Grove City College Men’s Soccer – Coach Mike Dreves

On today’s episode, I speak with Coach Mike from the Grove City Men’s Program in Pennsylvania. We talk about their early, proactive recruiting process. He describes tradition of the school and program. Lastly, we discuss their roster size and making sure it leads to success. Learn more about Grove City College Men’s Soccer.

Matt: [00:00:00] Hi everybody. Welcome to Discover College Soccer. Today I’m lucky enough to be joined by Coach Mike from Grove City College. Welcome coach. Hi. Thanks for joining us. Um, you’re the men’s coach up at Grove City Division three program there in northwestern pa. 

Coach: Uh, yeah. We’re in our north, our north of Pittsburgh.

Matt: Yeah. Awesome, awesome. Well, we’re talking, it’s the beginning of June. Um, I’m just curious, as a division three school and you, you’ve been there a number of years, um, what’s your timeline, your recruiting calendar? Normally it, it, it’s June. How much, uh, have you gotten done for this upcoming class of 24 or are you just now starting 24?

What, what, what’s your normal yearly recruiting calendar look like? 

Coach: Yeah. I, I, I, I think just trying to build something and, and. Every year you try to refine the process. So the last three to five years, we’ve really tried to be a little bit more aggressive. So we had a new assistant, uh, who literally started on July 1st, and the first thing I gave him was the 24 class.

So we started in earnest July 1st, and that’s a cycle that we’ve, we’ve tried to, to be more aggressive with the last several classes, and I think it’s helped. So I gave him some parameters and I said, go and, and he’s really fresh at it and had a new set of eyes. So we’ve been super aggressive. Um, we don’t have any commitments yet, but we have [00:01:30] five offers out.

Um, we’re gonna bring in a class of 11 and we have five offers out. Our, our goal is to have all of our offers formulated and ready to go by the middle of July. Uh, and go from there because we hope to have our class. And we did last year, the last two, two seasons. We’ve had our class done by Christmas. Um, so that’s the goal.

I mean, we were losing some recruiting battles, I think. And, uh, we’ve tried to change some things and be more aggressive. We, we have a great program and we’re gonna get great kids and we want to just do it as quickly as we can. 

Matt: Okay. Well, when it comes to. To the whole recruiting process, how, how much of it is inbound folks emailing you saying, Hey, I wanna come play at Grove City versus you being outbound and, and kind of a follow up to that is you’re outbound, is that.

Through agencies in the NCSA of the world. Is it through events? Is it how, how do you do your outbound? 

Coach: So I guess, yeah, you should add another column. How much of it is random? So a kid didn’t open an email from someone else and open an email from us. There’s, and I think if you talk to every, when you have these coaches, you should ask them those stories as well because, um, I mean, we’re a Christian college, so God’s providence I think has a lot to do with it.

And, and we get a lot of kids. There are no coincidences. So there’s a lot of really cool stories in the recruiting process, but we still work hard at it. Right? We don’t just sit here and wait. Um, I think it’s, it’s [00:03:00] all of those things you discussed. Um, we have a, I, I think we’re a niche school in some regards.

Um, it’s a Christian college. Uh, we’re very conservative. Um, we have a certain bank of majors that people are looking for. Uh, if you want to go to a Christian college and you want engineering, And you want good engineering, the list is short. So we get a lot of in inbounds on in that regard. If you want entrepreneurship, we’re unique.

We have an entrepreneurship major, so there’s some kids that are looking for a certain thing. Um, I think we have a lot of legacy kids, you know, mom and dad or mom or dad or, or grandpa or went here. So they reach out in that way. Um, so there’s a lot of that that comes in and we have to figure out who’s the best players and who are the best fit for us, and we do that.

And then the kids were searching and finding, um, you know, this, this calendar year we went to E C L in Florida. We went to Richmond. We went to some local events in February. Um, I went to North Carolina and South Carolina on a trip to see some folks. We, we’ll have two ID camps, state Cup, uh, we’ll go to another ID camp.

So all those avenues will come in. I don’t think one is more in particular than another. Um, we wanna find those kids from all those areas, and then we will just get online because, you know, you mentioned nnc. S a is a great resource. Videos are pretty good. Normally the kids are vetted in a certain [00:04:30] way and all the information is fairly clean.

Um, and, and they do a pretty good job, uh, pushing kids to you because you check your profile. This s a t score, this grade point average, and we don’t solely rely on that. But you know, when you’re trying to just, you know, open your recruiting funnel a little bit wider, you can do that. And, and we’ve had some success from that.

So I think every, every one of those veins that we’ve mined has helped us. Um, not one more than the other, but we get it from a lot of areas. 

Matt: Well, and you mentioned a lot of different events and it, it seems. Not surprisingly that you’re fairly much that mid-Atlantic, southeast kind of corridor. Yeah. And, and I’ve just scrolled through the roster and amazingly enough, you’ve got a player from my daughter’s high school down here in Florida.

So imagine that, um, when you’re at these events, is it, how much of it is you going to watch a player who you’ve been talking to, however you found them versus No. I’m at a field or I’m, you know, I’m at a tournament, I’m at, I’m at Jeff Cup in Richmond, and uh, I’m gonna go watch X team versus Y team and just see if there’s something there.

Coach: Yeah. Cold, cold recruiting as I would call, like cold calling and sales. I think, um, I mean, interesting thing, I don’t know what you ask and if everybody would know this, but like our median distance for our campus is 200 miles for our students, which. Our roster’s [00:06:00] fairly representative of that. We have a lot of Western PA and Eastern Ohio kids, but we’ve got Colorado, Texas, Florida, North Carolina, you know, we had a Connecticut, New York, Tennessee, Chicago.

So we’ve got, we’re kind of half close, half not close. We’re pretty representative of that, I think, um, because of the niche. So like our average s a t on campus is, is about 1250. Average ACT is about 27. Um, Depending on where you look and what data set you’re finding, but that’s pretty close. Average incoming GPA is 3 7, 3 6, 5, something like that.

So, so that like precludes that plus a kid has to wanna come to a Christian college. Um, because the faith component, uh, here, um, you know, if somebody doesn’t have a faith background, I don’t say like, look, we’re not gonna recruit you. I tell ’em who we are and if they’re still interested, then great. We’ll, we’ll, we’ll continue that conversation.

But what I don’t wanna do is have a kid come here and he goes, oh, you have to go to chapel. And we have a, a, a, you know, a a a bible class and those kind of things. And a kid, you know, that would be kind of snake oil salesman. So we don’t do that. So that’s the, the challenge with cold recruiting. And you go watch, there’s 22 kids running around on the field.

I like that kid. Does he have north of 1203 7 and want to come to a Christian college? So a lot of it is, We want to go see kids who, who’ve we’ve found in other ways. [00:07:30] And if we can find an event like, you know, the E C N L event in Florida in January, you know, there’s about 25 kids that were on a list that we put together and said, okay, these are kids we can see at this event.

Um, so we do that. And then while you’re watching the game, you know, mom or dad hands up brochure, you say, Hey, is there any kid here that’d be interested in a Christian college circle? A couple. So that helps. But also you’re gonna find a center back that you really like and you’re gonna reach out to ’em and tell ’em who you are and see what it’s, I think every coach does that.

Um, so it’s kind of a combination of things, but we’re not just going and plunking down and watching and, and hoping for the best because of our niche. And, and some people would argue that makes it more difficult, but I would argue it actually makes it a little easier. Um, because if a kid isn’t academically viable, for instance, like.

I’m not even gonna look at ’em. And that sounds bad, but I don’t want him to come here and be unsuccessful. Cause maybe we could grease the doors and figure something out and maybe, I dunno. Or maybe he gets in, whatever the case may be, but is he gonna be successful? That’s the challenge. So I think it’s a combination of those things.

Sure. 

Matt: No, that makes a lot of sense. Well, in terms of, um, just you, I mean you mentioned a lot of things on the academic side, but. But in terms of everything else that goes into deciding those 11 players, right? For your, for your recruiting class, what is your, your hierarchy of things that you’re looking [00:09:00] for in a player, whether that’s off the field stuff or on the field stuff?

Coach: Yeah, so I think technical ability gets you in the, opens the door for you. Like, cuz you gotta be able to do soccer things and um, when you receive the ball and you’re playing, is there a difference? And, and there should be. That’s the hope. Um, so once that happens, There’s a list and I think every coach, like, you know, highly technical, two footed six four, a hundred eighty five pounds fast, right?

I mean, we would say that, but, um, you’re gonna give and take depending on position, but technical ability, um, can you be dynamic and can you do simple things really well? Um, we recruit from a positional standpoint, so we’re really trying to look for, you know, if you’re playing, if we’re looking for a left back, ideally we’d want you to be left footed.

We want you to be able to have an engine to get up and down, to get into the final third. So those are some things that we’d look for cuz it’s positional, could this kid play this position? Um, and then after you decide that there’s the academic vetting, and then you’re gonna have the conversations Do what?

Do we like this kid? Is he gonna be good for, good for our culture? And I think every coach says it right. And the culture side is huge. And, and I’m a fan of saying we want players who are good for our culture, not players. Our culture is good for, because if you take too many projects, your culture suffers.

Um, I [00:10:30] mean, 70, you need 70% to kind of maybe tip the scales in any way. So we’re really looking for kids that are gonna make our culture better. Um, and that’s hard sometimes. Those are the really, like, how do I figure out, and this is the, the challenge, I think as a. As a coach and how do we get better at recruiting?

Yeah, I can, I can watch. We had a kid come to ID camp and uh, we had been following him. I ended up offering him a spot and his dad said to me, how do you know he is a good player? Was dad ran a restaurant. And I said, well, what do you do for a living? And I knew that, and he said, I’d run a restaurant. I said, if we go out to eat in town, could you tell me if it’s a good restaurant or not?

How long would it take you? And he said, oh, about four minutes. I could tell you if it’s a good restaurant or not. And I said, You do this long enough, you watch a kid for, you know, he has four highlight videos, three minutes, and then you train him at an ID camp for an entire day, and then you watch him play live, you know?

Right. If he can play or not, and you could probably figure that out in that area. The hardest part is, is this kid gonna be a four year player and is he gonna have the grit that it takes to play college soccer? And is he gonna be good in the dorms and he is gonna make our team better culturally. And that’s, that’s, that gets harder and harder.

Um, you gotta spend time with kids, you gotta vet ’em, you gotta talk to coaches. And I think that’s on our end, that’s the really, that’s the challenge thing. How do you figure that out? Because you go to that, [00:12:00] go to wherever and you go to an E C L event, it’s two top teams. There’s probably 20 kids on the field that you’d like to have, so.

You know, you guys just gotta figure out who, who’s gonna make you better culturally, because at, at every level, um, the, the inner, you know how the team connects and, you know, six weeks into the season, the kid’s got an exam the next day and we lose a game or whatever. He’s gotta study for that. Like, cuz those kids have to stay in school.

All that stuff, you know, the best, the best skill teams don’t always win. It’s the teams that. Have all those things together. And I think that’s been proven quite a bit. And sports, it’s proven all the time. Yeah. The, so the soccer part’s the easy part, right? Sometimes. Sometimes. Yeah. 

Matt: Yeah. Uh, well let’s talk a little bit more about the school.

I’m sure there’s some folks not familiar with, with Grove City. Um, so you’ve been there a number of years, kinda gimme, what’s the, what are some of the things that you find that, that help Grove City stand out? Maybe some stuff that’s cool that we wouldn’t find necessarily going through the website. Yeah.

Coach: Um, I mean there’s just a lot of, I, I’ve already said it, conservative Christian school, academics are really important. Um, I think there’s a lot of tradition here. Um, so two, two kind of cool things. We we’re almost been around for 150 years, right? We’ve had nine presidents. Wow. Which is pretty cool. Our soccer [00:13:30] team’s been around for almost 85 years.

Uh, we’ve only had six soccer coaches. So we’ve only, I’m only the sixth guy to be the head coach of Grove City College, and we, we missed two seasons during World War ii, so that doesn’t, that’s way time ago. But, um, and actually there was a guy, one of the guys was only here for the 71 season. So my coach came in 72 and he was the head coach from 72 through oh five, and I took over in oh six.

So since 1972, we’ve had two coaches. Uh, and we’ve also had two basketball coaches since 1972, so it, that’s kind of cool. I think that could be good. It could be bad too, cuz you know, people don’t leave. But the continuity, uh, has given us a ton of stability. I saw my coach, uh, yesterday, um, un unfortunate event.

We were at a funeral for one of his players, uh, a guy who played 10 years before me, but there was a lot of former players in the room and it was cool just to kind of connect. But that continuity has given us a lot of stability. Alumni group is great. Um, and, and it’s just that connection has really helped us, I think be successful, pretty successful for a pre pretty long time.

So that, those are two unique things about the school. I think. Uh, we don’t take federal financial aid, which is a, which is for some people would be scary, uh, because, you know, loans and grants and stuff. But one of our core values here is independence. Um, so we. We don’t get government handouts. We don’t [00:15:00] ask for government handouts.

Um, and we’re pretty much cash and carry here, which is great. Now, that presents some education opportunities when you’re speaking with, with recruits and their parents. Um, but we, we work through that, so we love it because nobody, we follow all the federal regulations, but nobody tells us what we can do with our money because they didn’t give it to us.

We got it ourselves. So we like, we like that a lot. Um, so those are some kind of cool things about us as an institution. Sure. 

Matt: Well, you have mentioned academics a few times and you know, as a student transitioning from high school to college, balancing being a collegiate athlete as well as a student can be one of the, the toughest things you have to do.

Right. So how do your players specifically balance their studies and, and the soccer side of things, and what kind of support systems does the school have to help them with that? Yeah. 

Coach: For the most part, kids that come here are, are serious students, right? I mean, that’s based on the academics. So for the most part we like that.

Um, I think it’s really, and this is for all college kids, it’s just the adjustment. You go from eight to two 30 to three hours a day or two hours a day, whatever. So like the cool part about most of the guys that we recruit, they’re doing well academically. They’re playing a couple of sports, they’re playing high level club.

They probably have a job and they’re [00:16:30] probably active in their church. And, and you, you’ve already referenced that you have some kids, uh, you know, what your schedule’s like, um, that, that like, look, we’ve gotta just do things and get things done and have this discipline and, and the only thing we have to do is take the kids and help them bring that here and figure out how to apply that recipe in our environment.

So we help ’em with that. Um, The support. Here’s great. You know, we have free tutoring for all students on campus, so that’s great. Uh, we have an academic resource center. I think that really helps folks. The professor, student faculty ratio is 13 to one, so there’s a, there’s a care and concern for the, for the, the students on campus from the professors.

My wife’s a professor here in the education department. She has her, she, she teaches in the elementary education department, so elementary education classes. So one of the classes each semester she has them, they cancel class during the day and they have it at our house at night. So like it’s a cool setting where you go to your professor’s house for class.

It’s a different if it, and they need to do it cause they need a little bit more time. But the point is, um, that’s probably not gonna happen at a lot of institutions. My wife and I, we eat in the cafeteria every week as a family. So we get to interact with our students in that way. So I think that care and concern really goes a long way with helping students adjust if they need extra help, if they need tutoring.

So that community on campus is really, really important. [00:18:00] I something else, like, I’m not an expert at it, but I’ve taught, I w I was a professor on campus and I’ve been a student advisor. I’ve been a department chair, interim department chair on campus. So, you know, kids’ schedules, Tutoring, all the kind of mechanics of what we do on campus.

And I’ve also been around all a long time. I can walk our student athletes through that in an easy way. I think, um, at least provide who to talk to. Um, so I think that’s a little extra edge that we have here. Um, just cuz, cuz of my experience and I’ve been blessed to do some different jobs on campus, it helps us, you know, if we’ve got a kid who wants to change his major.

There’s three people on campus I’d want him to talk to before he does it, and I’ll set ’em up, help him do those meetings. So that’s just a couple of examples. Okay. 

Matt: Let’s talk a little bit more about the team, the soccer side of things that, I mean, we kind of talked about recruiting earlier, but is there, is there a set roster size that you’re trying to hit each year that you find is ideal?

Coach: Yeah. Um, and that’s a fun conversation. Uh, we we’re, we’ve, we’ve, I’ve kind of landed on 36, which sounds weird. Um, This fall coming up will be enormous. We’ll be at 41, which is crazy. However, um, we were pretty traditional, 27, 28, 3 4 goalkeepers, 24 field players, which I think is a pretty, pretty traditional roster.

Um, but there was four to five kids, cuz we’ll [00:19:30] play 18, 18, 19 deep. But there was four to five kids that weren’t getting a great experience. I mean, they’re getting a great cultural experience, but you wanna play more to have a better experience. We didn’t have enough to play reserve games. So what I did was I grew my roster incrementally over a few years.

Uh, so my current senior class, uh, there’s thir, I’ll have 13 seniors this fall. So that was the big jump step. Um, and then this fall I’ll have a junior graduating early, and I have a su, I have a fifth year, so I’ll lose 15 to graduation this year, but with a roster around 36, which is where we’ll level off to in the 24 season.

We can play, we’ll play four reserve games. Uh, we fit in our locker room. Um, we can still provide a service for them at training. And I think culturally. So that’s the number we’ve kind of, and, and, and it’s something else. It’s connected to what we wanna do on the field from a competitive dorin calls it a competitive culture.

And we’ve tried to create this competition in our own team. And if you’ve looked at our history, we’ve been pretty good. Um, But we haven’t won the conference since oh five, which is a knock and anybody, and I’ll just bear my soul to this, to your, uh, subscribers, but, but we’ve been good. So, 2018, we were the number one seed, uh, 2021.

We were the number one seed. 2022. We were the number one seed. Uh, but we haven’t won the conference, so kudos to everybody that has and our conferences. I think in the [00:21:00] last seven years, there’s been six different champions. Wow. Which is pretty in, uh, interesting. But anyway, as you start to look for ways to, to, to get better, uh, you look at and evaluate everything.

So we felt that if we could have a more competitive practice and playing environment, uh, and have a couple more players compete for those top 20 spots. Cuz if you want to play, you gotta be in the top 20 basically. So the roster of 36 last year, it really helped us do that. Um, I mean we, we again came up short.

We lost in penalties, but we ran the, we went 10 and oh in the conference and we had a plus 29 goal differential. So the argument was, it, it was pretty effective cuz I think we had a better, deeper roster and it helped us. Sure, for sure. 

Matt: Okay. Well, you mentioned earlier about, uh, a staff person helping with recruiting.

Can you just gimme a quick overview? Uh, how many staff do you have? What role does everybody play? What does that look like? 

Coach: Yeah, so we’re two full-time, uh, folks, um, myself, um, and my assistant Eli Ri, who’s just new and his first year. Um, so we’re both here every day doing everything. Um, we have a, a part-time goalkeeping coach who’s a recent graduate, Luke Greenway.

Um, He, he lives in Pittsburgh. Uh, he’s a computer programmer by day, and he comes up, uh, you know, one, one, maybe two games two days a week. Normally he comes Monday to do our training and then he can sneak to a game here or there. [00:22:30] And then he’s watching video and connecting with me and talking with the goalkeepers throughout the week.

And then we have a volunteer assistant, uh, who has some jo, a job in the community, and, and he has some flexibility. Um, Ben Macon, he’s a Geneva College grad. Great. Great asset to the program fills a ton of gaps for us. You know, cup of coffee with a kid during the day, kind of guy and, and arm around the shoulder to really help.

And he’ll come to one training session, one game a week. Um, so the four of us, it’s nice. I mean, we’ve got two guys who are here all the time and two guys that are kind of coming in and out. But it covers a lot of areas and it, it really has, has helped us. Okay. 

Matt: Well, excuse me. Um, In terms of on the field stuff, how would you describe your style of play and your style of coaching?

Coach: Yeah, from a style, like we wanna keep the ball, um, possession matters, uh, to us, we like to play with high wide width. Um, I’m really adamant about wide play, uh, because I think it opens up, uh, it, it provides a lot of opportunities to be attacking minded, uh, and it opens up a lot of options elsewhere. But we’ll be effective.

We try to be effective, so it doesn’t mean that we’re not gonna play ball over the top. Uh, if you’re pressing us and you give us a lot of negative space, we’d be foolish not to utilize it. So we’ll utilize it and we try to, to really focus on just solutions to the possession [00:24:00] problem. Uh, and we try and train the guys to figure out, do you know, basically do we go through, around or over?

And that’s really what we train all the time. We’ve got. I’m a pretty detail oriented guy, so we’ve got a pretty, uh, pretty basic but detailed game model that we try to preach to the guys. Um, yeah. And, and, and that’s, that’s how we wanna, that’s how we wanna train. Um, 

Matt: okay. Well we’ve, we’ve talked about a lot of different things and covered a lot of ground, but I always like to end with the last question being.

If there was one nugget, one piece of information, one thing you would love for all parents players going through the college soccer recruiting process to know, what would that be?

Coach: That’s a great question. Um, I, I would, I would, I would spend time, um, well, first of all, I, I would take back, I would try to really figure out what you want.

A lot of kids come in and, and they don’t know what they want. Or they think they know what they want. Um, you know, kids will come to the office and say, I really wanna play for you. And I’ll say, that’s great. Have you ever seen me run a training session? No. No, but I’ve looked at your record on your website.

I’ve looked at this and I’ve looked at that. I’ve watched your team, but like, have you spent any time with me? Well, no, you haven’t. So that might be something. Um, so I would think, do some introspection. Figure out what you really want, um, what do you want out of an experience? What do you want out of [00:25:30] a college experience and a soccer experience?

Do your homework. Um, talk to people, talk to coaches and go spend time there. Go spend the night, really peel back the layers and ask some questions. Um, you know, I’ve gotta get better at asking you questions and drawing that out, but you’ve gotta ask questions as well. Uh, and you know, people love the team.

Oh, I, I spent a lot of time with the team and I love them, but you have to realize that. Three quarters, half or three quarters of that team will not be around when you’re a junior and you’re in the meat of your college career, I, I connected with Bob. Well, Bob’s great, but Bob’s gonna be an engineer in two years and you’re never gonna see him except at homecoming and you’re not gonna live in a dorm with him.

So connect with the, the, the freshmen because that’s who you’re gonna spend your time with. But do that homework. Um, if I, if I could say that and figure out what you want and then spend time come to a practice. Like people want to come to games all the time, but come watch us train, like actually live a day in the life of a soccer player, and ask me some tough questions.

Like, have you ever cut anybody? Have you like, ask some of those questions? Um, because I think you can have a great experience and make a great experience wherever you go, but it’s, I would say to people, you’re gonna make. We can have an argument. You’re gonna make five, eight really important decisions in your life.

You know where you go to college, who you marry, what you study, where you live, where you work. [00:27:00] And we could argue the number, but where you go to college is on that list. And I think you wanna do your homework and you wanna start earlier than you think. Um, because like I told you, our calendar, like I’m gonna be done with the offers by like maybe August 1st, right?

Maybe that we’ll save some for a guy to come in late, but, you know, I’ll get emails in December. You have four months to decide and you’re just reaching out to a coach. Cause the, you know, the deposit deadlines May 1st nationwide for admissions. So it’s December and you’re just reaching out to college coaches to make one of the most important decisions of your life.

That’s tough. 

Matt: That’s tough. Very good advice and, uh, I’ll, I’ll clip that and show it to my daughter so she doesn’t think I’m the only one saying it. So I appreciate that. I think you’re crazy. Well, coach, we really appreciate the time. Good luck with, uh, wrap it up your recruiting class and, and this fall season.

And if you do get down to any recruiting events down here in Bradenton, gimme a shout. All right? Yeah. 

Coach: Yeah. It’s awesome. Hey, thanks for this. I appreciate it. Thank you.