Testing, 1-2-3

Lost WCU season the latest hurdle in Kempf Townsley’s journey through a decorated soccer life

\This is the second in a three-part series on how West Chester University teams are dealing with a lost 2020 fall season.

Just like everyone else, Betty Ann Kempf Townsley is struggling with the new realities of the post-COVID-19 era. But West Chester’s highly successful women’s soccer coach has an uplifting, hopeful message she has been delivering regularly to her team since offseason workouts were scrapped last spring.

“There is nothing as a coach that can prepare you for this stuff,” said Kempf Townsley, who has orchestrated winning seasons and NCAA playoff berths in each of the 13 seasons since arriving at WCU in 2007.

Prior to that, Kempf Townsley started the division I soccer programs at La Salle and Seton Hall, and there have been some true life and death challenges along the way. She was at SHU in 2000 when a fire at Boland Hall led to three deaths and 58 injuries.

“Seven of my freshmen players lived in that dorm,” she said.

A year and a half later, she was just across the Hudson River in South Orange, N.J., during the 911 terrorist attack.

“Many people on campus had a family member that passed away,” she added.

And then in 2006, one of her players – 21-year-old Mary Jennings – succumbed to liver cancer, prompting Kempf Townsley to stay on as the Pirates head coach an extra season.

“That was the most challenging thing,” she acknowledged. “When I resigned, I was emotionally drained.

“So this is really nothing compared to that. That’s a person’s life. This is just a setback for these kids. They will learn a lot of lessons about themselves. Once we get back to playing again, they will appreciate it more than they ever have.”

Kempf Townsley learned first-hand to focus on the blessings of life after hearing stories from her father, Florian Kempf, who was born in Yugoslavia and was a little boy living in Austria during World War II.

“Listening to my father and hearing about the craziness of bombs being dropped every night, he didn’t know where his next meal was coming from,” she said. “That’s things you need to focus on during these types of times, and how lucky we are to have what we have.”

Kempf Townsley has relayed the stories to her players. How Florian came to the United States at the age of 18 in the early 1950s on a ship with his parents and one of his four older brothers. Another brother had died in the war.

“He came to this country with only the clothes on his back in order to have a better life,” she explained.

“In our household I grew up in, it was food on the table, a roof over your head and you were healthy. Those are the types of things I’ve been stressing to my team all along. These are the things that are really important.

“This is an opportunity to step back and evaluate what really is important in life. The simple things we all take for granted every day.”

In 34 seasons as a head college coach, Kempf Townsley has amassed 347 victories, with 203 coming at WCU. The Golden Rams have captured five regional titles, three PSAC crowns and she’s been named the conference coach of the year two times.

“It’s all of the little things that lead up to those accomplishments,” she said. “We do a lot with the players in the offseason, working on individual skills and leadership skills. That all builds together and creates the continuous success pattern we have, and it gets passed on from class-to-class.”

A 1982 graduate of Immaculata, Kempf Townsley is married to Ed Townsley, who coached West Chester’s women’s soccer squad for two seasons in the late 1990s.

“This was going to be a good season for us,” she predicted. “Every other year I take my teams to Charleston (S.C.) for preseason and this was the year with this group. I know it was very disappointing when I had to break the news that we weren’t going to be able to go. It’s been one letdown after another for these kids.

“It’s the first time in 38 years that I have not been on the soccer field at this time of year. A couple days ago I got into a funky, weird mood. I guess it was kind of like mourning feeling.”

But Kempf Townsley is undaunted and planning for a return to action next spring, if possible, and again in the fall of 2021.

PETE BANNAN — MNG FILE West Chester University women’s soccer coach Betty Ann Kempf Townsley, left, thought she had seen just about everything in her soccer coaching career. But a season lost to a pandemic is a new one, even for her.