Forged by FAU - Megan Coyne Bonvillian
Wajih AlBaroudi
7/12/2020
#ForgedbyFAU
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Former Owls’ goalkeeper Megan Bonvillian, then Megan Coyne, earned the nickname “Turbo” from her Florida Atlantic University teammates for continuously seeking challenges and being a perfectionist.
Those tendencies didn’t develop upon her arrival to Boca Raton. They’re part of what made the Marysville, Washington native a nationally-recognized high school recruit. Colleges from New York, the Midwest and West Coast vied for Bonvillian, and she considered her scholarship options carefully by taking all five Official Visits.
Bonvillian’s last visit, to FAU, made her decision clear.
“Solidifying that last visit and having seen other places, FAU was just the perfect place for me and what I needed, and how I thought I would become a better person by being immersed in a completely different culture and just a really diverse culture,” Bonvillian said.
Bonvillian became a better soccer player at FAU, too. Starring for the Owls from 2003-2006, she contributed to two regular season championships and a conference tournament championship. Her 2005 squad notched the only NCAA Tournament appearance in program history.
Among all-time FAU goalkeepers, Bonvillian is third in save percentage at .802, eighth in saves with 146 and fifth in shutouts with 12. She tops the goals against average list with a 0.79, a full tenth better than the next player.
Bonvillian’s “Turbo” mentality helped her academically as much as it did athletically. CoSIDA named Bonvillian a 2005 Academic All-District First Teamer, and over her time at FAU she earned multiple President’s List selections.
That athletic and academic balance is largely why Bonvillian is grateful to FAU for offering her a scholarship.
“The fact that I could get a full scholarship to not only continue my education – I’m a huge nerd; I love learning new things – but also being able just to play soccer as basically a job … that’s the best,” said Bonvillian, who in 2005 earned Third Team All-Region and postseason All-Conference First Team honors. “I can do the two things I love doing the most: I can play soccer and I can go learn new things.”
While at FAU, Bonvillian served as the university’s Student-Athlete Advisory Committee President and was the Sun Belt Conference’s SAAC representative. Bonvillian helped shape student-athletes’ lives through her work with the committee: The legislation she reviewed covered everything from practice hours to nutrition.
Bonvillian added another job during her final academic term. She began working with FAU’s compliance department, learning from then-associate athletic director Ed Hayward.
And in December 2007, Bonvillian graduated from FAU in as “Turbo” a way as possible: summa cum laude with a triple major in communications, sociology and social sciences.
Bonvillian returned to her home state of Washington as an assistant compliance officer with Seattle University following her graduation. And after a year there she landed a governance internship at the NCAA national office in Indianapolis, giving her a unique opportunity to employ the skills she honed as an FAU student-athlete.
“It was a way for me to continue to be attached to my roots as a student-athlete,” Bonvillian said, “and also have an impact on student-athletes’ lives directly, which was really attractive to me because I felt that – especially when I started – being just recently removed from the student-athlete experience and having had a great experience, I felt that I could be a good representative in the administrative role in speaking for the student-athletes, with a compliance background, and making sure those student-athletes’ voices were being heard in the legislation.”
Once Bonvillian’s internship concluded, she began looking for West Coast colleges to work at. She enjoyed her time with the NCAA but wanted to be closer to home and have more direct interaction with student-athletes.
Then Hayward, who was still at FAU, gave her a call.
“He told me, ‘Well, no, don’t go work there,” Bonvillian recalled. “Come work for me.’”
And she did. Bonvillian became her alma mater’s director of compliance in 2009, a position she held until 2012.
Bonvillian spent the following three years as Ball State’s compliance director before facing both her biggest challenge yet and a homecoming. She took the assistant director of compliance job at the University of Washington, a Pac-12 institution whose culture was “ingrained in” Bonvillian since she attended Husky soccer camps as a kid.
While Bonvillian says it was “nice” to return to the Pacific Northwest, she admits working in compliance for a Power 5 conference was a “different beast” than anything she experienced before.
“Moving into that role, it was extremely gratifying because, again, having that challenge was extremely tough,” Bonvillian said.
The challenge eventually grew too tough. After five years at UW and a decade in compliance, which Bonvillian describes as a “very thankless” field, she was ready for a traditional nine-to-five.
She found that at Zillow, an online real-estate database company, in 2019. Bonvillian is a senior administrative assistant at Zillow’s Seattle headquarters. The job allowed her to stay in the Pacific Northwest, but with a more tenable schedule. She works with facilities and corporate real estate, organizing and leading projects.
“It’s been a very fulfilling role and job,” Bonvillian said, “and had it been any other position I don’t know if I would have been as satisfied, because athletics played such a wonderful role in my life and basically developed me into the person I am today.”
Even though Bonvillian is working outside the sports realm, she’s applying many of the lessons it taught her. Bonvillian says her student-athlete experience plays a “significant and impactful” role at her current job, helping her lead teams and be more open to people from different walks of life.
One other thing stuck from Bonvillian’s FAU days, too: her nickname and the challenge-seeking personality that inspired it.
“All the people on my team right now will tell you ‘Turbo Mode’ is alive and thriving,” Bonvillian said with a laugh, “whether they like it or not.”