I honestly figured that Marquette women’s soccer head coach Chris Allen was done adjusting his coaching staff for the 2026 season. The Golden Eagles have an exhibition match on August 8th before starting the regular season on August 12th, so it seems like things were just a liiiiiiitle too close to the start of the preseason training window to bring anyone else in…… but that changed on Tuesday. That’s when Marquette announced the addition of Gillian Holder to the coaching staff with the title of assistant
coach.
Here’s Allen on his new assistant:
“We’re incredibly excited to welcome Gillian to Marquette Women’s Soccer,” Allen stated. “She is the kind of person every program hopes to have, selfless, driven, and deeply invested in the success of those around her. Our players will have an amazing mentor to learn from every day, and I know she’ll make a lasting impact on our culture.”
Holder’s an interesting addition to the coaching staff as this will be her first soccer coaching job and she doesn’t have playing experience at the NCAA level. She earned a degree in biomedical engineering from Wisconsin-Milwaukee in 2022 and worked in the field for a few years after graduating. Since then, she’s been a fitness coach at Train Moment, which has a location in Milwaukee’s Third Ward, and she’s been doing self-employed personal trainer work since January 2024.
She’s not completely inexperienced at the game of soccer, having played at the club level at UWM after a high school career at Pulaski High School up in the Green Bay area. Her high school playing days featured a year as team captain as well as a third place finish in the WIAA tournament in her senior season. Altogether, that puts Holder as somewhere in between a confident and capable Division 1 soccer coach and a strength & conditioning coach, although that last part is officially the job of noted WSOC alumnus Emily Jacobson. It’s unclear from the press release exactly what Holder’s responsibilities are going to be immediately out of the gate, but hey: It is her first soccer coaching job, so perhaps there’s a going to be a lot of “let’s see what you’re good at” going on here, too.
Follow Anonymous Eagle on social media
Facebook: AnonymousEagle
Instagram: AnonymousEagleSBN
Bluesky: AnonymousEagle
