This weekend’s matchup between Seattle Reign and Racing Louisville is a big one for both teams. They’re separated by just a point in the standings, and the playoff race gets tighter every weekend.

But on the sidelines, a different story unfolds. The only three-time NWSL Coach of the Year faces off against a newcomer who, in less than two seasons, is righting her club’s ship.

Laura Harvey is in her 10th season at the helm of Seattle Reign. She’s the winningest coach in NWSL regular-season play. Just about any coaching record in the NWSL history books, Harvey has smashed. She’s intense, passionate, with a resume that speaks for itself.

To play for her is to become more connected to the game as a player. As a player with aspirations to be a coach, there is no better classroom.

No one knows that more than Bev Yanez.

Yanez is in her second year as the Racing Louisville head coach, but played under Harvey’s Reign from 2014-17 (Yanez remained on the Reign after Harvey left to coach the Utah Royals).

“She’s a tactician. She knows exactly what she wants … She just created such a great culture in the locker room,” Yanez said. “She would come in, turn the stereo on and get the music and the vibes going. We always felt comfortable around her.”

Thanks in part to her time with INAC Kobe Leonessa of the then Nadeshiko League, Japan’s top flight women’s soccer league, and her years spent playing for Harvey, Yanez knew coaching was her post-playing path. Harvey was not at all surprised when Yanez ventured into coaching after she retired from the game in 2019, calling her a “football junkie.”

Every coach approaches the game and their locker rooms differently. Yanez is cool and analytical compared to Harvey’s fiery passion.

“Everyone knows I’m a bit of a nut on the sideline,” Harvey joked. “I get a thousand steps a minute.”

No matter how different, Harvey and Yanez both stressed two qualities for successful coaching: authenticity and adaptability.

“I’ve always believed that authenticity is really important in our line of work. Players are very good at reading through people who aren’t authentic, and when you’re trying to be something that you’re not or profess something you don’t believe in, I don’t think you get the best result out of that,” Harvey said. “What’s great about our sports and humans in general is everybody’s different. No one’s the same. Even though we’re all trying to accomplish the same goal, how we go about it can be done in really different ways.”

Yanez learned this lesson the hard way in her first year as a head coach. Coming in, she wanted to prove that she was in charge, putting on a front that didn’t fit.

“Going from an assistant to a head coach within the environment, I tried to draw such a sturdy line and make sure that it was very clear that I was now stepping into a decision maker's role,” she said.

That firm hand is simply not in her nature, she admitted. In fact, Harvey said Yanez is one of the most empathetic people she knows. Harvey never worried about Yanez’s chops as a coach, but because she leads with that gentle, relationship-forward connection, she worried how Yanez would handle the more difficult parts of the job.

“It's really hard. You have to make people unhappy and I hate that side of the job,” Harvey said. “I really dislike smashing people's dreams and bursting their bubbles occasionally. It's really challenging and just knowing how empathetic she was as a person, I always thought that that would be really hard for her.”

It took self reflection over the offseason to find her sweet spot. Thinking back on her Reign days, Yanez recalled a game where she felt slighted. She didn’t get the minutes she thought she deserved, and she took it out on Harvey.

“I remember being so cold, going and getting a shower and sitting on the bus first, and staring out the window, crying. I didn't want to make eye contact with her,” Yanez said.

The next day, she went to Harvey to apologize, and Harvey gave her the space to let her be wrong and to feel hurt and angry. As a head coach now, Yanez makes an effort to give her players that same respect and space.

“How I try to operate is just consistently trying to remind the team that these are the standards. This is how we operate, but also understanding that there are human beings within it, so giving that grace period,” Yanez said.

Coming into her second season, rather than lean further into the hardened emotionality, Yanez turned her empathy and kindness into her secret weapon in those difficult moments.

Authenticity and adaptability.

“That was authentically, genuinely not who I was. I wanted to come in this year, and I wanted to operate more like who I am,” she said. “I'm a people person. I enjoy relationships. I enjoy building relationships. I enjoy creating standards, and I enjoy coaching. I enjoy the detail of it. I think I lost a lot of that trying to step into the role for the first time and do well in it.”

From the outside, one might not have noticed that hiccup in 2024. The team’s seven wins was the best in club history, and heading into Week 20 in Seattle, Racing already have tied that number and are firmly in the playoff race.

“She’s now changed that narrative. They’ve been one of the hardest teams for us to prepare for because they play a very different style to a lot of other teams,” Harvey said. “They are very, very good at it.”

For Harvey, the most impressive part of watching her former player turn into one of the league’s rising stars has been how she is able to adjust.

“I know the style of football she likes to play herself, and Louisville doesn't really play that way. She's recognized the players she has. She's recognized what they'll be, what their strengths are and what they'll be good at,” Harvey said. “She's leaned into that. That’s a huge part of coaching, but it's part of the authenticity piece of it. If I'm authentic, I'm myself, but I can adapt within that, that's where you truly find success.”

That method has been working for Harvey since she took off her boots and joined the sideline ranks more than 20 years ago. As much as each coach has their own way, Harvey’s passion, according to Yanez, had a way of bringing a team together.

“I think that’s ultimately what sold a lot of people on wanting to play for her. She did it in her way,” Yanez said. “The music was loud. She was always laughing, but when it was time to be serious, it was time to be serious … She makes you want to be more invested in who you are for the team.”

Yanez knows she got a crash course in coaching just by being in Harvey’s orbit. As she builds her own legacy in Louisville, with a contract extension recently signed through 2026, she is not unfamiliar with the fact that she and Harvey are the lone women coaching in the NWSL this season. Boston Legacy will kick off next season with Filipa Patão at the helm, but Harvey said that hiring women for coaching roles is still largely considered a “gamble”.

“I think I'm seen as a unicorn,” Harvey said of her success. “I think people are going, ‘Well, yeah, that's Laura.’ That's just not how it is.”

The talent exists; it just comes down to getting the opportunity.

“A lot of it is visibility. I'm very high on when you see it, you can believe it. When you see it, you can dream it,” Yanez said. “I feel a lot of responsibility in continuing to be the best version of myself so that hopefully, along the way, I inspire someone because you never know who's watching. You never know whose life you can touch on any given day.”

That chance to inspire sits keenly in the back of their minds but at the end of the day, there is still a game to be played. It is just the fourth time Yanez and Harvey’s squads face off, with the student yet to overcome the master.

For Louisville, who currently sit in eighth place, it’s a chance to climb further above the playoff line. They’re hoping to make the postseason for the first time in club history, but Yanez isn’t going that far just yet.

“I believe as a leader in the group that when you start to focus on a result, you lose focus of process, and when you lose focus of process, that never properly sets up your group,” Yanez said. “Continuing to focus on the process and the outcome as being a part of that journey, I think is really important for us.”

Taking a page out of her mentor’s book, Yanez knows when to turn game mode on, but that doesn’t mean Racing Louisville aren’t having fun. One thing is for sure: despite the affection between Yanez and Harvey, when the whistle blows on Sunday night, it’ll be game on.

You can watch Seattle Reign host Racing Louisville on Sunday, September 14 at 8 p.m. ET on NWSL+ and Paramount+.