Ashcraft ends historic career at La Cueva

Four years ago, Amber Ashcraft said, she arrived at the decision. The 2025 season, she determined, would be her final one coaching the La Cueva girls soccer program.

Her magnificent career with the Bears ended on Tuesday afternoon at Eldorado, with La Cueva falling 1-0 to the Eagles in the semifinals of the Class 5A state tournament.

There were an abundance of hugs and tears in the aftermath, as after 29 years and 10 state championships, one of the country’s winningest girls coaches, and a legitimate New Mexico coaching icon, is leaving.

“Soon as that whistle went, I thought, I don’t know if I can say goodbye,” a giggling Ashcraft, 50, said about 20 minutes after Tuesday’s game ended. “I set myself up for four years to say goodbye. It’s not ideal, but it’s sports, and that’s what happens in sports.”

Ashcraft ranks among the top 10 winningest girls soccer coaches in the country, and is No. 1 among women who coach the sport.

She finishes her career at La Cueva, where she was a player and an assistant coach before being made head coach — “I didnt even interview (for the job),” she said with a smile — with a staggering mark of 508 wins, 94 losses and 11 ties.

The Bears won 10 state championships under her stewardship, the first in 1997, her first season when La Cueva was undefeated (her only undefeated campaign), and the last one coming in 2024. No New Mexican man or woman has won more than seven blue trophies coaching girls soccer.

“It’s just come to the time of my life, there are things we (my husband and I) want to do,” said Ashcraft, who has two grown children. “We have the ability to travel and do some things … I absolutely love coaching, but … it’s a long season. There are some things that I want to do in life that being a coach doesn’t allow me to do.”

She was an assistant coach for two seasons before La Cueva simply installed her as the program’s new coach. The Bears were more or less the gold standard in New Mexico girls soccer for so many of her 29 seasons.

She reached the 500-win plateau on Oct. 1 with a victory at Capital.

“I hit all the goals that I kind of set; I really never had 500 in my mind,” she said.

Ashcraft said she planned to remove herself from soccer for a year “to see what happens, to do some traveling, then decide what life offers me.”

She did not entirely rule out the possibility of being a coach again someday, though she sounded a skeptical tone as far as that goes.

But emotions were certainly running high Tuesday as she bid farewell to her players, and the sun set on a decades-long, historic coaching career.

“To make this decision to leave at this time was probably the hardest decision I’ve ever made in my career, almost in life,” Ashcraft said. “Being able to coach for 30 years at the school I graduated (from), I think it’s a dream come true, and nobody has that opportunity very much in life.”