A Coach Trades Up by Going to a 'Midmajor'

Perhaps only in the nonrevenue-producing universe of collegiate men’s soccer would Creighton University, a small Jesuit college in Nebraska, be considered a more desirable destination than the University of North Carolina.

But that is essentially what the highly regarded Elmar Bolowich said when he stunned the soccer community last February with his decision to leave Chapel Hill after 22 years as coach and with the Tar Heels building toward a potential second N.C.A.A. championship — that men’s soccer matters more in Omaha.

“When you’re at one place so long, you always wonder, ‘Is this the only thing?’ ” Bolowich said. “I tell my players you have to get out of your comfort zone if you really want to accomplish something big. I felt like that applied to me first.”

Nine months later, Bolowich has Creighton in the College Cup Final Four for the first time since 2002. The second-seeded Bluejays (21-2) will face U.N.C. Charlotte (16-4-3) in the first semifinal Friday in Hoover, Ala. Top-seeded North Carolina (20-2-2), now under the guidance of the Bolowich protégé Carlos Somoano, meets 13th-seeded U.C.L.A. (18-4-1) in the other semifinal. If seeds hold, Creighton would meet North Carolina in the N.C.A.A. championship game Sunday.

“I left a very good team,” Bolowich said. “Even when I parted, I told the U.N.C. guys, ‘You’re going to be back in the final four.’ ”

Bolowich left a comfortable situation at North Carolina, where he earned an annual salary of $91,052, according to state records, and cultivated a recruiting pipeline from the local youth soccer clubs. But he said he has found an even sweeter spot at Creighton.

“Being the only major fall sport in Omaha, your sport is getting recognized,” Bolowich said. “Even being at a top school like North Carolina, we were just one of 28 sports.”

Beth Miller, the senior associate athletic director at North Carolina, said: “It’s true that at Creighton, they don’t have football, so it’s the premier fall sport. That’s great for them. But I think at the University of North Carolina, while we do have a broad-based program, soccer is definitely one of our premier sports — men’s soccer and women’s soccer. It is a little different, the positioning of the sport, but we’re seeing success in a lot of sports. We had 5,800 people at our N.C.A.A. quarterfinal game. It was a great crowd.”

North Carolina has nearly four times as many students and twice as many Division I athletic programs as Creighton. But bigger college does not always equal better prospects.

With an N.C.A.A. maximum of 9.9 scholarships per team and soccer’s global reach, midmajor institutions like U.C. Santa Barbara (2006) and Akron (2010) have won N.C.A.A. championships in recent years.

“In our soccer world, you don’t think of Creighton or Charlotte as midmajors,” said Somoano, who was Bolowich’s top assistant coach for nine years before becoming the head coach at North Carolina this season. “I was at Virginia Commonwealth University prior to coming to U.N.C., and I knew we could be as competitive as anybody.”

Creighton, which competes in the Missouri Valley Conference, has advanced to the N.C.A.A. tournament 19 of the last 20 seasons. This is the Bluejays’ fourth College Cup appearance. After making it to the national championship game in 2000 and the semifinals in 2002, the university opened Morrison Stadium in 2003. The $13 million soccer-only facility has further raised the program’s profile with blue-chip recruits.

“When you see that stadium, you want to go,” said the senior defender and Chicago-area native Andrew Duran, a former national high school player of the year.

It certainly got Bolowich’s attention. A native of Edenkoben, Germany, Bolowich (pronounced BOWL-o-vich) played and coached semiprofessional soccer after graduating from the University of Mainz. He joined U.N.C. as a part-time assistant in 1986, and became a two-time Atlantic Coast Conference coach of the year. He went 280-144-40 in 22 seasons.

When the former Creighton coach Jamie Clark left after one season to take the same job at the University of Washington, Bolowich visited Omaha and toured the stadium, which College Soccer News called the most exciting college soccer site in the nation.

Clark resigned Jan. 26. Creighton hired Bolowich 15 days later.

“It is phenomenal, the difference,” Bolowich said. “People know you’re here. They care about the program. There are so many people tied to it that they have suites up in the stadium. It’s like a party when you have a home game.”