Kevin Leacock ascended to the role of head women’s soccer coach prior to the 2008 season after serving the previous three seasons as an assistant coach.
In his time on staff the team made postseason play for the first time in its final season at the Division II level (2005) and then made the transition to NCAA Division I in 2006 and became postseason eligible at the top level in 2007.
Leacock joined the NJIT staff in 2005, serving as full-time Operations Manager for the athletic department and part-time women's soccer assistant. Leacock became full-time women's soccer assistant coach, relinquishing his operations duties, in 2006.
After two seasons as the full-time assistant coach, he led NJIT's program since March 2008, when the previous head coach, Alyssa Radu, resigned to accept a similar position.
Directing NJIT in 2008, he scored his first head coaching victory on September 10 with a 4-2 home win against Wagner.
The 2009 season represented a major step for the program, as it came close to the .500 mark for the first time at the Division I level. Overall, the record was 7-9-2 (one win shy of the program-record eight wins, set in 2005 when the Highlanders were 8-6-3 in their final season in Division II.
Included in NJIT’s surge to seven wins in 2009 (up from two the year before) was a 4-1-1 mark in the inaugural season of Great West Conference competition. The 4-1-1 record was good for first place in the four-team GWC East Division.
To go with the improved won-lost record, the 2009 Highlanders also set new program Division I standards in goals for (23, nearly double the previous year’s 12) and fewest goals against (25, exactly half the 2008 season total).
Leacock has played a large role in bringing together the last four recruiting classes, which have seen a steady improvement in the team’s skill and depth.
He ran all of NJIT's 2008 practices and spring competition leading up to his being named head coach, but when the team returned in August, the 2008 campaign was undermined from the start of preseason by a spate of injuries, many to the young players who had entered the program in 2007 and 2008.
A native of Trinidad and Tobago, Leacock was a goalkeeper on that country's under-21 and under-23 national teams, where he played alongside many of the players who made international headlines for tying heavily-favored Sweden to open the 2006 World Cup.
He represented his country in the 1993 Central American and Caribbean Games and in the 1994 Pan American Games before coming to the United States in 1995 as a student-athlete at Long Island University in Brooklyn, NY, where he competed for four years and was a magna cum laude graduate, twice earning Northeast Conference all-academic honors.
In addition to his work at NJIT, Leacock was recognized at the national level in 2007, when he was selected as one of two assistant coaches to help the United States U16 Girls National Team during its summer training. He was asked back again for domestic training of the US U17 Girls National Team in the summer of 2009.
Leacock holds an NSCAA national diploma, regional goalkeeping diploma, and advanced national diploma. He previously coached an U17 girls team in the New Jersey Region I league.
He and his wife, Shannon Evans, reside in Manville, NJ, with their daughter, Alivia Evans-Leacock, born in December 2009.
