When Aberdeen Central asked Merle Aske to help get its girls’ soccer program off the ground, he figured he’d coach for a handful of seasons, then pass the baton.

He stayed for two decades.

But come this fall, Aske will be taking in Golden Eagles games from a different vantage point, this one from the stands as the first and only head coach in program history hands off the reins to longtime assistant Kentra Hanley.

“After 20 years, it was time to let someone else take over,” Aske said.

Aske, who was already coaching wrestling for the Golden Eagles, had a hand in the boys’ program and was coaching at Presentation College when Central officials approached him about starting the girls’ program.

“My son had just graduated college, so I thought it was a good time to try something different,” he said. “Realistically, I went into it thinking I’d do it for a few years and then somebody else would take over, but I got into it and I’ve always loved to coach and watch the kids and put them in a competitive environment and watch them grow.”

In other words, he loved the process too much to step away.

And a process is exactly what it was, guiding the fledgling program through its infancy, through the growing pains and ultimately, to a pair of state championships.

“When we first started, it was all a matter of growing pains, getting the kids used to the fact that they weren’t riding with their parents and they weren’t just driving to a game and showing up,” he said. “They were riding the buses and giving them that team atmosphere and growing it within the school.”

Central first credentialed a girls’ soccer program in 2006, well before the South Dakota High School Activities Association officially sanctioned the sport. Aske noted those first few years had a few proverbial bumps in the road.

“We went from the team that was middle of the road and we developed and built a steady program,” he said. “Through Hub City Soccer, we developed the younger players to get into our system and we got it to where we were a team that was going to be in the fight as much as anybody else when you got to the end of the season.”

That steady growth culminated in 2011 when the Aske guided the Golden Eagles to its first state title, one year before the SDHSAA stepped in and organized a sanctioned season. Central won again the next season, claiming the first trophy with the activities association’s logo on it, besting a field of roughly a dozen schools who had officially credentialed their programs.

Since then, while the state transitioned from “sanctioned teams” and “unsanctioned teams” into Class AA and A divisions, Central has quietly stayed amongst South Dakota’s perennial contenders.

“That was the turning point, 2010, 2011, where we went into every game knowing we had a fighting chance and we could compete with the Sioux Fallses and the Rapid Cities and those better teams that had always been dominant,” Aske said. “We were able to be in games with them, whereas before, we would know this is a game we’re probably going to lose 3-1 or 2-0. It’s just not going to go our way. But after that, any game we went into, we had an opportunity to win.”

And that, essentially, is the culture that Aske has demanded of his program.

“Throughout the years, we never really talked about winning and losing. I was never a big goal person, we’re going to do this or going to do that,” Aske said. “(Instead) we’re going to develop ourselves so at the beginning of the season, we’re OK at this stuff, but at the end of the season, we need to be good at everything we want to do. We need to play the style of soccer we want to play and we need to force other teams to have to step to us and try to match us. The girls have really bought into that and done a really good job. We’ve had a bunch of quality kids come through our program.”

The proof positive of that philosophy may very well have come during the 2022 state tournament when Central fell 2-1 to Harrisburg in the championship contest. Following that game, Aske struggled to come up with the right words to say to his team, but, as it turned out, he didn’t need to say much. The culture had already spoken.

“When we lost in the state final to Harrisburg in Tea, you would think the team that loses, they’re full of tears and they’re upset,” Aske said, “but a lot of the girls were laughing because they realized the amount of work – it came from the seniors – how much work they put into this and they did their best. Things just didn’t go our way that day. The wind was blowing 50 miles an hour and we hit the crossbar twice and we lose a 1-goal game. But to them, especially the seniors, we accomplished something. We’ve been in the finals or the semi-finals every year we’ve been here. It didn’t go our way today, but we should celebrate the work we put into the season. That was a very memorable moment for me.”

Aske said the best part of coaching has always been getting to watch kids come into the program as young teenagers and go on to become successful adults.

“That’s the biggest thing for me is watching the kids,” he said. “They come into our program as 8th graders, freshmen, sometimes a 7th grader, and seeing them develop from the time they’re 12 or 13 until they’re 17 or 18 and going off to school, and how they developed into adulthood and seeing them transform into someone who’s going to help out in the community and be successful when they get out in life.”

As the Golden Eagles prepare to move forward under Hanley’s direction, Aske feels good about the direction of the program.

“She was a senior my first year with the program in ‘06,” Aske said. “She was there at the beginning of where I started, went off to Northern for 6 years and she’s been with us since 2014. Having somebody who’s been around the culture and has been in it and understands what has been built. The whole structure is there, it’s just a matter of getting her leadership style in there.”

As for his future plans, Aske still plans to stay on as an assistant for the Golden Eagle wrestling program and use his newfound free time to invest more intentionally in his grandchildren.

“There’s never going to be a perfect time to step away, but it was time to just get on with it.,” he said. “Our grandkids are getting to the age now where they’re starting to be in school sports and stuff like that, and they live about 3 hours away. It’ll be nice to be able to go down and watch them do stuff every once in a while.”