Hemant Sharma (first name pronounced: HEE-mont) rejoined the Tennessee soccer staff as a volunteer assistant coach in the spring of 2021 and transitioned to the role of analyst prior to the 2023 season. He previously served as a member of UT’s coaching staff from 2004-12 and was the program’s director of operations from 2012-14.

Spanning his two tenures with the Lady Vols, he has helped Tennessee capture three SEC Tournament championships, two SEC regular season championships and advance to the NCAA Tournament Round of 16 on four occasions.

He also helped to coordinate the Lady Vols’ involvement in TOPSOCCER, a program for disabled athletes.

Between his stints at UT, Sharma worked with goalkeepers for several other Tennessee colleges, including the Maryville College men’s and women’s soccer teams, the UT-Chattanooga women’s soccer team, the Tennessee Wesleyan women’s soccer team and the Carson-Newman men’s and women’s soccer teams. He was a part of the Maryville College coaching staff when the men’s team won conference tournament titles in 2016 and 2018, and when the women’s team captured a conference tournament crown in 2019. Each of those teams appeared in the NCAA Division III Championships. 

Prior to arriving in Knoxville, Sharma worked with goalkeepers for the University of Colorado women’s soccer program as a volunteer assistant.

Sharma has worked with goalkeepers for two semi-pro men’s teams, the Boulder Rapids Reserves of the Premier Development League, and the Knoxville Force of the National Premier Soccer League.

He also has served as Director of Goalkeeping for the Tennessee Olympic Development Program for boys and girls since 2012 and has been a member of the South Region girls ODP staff since 2017. 

He has been the Director of Goalkeeping for FC Alliance since 2009. During that span, FC Alliance has produced more than 40 collegiate goalkeepers and sent two keepers on to MLS academies.

During his playing career at Cornell University, the Short Hills, New Jersey, native earned All-Ivy League and All-Region honors, and played in the 1996 NCAA Tournament. In his senior year, he set a school record for shutouts in a season, as his team finished ranked in the nation’s top 25. Sharma proved equally adept in the classroom, as he was a member of the Dean’s List and the winner of the prestigious James E. Rice writing prize.

After college, Sharma was a draft pick of all three major professional indoor soccer leagues that existed in the U.S. in the late 1990s (NPSL, WISL, EISL). He was a first-round draft pick of the Buffalo Blizzard of the National Professional Soccer League and a fifth-round selection of the Arizona Thunder of the World Indoor Soccer League. He played five years of pro indoor soccer.

Sharma also held coaching positions at his alma mater, serving as an assistant coach for the Cornell women’s program in 2001 and the men’s team in 2000.

Sharma is a 1997 graduate of Cornell, with a degree in English and a certificate in Financial Management. He received a PhD in Political Science from Tennessee in 2009 and was the first recipient of the UT’s Otis Stephens Fellowship, granted for excellence in the study of American politics.

Sharma currently teaches in Tennessee’s Political Science Department and has co-authored three textbooks: An Introduction to the American Legal System, which was released by Wolters Kluwer publishers of New York; Administrative Law and Policy, published by Carolina Academic Press; and American Government: The Evolution of a Constitutional Republic, published by Great River Learning.

His published articles include one entitled “The Game is the Best Teacher,” which appeared in the United Soccer Coaches’ magazine Soccer Journal, and “Can’t Play Here: The Decline of Pick-Up Soccer and Social Capital in the USA,” published in the Soccer and Society journal.