Krieger calling it quits

He’s won four state titles, two national championships and taken three different high school boys soccer programs to the state tournament. No question about it. Ken Krieger has left his mark on the prep soccer scene.
But after a 30-year coaching career that’s made him Virginia’s all-time winningest high school soccer coach, Krieger has decided he’s accomplished enough. It’s time to move on.
Krieger will retire after this season with Forest Park.
“I’ve put a good 30 years in and I appreciate what Prince William County has done for me,” said Krieger, who has a 386-187-40 record going into tonight’s Group AAA Cardinal District Tournament semifinals, where third-seeded Forest Park plays second-seeded Gar-Field. “I’ve done everything I wanted to. People have asked me, ‘Why not go for 400 wins or even 500?’ I tell them, it is not about that.”
Besides leaving behind an accomplished track record, the 53-year-old Krieger cited other reasons for his decision to retire from the Prince William County Schools System. He will be able to devote himself full-time to his position as the technical director of coaching for Prince William Soccer Inc.
He also will be able to spend more time watching his daughter Ali play. Ali Krieger, a Forest Park graduate, currently plays for one of the top women’s professional soccer teams in Europe, FFC Frankfurt of Germany. She is currently in the running for a spot on the U.S. Women’s National Team that has qualified for the Summer Olympics in China.
In addition, Krieger’s father Robert has pancreatic cancer and may not live beyond this month.
“I would like to spend more time with him,” Krieger said.
Krieger began his coaching career at Osbourn Park as a girls basketball coach in 1978. In 1979, he was hired as the school’s head boys soccer coach, a position he held through the spring of 1991.
He enjoyed some success with the Yellow Jackets, leading them to the 1990 Group AAA state fi-nal. But it was Krieger’s next coaching stop at Hylton that took things to a new level.
After its inaugural season in 1992, in which the Bulldogs went 12-3 and lost in the district semifi-nals to Osbourn Park, Hylton reeled off an amazing string of eight straight state tournament ap-pearances.
From 1993 to 2000, the Bulldogs went 160-12-8. That run included state titles in 1993, 1994, 1998 and 1999 and
NSCAA national championships in 1993 and 1998. In 1999, Krieger was named the NSCAA Na-tional Division 1 AAA High School Coach of the Year.
The run also included an unbeaten home-winning streak that reached 57-0-2 before being snapped by Woodbridge in the Northwest Region Tournament final in 1996. And the run included the fact that Hylton was the first boys soccer team in state history to finish the season unbeaten and untied after going 21-0-0 in 1993.
After the 2000 season, Krieger moved to Forest Park to start his second straight boys soccer pro-gram from scratch. He has taken the Bruins to three state tournaments, making him the first coach in state soccer history to take three different teams to states.