It’s the ultimate days earlier than the Alamo Bowl, the final gasps of USC’s soccer season, and Rock Hanson continues to be getting over a fever.
For USC offensive line coach Zach Hanson and his spouse, Annie, who beforehand was Trojans recruiting director, the timing isn’t perfect to be tending to a sick 1-year-old. The Trojans are shorthanded in making an attempt to complete out a 10-win season on Tuesday in opposition to Texas Christian. The switch portal opens three days after that. And the teaching carousel is already in full swing, with one assistant already gone and Zach garnering exterior curiosity, particularly from his alma mater, Kansas State.
However they’ve been parenting lengthy sufficient now to know to not stress over a fever. And so they’ve been working in faculty soccer lengthy sufficient to know the timing isn’t perfect. Their previous decade collectively has been a testomony to that. Final December, Rock was born on early-signing day, hours after Annie had wrapped up USC’s 2025 recruiting class. Two weeks after that, Zach was thrust into a brand new function as USC’s offensive line coach. They spent the bowl season in a Las Vegas resort, strolling the Strip with a three-week previous, in a new-parent-induced delirium, their complete lives having abruptly turned the wrong way up.
“It was lots of studying on the fly,” Zach mentioned. “We had been figuring all of that out collectively.”
Rock Hanson, son of USC assistant coach Zach Hanson, wears a Trojans jersey whereas sitting on the workforce’s observe area.
(Courtesy of Hanson household)
There aren’t many in faculty soccer who’ve navigated all that the Hansons have throughout the previous two seasons at USC. However their resilience has been the beating coronary heart behind an unexpectedly sturdy season for a Trojans offensive line that overcame its personal harrowing hurdles. At the same time as accidents compelled USC to reshuffle the road on a close to weekly foundation, Zach nonetheless guided the group to its finest season since 2022.
“To lose all that we misplaced, then to have all of the reshuffling on the offensive line we had, usually that might virtually be a demise sentence for an offense,” coach Lincoln Riley mentioned. “We’ve had some huge challenges. We’ve been in a position to reply.”
That’s a credit score not solely to Zach, who has turn out to be one of the crucial assistants on USC’s teaching employees, but in addition to Annie, who has remained an important a part of this system, albeit now in a extra unofficial capability.
That they’ve confirmed so adept at navigating such opposed circumstances ought to come as no shock contemplating the uphill climb they confronted from the beginning of their relationship. After they first met on a blind date at an Eric Church live performance in 2014, Annie labored at Oklahoma within the growth workplace. Zach was a graduate assistant at Kansas State, a five-hour drive away in Manhattan, close to the place Annie grew up. They hit it off so effectively instantly that each knew they needed to make it work. A yr in, simply as Zach deliberate to suggest, Annie acquired a job in Chapel Hill, N.C., main the Tar Heels recruiting workplace.
For years, they toiled away, rising by means of the ranks, hoping their paths would converge. They by no means did for lengthy. They spent the 2015 season aside, earlier than Zach acquired the job as North Carolina’s particular groups assistant coach in 2016. They spent a yr collectively, then employed Annie was employed to run recruiting at Oklahoma in 2017. They spent one other season aside, earlier than Zach returned to Kansas State and that very same five-hour drive into Oklahoma.
When Kansas State coach Invoice Snyder retired, Zach joined Riley’s employees as a grad assistant in 2019, lastly again on the identical college as his spouse. However in 2020, Tulsa supplied him a job two hours away, teaching the offensive line. He took it. They purchased a home. And Annie drove two hours on daily basis, there and again, to work in Norman.
It felt, by then, like a blessing.
“You simply discover a method, proper?” Annie says.
Zach dreamed in the future of being a head soccer coach. Annie had gotten into faculty athletics to sometime be an athletic director. At USC, they may pursue these paths for the primary time collectively. Zach coached tight ends whereas Annie ran the recruiting workplace. For the primary time, it felt like they may keep in the identical place for some time. They determined to begin a household.
Annie acquired pregnant in 2024. Then final September, simply earlier than the beginning of the soccer season, she began to expertise severe ache in her leg. One physician brushed it off. However ultimately she went again to the hospital. One other physician found a big blood clot working from the center of her calf, all the way in which up close to her stomach.
Emergency surgical procedure was scheduled for the very subsequent morning. Annie spent the following six weeks relegated to a wheelchair or a walker. Along with her husband within the throes of the soccer season, the Riley household insisted Annie dwell within the casita of their Palos Verdes residence. So for six weeks, whereas she recovered, Riley’s spouse, Caitlin, waited on her each want. “I imply, [she did] every little thing you might consider,” Annie says, nonetheless blown away by the kindness.
In spite of everything that, having a child didn’t really feel so daunting. Riley advised her to take the time after Rock was born. She nonetheless labored from residence, establishing recruiting visits for January. She didn’t need different ladies within the enterprise to suppose you couldn’t have a child and run recruiting for a serious faculty soccer program. However in the future, she got here into USC’s soccer workplace and set Rock up in a pack-and-play in a single room whereas she ran a employees assembly in one other. As she spoke to her employees, Rock wailed silently on the newborn monitor app on her cellphone. She couldn’t take it.
USC assistant coach Zach Hanson embraces his spouse, Annie, and son, Rock, share a hug on the sector on the Coliseum after a USC soccer recreation.
(Courtesy of Hanson household)
“I turned to my counterpart [current director of USC recruiting strategy] Skyler [Phan] and mentioned, ‘Lady, it’s your flip. You’ve acquired it,’” Annie recalled.
She’d already advised Riley she was interested by stepping away. Truly doing so “was extremely tough” for Annie, Zach mentioned.
She made it official in March; although, she maintains it’s simply momentary.
“My time in faculty soccer will not be over,” Annie says. “I really imagine each time I do return, I’ll be a a lot better chief now that I’m a mother.”
Simply as Annie stepped away, Zach got down to put his imprint on USC’s offensive line. Instantly upon taking on the group, he began switching up mixtures, to make sure that every linemen realized a number of positions, by no means understanding which mixtures he would possibly want.
He’d additionally realized over the course of his profession how crucial chemistry could possibly be up entrance. If it was off, it may sink the entire season. So he made a concerted effort from the begin to deliver the group collectively exterior of soccer.
USC offensive line coach Zach Hanson; his spouse, Annie; and son, Rock, be a part of linemen and employees for a bunch picture within the Trojans’ locker room.
(Courtesy of Hanson household)
“One of many coaches I labored for a number of years in the past advised me, the gamers aren’t simply going to come back to you,” Zach mentioned. “You’ve acquired to deliver them in.”
In order that they hosted dinners at their home. Annie baked each lineman their favourite cake on their birthdays. They needed the linemen to know that they cared about them as extra than simply soccer gamers.
“He’s a terrific coach,” guard Alani Noa mentioned. “There’s nothing too private. There’s nothing out of whack. All the pieces is open so far as conversations.”
They’ve even taken to holding Rock, who’s now already 33 kilos.
“It’s so necessary to Zach,” Annie says, “that these youngsters perceive, like, ‘You are able to do this, and we imagine in you, and we’re going to put together you to some extent of trusting your coaching. So whenever you get out on that area, like there’s not even a query, you realize, and I feel that these guys very a lot performed that method this yr.”
USC was with out stalwart left deal with, Elijah Paige, for half the season. Beginning heart, former walk-on Kilian O’Connor, performed in eight video games. And simply two of its beginning lineman — Tobias Raymond and Justin Tauanuu — began all 12 video games heading into the Alamo Bowl.
USC offensive lineman Alani Noa (77), Amos Talalele (75) and Kilian O’Connor (67) heat up earlier than going through Notre Dame on the Coliseum on Nov. 30.
(Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Instances)
“It is a place group the place it’s not all the time essentially the most gifted guys you throw on the market,” Zach mentioned. “It’s the 5 guys who performed finest collectively.”
Zach managed to maintain discovering these 5 all season, retaining the entrance regular all season regardless of accidents. USC gave up simply 15 sacks, fewer than all however 14 groups in faculty soccer. The road additionally cleared the way in which to common 5.29 yards per carry, the very best speeding clip on the college in over a decade.
Different colleges are beginning to discover. At Kansas State, his alma mater, Hanson’s title has been talked about as a possible offensive coordinator beneath newly employed coach Collin Klein, who Hanson described to The Instances as “certainly one of my finest pals” whose “household is like household to us”. Annie’s household additionally hails from simply exterior of Manhattan, Kan.
“That place is actually a spot that’s particular to us,” Zach mentioned of Kansas State.
However in the identical breath, Zach says he’s “extraordinarily pleased [at USC] doing what we’re doing.” It’s not misplaced on the Hansons how a lot the Rileys have performed for them.
Within the coming days, these questions will certainly come up once more. However for now, the Hansons had been extra preoccupied with kicking a 1-year-old’s fever and making ready USC to play Texas Christian with out three of its prime seven linemen.
“Our philosophy has all the time been, as a household, we’re going to be all in regardless of the place we’re at,” Zach says.
At USC, that has actually been the case. That features Rock, who is an ideal 9-0 at USC video games he’s attended heading into Tuesday’s Alamo Bowl — and may now say the phrase “ball.”
Whether or not he’ll get to construct on that file past the bowl recreation stays to be seen. However there have been different choices elsewhere earlier than. Choices nearer to household, for childcare functions.
However USC, Annie says, “has made our expertise so unimaginable and definitely worth the sacrifices.”
“We’ve chosen to remain due to how particular this place is, you realize?”
