Naomi Girson | staff writer

There’s a new gaffer on the Bluff.

In December, Duquesne named Jessica Giegucz the sixth head coach in women’s soccer program history. She is the third woman to be awarded the position and the first since Dawn Crow in 2001. She takes over a team that hasn’t won more than four Atlantic 10 Conference games in a season since 2017.

Giegucz previously spent 10 seasons at Division II Slippery Rock, ending her tenure this past fall. She went 104-48-24 with the Rock, good enough for a winning percentage of 65.9%. She led SRU to at least the quarterfinals of all nine Pennsylvania State Athletic Conference Tournaments played during her tenure, and won it once in 2019, reaching the DII NCAA Tournament as a two-seed.

Prior to Slippery Rock, Giegucz was an assistant for four years at DII Shippensburg coming out of college before her first head coaching role lasted a season at DIII Northland.

Though Giegucz has been coaching collegiate teams for 15 years, she has never had the opportunity to coach a Division I team until now.

“I’ve had a wonderful career in the past, and time with teams in the past,” Giegucz said. “And I think just being in the A-10, being at the Division I level, is really exciting.”

With her father being a college soccer coach, as well as Giegucz herself amassing four All-Centennial Conference awards as a player at Dickinson, she’s become accustomed to performing well under pressure and is ready to push her new team to a more competitive level.

Giegucz was ready to make a change away from Slippery Rock. Living with her husband and two children in Cranberry made the commute to and from the school more daunting as time passed. Duquesne’s central location in Pittsburgh gives her more time to spend both with her players and her family.

Dave Harper, vice president of athletics at Duquesne, is as optimistic about the new hire as Giegucz is about her new stomping grounds.

“As the search process played out, it became apparent that the qualifications Jessica brought to the table were the perfect fit at Duquesne University and for our women’s soccer program,” Harper said, according to Duquesne Athletics. “Her attention to detail, vision and sustained success at Slippery Rock will help elevate our program.”

Giegucz graduated from Dickinson in 2007 with a B.A. in Spanish, but she found herself back in the game soon after, being asked to coach small youth clinics and club teams before landing the assistant gig at Shippensburg. Since she began coaching, Giegucz has discovered a knack for not just coaching her players, but educating them on the big picture perspective of the game.

“I truly believe in the psychology and the education of mentoring student athletes. That’s where I hang my hat the most, and where I feel I am able to make an impact with my student athletes.”

The main priority for Giegucz, on and off the field, is her student-athletes, and she makes a point to have a open-door policy for anyone, anytime.

“I will always make time if they want to stop by the office,” Giegucz said. “If I’m in the middle of doing something budget-wise, or planning a recruiting trip, or anything that’s more of an administrative piece, then a student athlete of mine walks in my office, I will stop everything to be available for them because they’re the very reason why I do this.”

Tyler Spence, a friend of Giegucz and previously a player under her at Slippery Rock, still keeps in close contact with her, years after graduating. Spence met Giegucz when she was still in high school, but immediately could see how much she had to offer for the team. It was part of the reason she committed to the school.

“She thinks outside of the box, and she really values creativity and obviously doing the small things right,” Spence said. “But she likes to play a good game of soccer, and she demands that from her players.”

Spence noted that during games, Giegucz is always fired up from the sidelines, and shares emotion with the players while keeping them in check at the same time. She looks out for her players and rewards high performance, whether they score every game or are foreign to the stat sheet.

“I actually had a four-year player and starter for me score her very first career goal in a quarterfinal game. And she literally played every minute of all four years of her career for me, but she was a defender. She was what I would call my insurance policy,” Giegucz said. “And then one game, I let her take a free kick and she put it in the back of the net, and it was so exciting.”

Soccer isn’t just about the results for Giegucz, though. She cares more about the progress along the way.

“Winning is great. Everybody loves winning, but the emphasis for me is really on the progress, and the progress creates the winning,” Giegucz said. “That’s the way it has to be.”
 
Staff writer Naomi Girson can be reached at girsonn@duq.edu.