Jacob Pickard is in his first year with the Roadrunner, joining the Cal State Bakersfield women's soccer team just weeks before the 2023 season while instantly becoming the team's most senior and experienced Assistant Coach on staff.
Pickard was most recently with Cal State East Bay women's soccer since Spring 2018. His duties included assisting with the planning and running of team training sessions, goalkeeper training, recruitment, organizing camps, travel planning, opponent scouting and video analysis. The year before, he was performing a similar job at Menlo College.
Before his time at Menlo, Pickard was the goalkeeper coach for the University of San Francisco men's team for two years. There he concurrently served as an assistant coach with the women's team at Cañada Junior College, goalkeeper coach for San Ramon FC's Women's Premier Soccer League (WPSL) team, and assistant scout for US Soccer's Youth National Program, which included training players at Market Training Center sessions.
Pickard served as a high school head coach for 13 years at four different schools. During that time he received Coach of the Year honors from the San Jose Mercury News and Palo Alto Daily News, and most notably, led the boys' varsity team at Menlo-Atherton High School to their highest-ever ranking of No. 18 in the nation in the ESPN/Powerade FAB 50 rankings in 2012.
That same year, Pickard led a '98 Boys Cal-North Olympic Development Program State team to the finals of the ODP Region IV Championships in Arizona. He was a staff coach for Cal-North ODP for five years. At the club level, Pickard has been a league president, technical director, director of goalkeeping and head coach at clubs all over the Bay Area. His longest stint was for 7 years with the Mountain View/Los Altos Soccer Club.
Pickard has a USSF National "B" License and NSCAA/USC Premier Diploma, National Goalkeeping Diploma and Director of Coaching Diploma as well as Level I Qualifications in Psychology and Fitness from the English FA.
