An outstanding coach with championship experience, Michael Haswell returns for his sixth season with the Cal State LA men’s soccer coaching staff with added responsibilities following an off-season promotion.
Haswell helped the Golden Eagles win their first-ever NCAA championship in 2021 and was a key part of the United Soccer Coaches 2021 National Staff of the Year. The coaching staff did a magnificent job navigating through a missed season of competition in 2020 due to COVID and then promptly returning to championship form in 2021.
The Golden Eagles captured all four championships available to them in 2021 – the California Collegiate Athletic Association regular-season and tournament titles, a second straight NCAA Super Region 4 title and then the NCAA Division II title in Colorado Springs, Colo. Cal State LA finished the season with an 18-2-3 overall record.
Haswell joined the program in 2016 and has been a key part of the coaching staff ever since.
He helped the Golden Eagles to a tremendous season in 2019. Cal State LA won CCAA and Super Region 4 championships and advanced to the national championship game. The Golden Eagles set a new program record for winning percentage after a sensational 19-1-3 campaign. Cal State LA reached the national title game for the first time since 1981 and for the second time in program history.
In his first year at Cal State LA, in 2016, he helped the Golden Eagles to a 10-6-3 overall record and a spot in the CCAA Tournament.
The Golden Eagles improved to 14-5-3 in his second season in 2017 and began their stretch of winning a championship at either the conference, regional or national level that has stretched to four seasons in a row. That year, the Golden Eagles won a CCAA Tournament title and advanced to the NCAA playoffs.
In 2018, Cal State LA won its second straight CCAA Tournament title and finished the season with a 15-3-3 overall record. The Golden Eagles reached the second round of the NCAA playoffs.
That set the stage for the program’s two trips to the national finals in 2019 and 2021.
In his first five seasons with the program, Haswell has helped the Golden Eagles to an overall record of 76-17-15, including a 42-10-6 mark in conference play.
In addition to his coaching achievements, Haswell has also been a Kinesiology instructor at Cal State LA since 2016. He has taught a range of classes from lectures in Applied Biomechanics and Exercise Psychology to large class lectures with Physiological Bases of Nutrition, Fitness, and Health to hands-on lab classes in Applied Motor Learning, to activity classes with Futsal.
Haswell has also had outstanding coaching experiences at the high school and club levels. He coached at Mendez High School from 2010-19 and was named the CIF Division II Coach of the Year in 2017 after leading the team to a CIF Los Angeles City Section Championship. After launching the program in 2010, Haswell led the team from a Division IV classification to Division I.
He holds a USSF “B” coaching license.
As a player, Haswell was part of three city championship teams at FM High School and a youth national championship with the Syracuse Blitz. Haswell played NCAA Division I lacrosse at Penn State, where he earned his degree in aerospace engineering. Haswell earned his Master’s degree in Kinesiology from Long Beach State in 2016.
He went on to play semi-professional soccer with the Los Angeles Crew and won numerous championships.
In addition to his soccer and teaching experience, Haswell was also an engineer at Boeing Satellite Systems, where he was part of high-profile teams working for top government and commercial customers including the Air Force on GPSIII and DirecTV high-definition television satellites.
He lives in Long Beach with his wife Kristin and two children James and Ellia.
