June 15, 2010
LAS VEGAS - Jennifer Klein has been named the head women's soccer coach at UNLV, Director of Athletics Jim Livengood announced on Tuesday. It was also announced that Paul Karver and Katie Burton will be assistant coaches under Klein.
Klein has spent the past three years as the top assistant to former head coach Kat Mertz, who recently left UNLV to take a position on the staff at the University of Texas. During that time the Rebels garnered a 27-21-13 record on the pitch and claimed the 2007 Mountain West Conference regular season title.
"Having watched Jennifer compete as a student-athlete at the University of Arizona, it is not surprising that she has risen so fast in the coaching ranks", said Livengood. "She was an excellent assistant for Kat Mertz, and will be an outstanding head coach."
"I'm very excited for this opportunity and looking forward to the upcoming fall season", said Klein. "The players have been working hard in the spring and with the schedule we have laid out for us, I feel we have the setup to have a very good team this season and years to come."
While at UNLV, she has been active in the local soccer community, coaching several local youth teams and currently is a coach for the Players Soccer Club. She is also involved in the Nevada Olympic Development Program as the head coach for the 94 girls team after previously working with the 91 girls team. She is a staff coach with the Region IV ODP.
Klein came to UNLV following a playing (2002-05) and volunteer coaching (2006) career at the University of Arizona. On the field at Arizona, she was named a team captain her final two seasons. She helped her squad to the NCAA Sweet 16 in 2005 after guiding the Wildcats to their first Pac-10 Conference championship the previous season. Overall, she played in 78 games with 60 starts as a midfielder and outside back. She earned her undergraduate degree in biology from Arizona in May of 2006 and is currently working on her master's degree in sports administration at UNLV.
The first of the two new assistants is Paul Karver, who takes his fourth coaching position after spending time as an assistant coach for the men's team at George Fox (2006-07), for the men's team at Millikin University (2007-08), and then at his alma mater, University of Redlands, since the 2008 season. He spent his freshman year at Creighton in 2001 and helped them to a conference championship before transferring to the University of Redlands for the 2002 season, where he helped the Bulldogs earn three Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference championships.
Katie Burton, a Las Vegas native and Bishop Gorman High School graduate (2003), joins the Rebel staff after spending two years as a graduate assistant at Sacramento State. She played on the Hornets from 2003-07, earning all-conference honors three times while leading the team to the NCAA Tournament for the first time in school history in 2007. Burton received her bachelor's degree in accounting from Sacramento State in 2008.
