After the captains of Mike Coven's 1984 men's soccer team overrode his game plan in a late-season loss at Babson College-spoiling an undefeated season, Coven walked off the field in fury and never stopped. Nine miles later, he was back at Brandeis, showing just how passionate he was about that game.Such antics, however, have become fewer and further between for Coven, who in his 35th year at Brandeis became the 10th Division III soccer coach to reach 400 career victories last Tuesday night when the Judges defeated Lasell College 1-0. Now, the man who says he used to get in players' faces calls himself laid-back.

"You won't see me screaming at the kids," Coven says in his office Wednesday afternoon. "I'll never do anything during the course of the match to embarrass an individual player."

Coven's temper is not the only thing that hasn't withstood the test of time. Also gone are the pink pants Coven says he wore on the sidelines in the 1980s, not to mention the bright green ones he donned at the Judges' 1976 Division III championship game victory.

"I think they were outlawed," Dickie Ellis '82, one of 12 former Coven players who attended his 400th win, says of the pink pants.

Still, during the Lasell game Coven showed he hasn't lost his trademark humor, even during the tense contest. After Judges' forward Ben Premo '09 complained to a referee, Coven remarked, "Just be quiet and play the game." When Premo responded that he wasn't saying anything, Coven joked "I wasn't talking to you."

Later, when a referee told Coven he can't see him over assistant coach Gabe Margolis, Coven turned to Margolis and says, "You're fired."

"We're always goofing around," Premo says. "Every time we are around coach Coven, it's pretty much a good time. We play better when we are having fun."

Brandeis men's soccer before the Coven era, however, was also laughable. The Judges would consistently win just one or two games per season, as the team was mainly composed of Wien Scholars, international students on full-tuition scholarships who didn't devote sufficient time to soccer, Coven explains.

In desperate need of better recruiting for its soccer program, the University turned to Coven, at the time a 24-year-old coach at Newton South High School. Coven says he was shocked to get the job, and credits his hiring to a connection with Brandeis' athletic director at the time, Nick Rotus, a former football and basketball coach at Coven's alma mater, American International College in Springfield, Mass.

Immediately, Coven was blessed with a trio of future Brandeis Hall of Famers, forward Robbie Muller '76, goalie Murray Greenberg '76 and midfielder Mike Shannon '76, as well as defensive anchor Peter Schacter '76. Coven didn't hide his lofty expectations from this group.

"I had a meeting with these guys, and we were setting goals, and I said 'Let's win a national championship,'" Coven says.

With the addition of one of the top high school prospects in America, Cleveland Lewis '77, in his first recruiting class the following year, Coven finalized a core of players that would achieve that dream in 1976, in what Coven describes as a "miracle season."

Lewis, the brother of former Olympic gold-medal sprinter Carl Lewis, headed in the winning goal in the Division III title game against the State University of New York at Brockport.

"I could see [the winning goal] happening in slow motion even before it came in," Coven recalls.

The championship run was so stunning that the Brandeis campus didn't quite know what hit it. Coven says when the team hung the championship trophy out of the window of its bus upon arriving on campus, nobody cheered.

"Back in the '70s, I don't think they were used to having athletic teams that had any type of success," Coven says.

More than three decades later, that certainly isn't the case. The Judges now play night games after the installation of Gordon Field in 2005, a new artificial surface that is a significant upgrade over the often muddy baseball field.

Days of long bus trips are a distant memory, as the team flies to Atlanta, Chicago and St. Louis on its University Athletic Association schedule.

Coven's body of work hasn't hurt the program's prominence either, as he has led the Judges to 23 postseason appearances in 35 years, including both Eastern College Athletic Conference and NCAA tournament bids.

The team hasn't made the NCAA tournament, however, since it joined the tougher UAA, which featured five NCAA tournament teams last season, in 1988.

But throughout changing times for the program, the longest-tenured coach at Brandeis has preserved his traditional methods.

"[Coven] plays old school, which is nice," defender Joe Levitan '08 says. "He likes to make sure we are playing safe defensively and being responsible, and he likes to play hard. He lives and dies by his passion for the game, and he wants to instill that in our players."

Coven's 400th win marked the climax of a journey filled with more twists and turns than a nine-mile walk from Babson to Brandeis. His former players awarded him with a signed game ball after the contest, which now accompanies the ones in his office for wins No. 250 and 300, but this milestone, unlike the others, is a harsh reality check.

"You get your 100th win, your 200th win, and even your 300th win, and you're looking and saying 'Hey, I have another 10 or 15 years,'" Coven says. "Realistically, I think my career is winding down. [The 400th win] makes the reality of 'How many more years am I going to be doing this?' a more real situation."

But no matter how much longer Coven serves as coach, he knows he will be able to reflect on his legacy.

"It's been 35 years of my life walking down this field, every day," a teary-eyed Coven says after last Tuesday's game. "A lot of games, a lot of memories, a lot of great players. It's been a 35-year love affair with this University and with this program.