Meet Alex Zaroyan, Fairmont State’s New Soccer Coach

Alex Zaroyan has never been the type to stand still. From the analytics rooms of the San Francisco Bay Area to the sidelines of Power Five programs, he has spent his career absorbing the game from every angle. And now he’s brought that curiosity to Fairmont.

​Zaroyan was named the fifth head women’s soccer coach in Fairmont State program history in February, appointed by Director of Athletics Greg Bamberger. He inherits a program that has never been stronger.

The Fighting Falcons captured the 2025 Mountain East Conference Women’s Soccer Championship, defeating the University of Charleston 4-1 in the final. The program finished with a program-best 17 wins before falling to West Chester in the second round of the NCAA Division II Championship. Not a single player transferred out following the season – a fact Zaroyan calls extraordinary.

​“When nobody transfers out, that’s extremely rare,” he said. “Especially when you win. The fact that nobody left the roster this year says a lot about the university and the program.”

Zaroyan grew up in Monrovia, California, where his uncle coached professionally and planted an early seed. While studying at Cal State East Bay, he took a job with Match Analysis, a California-based soccer analytics firm. He tracked more than 750 hours of matches in Major League Soccer, Liga MX, and with the U.S. men’s and women’s national teams, learning to translate on-field production into data. He later earned a bachelor’s degree in sports and recreational management from Temple University and a master’s
degree in strategic communication from the University of Tennessee at Martin.

His coaching path wound through Angelina College in Texas and the University of Tennessee-Martin, where he helped the Skyhawks to 17 wins and the 2021 Ohio Valley Conference championship. He also coached at George Washington University and then Syracuse, where he was named to the United Soccer Coaches 30-Under-30 program, selected from more than 270 applicants.

Zaroyan has been direct with his players about the challenge ahead. “You’ve been on a mountaintop,” he told them. “Everybody has their bullseye pointed at where you are. Our job is to get to the next highest mountaintop – and then the next one.” His philosophy is grounded in relationships and transparency. Rather than focusing players on trophies and tournament brackets, he challenges them to win every session and every drill, building habits so ingrained that when the stakes are highest, the team knows exactly what to do.

“I don’t want an environment with a perfection attitude,” he said. “Winning, to me, includes: I couldn’t do this yesterday, and I can do it today.”

Zaroyan describes his squad as a diverse group united by the game. What strikes him most is how naturally they connect across those differences.

He is recruiting selectively this cycle, prioritizing fit over volume, with commitments already in hand from a Southern California prospect and conversations underway with players from Spain and the Harrisburg area. The fall schedule will not allow for a slow start: the Falcons open against Slippery Rock before traveling to face Findlay, both nationally ranked opponents.

For donors who have invested in Fairmont State women’s soccer, and those considering it, Zaroyan wants you to know what that investment looks like from the inside. These are student-athletes who span majors from nursing to architecture to engineering, who stayed when they could have left, and who approach every day on this campus with genuine appreciation.

“When you’re a donor, you want to see your investment go deep,” he said. “At Fairmont State, you’re going to get four years of a student-athlete. Not just one season.”

That long view is exactly how Zaroyan thinks about the program he is building. The wins, the conference title, the NCAA tournament run – those are the foundation, not the ceiling. With a loyal roster, a demanding early schedule and a coach whose ambitions are as high as they are grounded, Fairmont State women’s soccer is pointed squarely at what comes next.

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