Franklin Pierce University Women’s Soccer – Coach Matt Johnson
On today’s episode, I speak with Coach Johnson from the Franklin Pierce Women’s Program in New Hampshire. We talk about how the transfer portal is changing the recruiting timeline. He describes how they embrace being a tough place to play for opponents. Lastly, we discuss their staff and how it is a solid, full-time staff much like a D1 school. Learn more about Franklin Pierce University.
Matt: [00:00:00] Hi everybody. Welcome to discover college soccer today. I’m lucky enough to be joined by another Matt, Matt Johnson from Franklin Pierce up in New Hampshire.
Coach: Welcome coach. Yeah. Thank you. I appreciate you having me. We’re, uh, we’re excited to talk.
Matt: Yeah. Yeah. It’s a nice division two program up North. Uh, I mean, I’ve heard of Franklin Pierce, you know, it’s a, I know we’ve had a lot of sustained success on both men’s and women’s side at the division two level, but, um, so I’m interested to, to hear more about it.
Let, let people learn about it as you and I were just kind of talking beforehand. It’s that college showcase season, right? Heavy, hot and heavy on the recruiting trail. So specifically for you guys, you guys. Kind of what is your recruiting timeline? Your calendar? Are you all totally done with 24s and halfway done with 25s?
Like, what does it look like right now? End of February when with a recruiting class?
Coach: Yeah, it’s it’s a great question. And the question the answer is a lot different now than it used to be 2, 3 years ago before the transfer portal. Um, so, Uh, you know, I would say a couple of years ago when the transfer portal didn’t exist, you would find that most division one programs were done probably two years out, at least, right?
Obviously, some of the bigger programs might be even more than that. Um, and so we could, you know, maybe focus in on some of our better players a year and a half. out. Um, and now what we’re finding is it’s completely different because of the transfer portal. A lot of these division [00:01:30] one programs are saving money, uh, and they’re waiting until the portal opens in November and December.
Um, so because we want to be every year, we want to be a top division two program. We want to compete for a national championship. The kids that we’re recruiting. I would say almost all of them are being recruited by division one schools. So it’s kind of a wait and see game for us now. So, you know, we’ll get some commitments early.
Uh, so, for example, we’ve got 3 commitments already for 25. we’ve got a couple offers out for 25, but we do not want to spend all of our money for 25 yet. So we want to wait until that transfer portal window is done for the division 1 schools. So it has been a really, really wait and see. Good. Um, three weeks for us over, you know, so, so the portal for D1 goes November, December, and, and we just kind of wait around because a lot of the kids we’re looking at are saying, well, you know, I’m, I’m waiting to hear back from this school or that school.
And so January, we start to, to kind of reengage and hit it hard and. Over the last three weeks, we have had, um, I want to say 61 players come to campus, uh, for, um, official unofficial visits and division two. We’re very lucky. We can try players out. Um, so, uh, almost all of those players have, have taken part in a, a two hour training session with the team.
Um, so, and in the last two weeks we have gotten seven commitments. Uh, so we have 15 commitments for 2024. Um, we are probably we’re about 95 percent done. My [00:03:00] guess is we’ll bring in four to five more players and we will be done, uh, two more major impact players, and then probably a couple other players that, that provide some depth in different positions for us.
Um, so yeah, very, very hot recruiting time now.
Matt: Yeah. Well, along those lines, is there a roster size that you guys are trying to hit each year? Do you have a development team? Like, what does that look like?
Coach: Yeah. So when I, when I first started back in 2005 coaching in college, I would say the average roster was probably 25.
Um, and what you’re seeing now, I want to say the numbers that I’m hearing. I don’t know where the data is coming from, but but most rosters now at the N. C. Division two level or about thirty thirty three to thirty five. So you’re starting to see that the rosters are getting bigger and bigger. It’s not surprising.
There’s a declining enrollment in in, um, in, you know, higher education now. So. More and more admissions offices are asking athletic departments to help out. And so, um, yeah, so we, we have, um, we’re, they’re asking us to school is asking us to have around 39 to 40 players. Um, that we can choose whether or not we want to have 2 teams, you know, 1st team and a 2nd team are men.
For example, They have won two consecutive national championships. They haven’t lost in two years. They’re number one in the country. They have two teams and they have 55 players. So they’ll have about 30 on the first team and about 25 on the second team, give or take a little bit. Um, what [00:04:30] we’re finding is on the women’s side, there’s not much of an appetite for two teams.
Um, you know, it’s, it’s just a different mindset. They, the, the men don’t care as much about a first team and a second team. The women do. So we’re running it as one program. All the ladies come in the same day of preseason. They all travel together. They all get the same gear. They all train together. Um, but inevitably, we can’t put 40 players on the field.
So we’re playing our rotation is between 22 and 26 players. And then there’s a, maybe, you know, 12, 13 players that aren’t seeing as much game time as they’d like. And what we’re going to be doing moving forward is. We’re going to be scheduling games for those players. So there are three or four schools in our conference that have two teams, and we’re going to schedule a home and away games with those teams and probably build our roster up a little bit more.
So instead of having 39 players and relying on, well, we have 13 players for these second games, but if you have injuries, you don’t have enough. We might end up with 44, 45 players now, um, so that we’ve got enough players for that, for kind of that, those, um, those second team games, even though we’re not going to designate it a second team.
Matt: Sure. No, it makes sense. Well, whether it’s, uh, at an event or whether it’s at a visit and the kids are training with you or, or ID camps or anything like that, if you’re looking for players. Kind of what is that hierarchy of things that you’re looking for in a player, whether that’s on the field attributes or off the field stuff?
Coach: Yeah, this is, I feel [00:06:00] this is the core of, of what we do. Um, so our, our recruiting, uh, philosophy, um, there’s four things that we concern ourselves with. The first one we say to everybody is non negotiable and it has absolutely nothing to do with soccer. You have to be a tremendous human being. So high character, low maintenance, um, somebody who’s going to come in and fit in well with our culture.
Um, so we say often it’s not about, it’s not about finding the best, um, talent. It’s about finding the best fit for Franklin Pierce women’s soccer. So that is by far the most important thing we’ll call club coaches. We’ll call high school coaches. And then, uh, you know, and, and as I used to say, you know, when I was an athletic director and I interviewed.
Candidates all the time for jobs. It’s not always about where they went to school or what their resume says. A lot of times it’s about that conversation. So we’ll do our due diligence. We’ll talk to club coaches and high school coaches. But I also want to feel really good when I get off the phone call.
Like, hey, that was a great conversation. That’s a kid. We feel like we want to add to the program. And then from a soccer standpoint, there’s three things that we’re really focused on. Number one, because of the style we play, we’re very possession oriented. You have to be really good with the ball at your feet.
Um, so, you know, clean first touch, good decisions under pressure. That’s really, really critical for us. And then the other two things I think are a little bit more specific to athletic ability. You have to have good speed and quickness because I just feel like everybody does now, uh, at least everybody that we compete against.
And then you have to be, um, what we say it’s a little bit more than just toughness, but toughness, we call it a tough two way player. [00:07:30] Um, so somebody that, We’re not looking for those players that you know, Hey, when we have the ball, I’m not going to move it. You know, I want that ball right to my feet. And then when we lose it, I don’t want to defend.
Um, we’re not interested in that. We want players that are going to be active on the ball and off the ball. And then when we have the ball and when we lose the ball. Um, so those are the, the 4 things that we look for in players and for us. Those things are non negotiable. We don’t, we don’t go outside of that.
So if we don’t like character, or we don’t like first touch on the ball, or we don’t like, you know, speed and quickness or, or two way play, we just go in a different direction.
Matt: Yeah, no, I get that. Um, you mentioned earlier official and unofficial visits. Um, the soccer college soccer landscape, you know, there’s, there’s folks with bigger budgets than others and a lot of schools don’t, you know, can’t even do official visits.
So it kind of just explained to me what What those visits look like both official and unofficial for your recruits and and how many come in on an official what what can a player expect on a visit both official and unofficial when they look at Franklin Pierce?
Coach: Yeah, the numbers of how many come in on an official versus unofficial are.
It’s all over the board. So, for example, last weekend, we had 22 players in on official visit. Um, and then yesterday we had, uh, nine players in an unofficial visits. Um, so what, what really for us, the difference is obviously the unofficial visit. You can’t pay for anything except one meal on campus. Um, so, and a lot of times we’re not even providing that meal.
So [00:09:00] yesterday, Hey. Um, we had all nine players arrived to our athletic facilities by 10 30 a. m. We checked everybody in. I gave a presentation that, you know, the players were in our gym on the bleachers. I gave kind of a recruiting presentation, an overview to all of the parents and the players of what Franklin Pierce is about, what we’re looking for in players, some of the stuff that I just talked about on the podcast here.
Um, but, but a lot more than that. And, um, and so we do that for about 30 minutes, and then our assistant coach will take all of the families on a tour of campus. Um, she played at Franklin Pierce for four years, was an all American. So we encourage the families and the players to ask her questions. Um, and so that that goes for about 30 to 45 minutes.
And then we typically, um, this time of year we train inside the bubble. So we have a bubble. We train on turf indoors. The ladies will all get to the bubble by about noon. Um, you know, we just kind of socialize a little bit and we don’t start training until about 12 15 because we have kids coming out of class.
And then we try to run them through a somewhat normal training session. So we’ll, we’ll start with a dynamic warm up, then a technical, get some touches on the ball, then, you know, progress into some type of Rondo. And then we want to see him play a little bit. Um, and, and so that, That session yesterday was was only about an hour and 20 minutes.
Um, we’re only in, we’re allowed eight hours per week now, but only four hours touching the soccer ball. Um, so we’ve got to really manage how much time we’re touching the ball each day. So it’s about an hour and 20 minutes session. I thought it was a good session. And then what we do is when we have a couple, [00:10:30] only two, three players up, we’ll, we’ll sit down with those families after and give them feedback and get feedback.
But when we have a large group of people like yesterday, Um, we’ll set up zoom calls within 24 to 48 hours and chat with the families just so people aren’t waiting for two hours. Um, so that would be an unofficial visit. They’re in at 10 30. They’re out at 2 15. Um, and then the official visit which we had last weekend, um, the the ladies would arrive.
on a Friday night at about five o’clock. Um, we would do something similar. They would all arrive. We would have the team meet with them. Um, we would have a little presentation probably for the families and the ladies. Then they would go to a team dinner in the dining commons. Our entire team would be there, including all of the recruits.
Um, last weekend, almost every one of our current players had a recruit. Um, so That made it pretty easy. And then they do a team building event. So we book out a room and at seven o’clock they do some type of fun team, team building event. I know the first week they did a, they were telling me they had a blast.
It did a lot of singing and dancing and obviously introducing the players and the recruits usually lights out pretty early because we train at 7 a. m. the next morning. Um, so we, it’s on Saturday morning, we train 7 to 9 a. m. Um, and then we do a tour of campus for all the families after that. And then we do stick around that a weekend.
We will stick around and say, Hey, if anybody wants to meet with us in person, um, we’re happy to do that. If you want to set up a zoom call, if you’re in a hurry, you’re, you’re coming from a distance, not a problem. And [00:12:00] actually on weekends, a lot of families want to stay and meet in person. Um, and usually we’re providing meals for those players on Saturday night for dinner.
On Sunday morning for breakfast. Um, but how do we keep our costs down? We don’t pay for any, um, any, uh, flights, um, or, or any transportation getting in unless that transportation is pretty, pretty light in terms of cost, but then we cover everything else. So we cover the. The meals when they’re on campus, they obviously stay in the dorms with our current players.
Um, and if they’re coming from a distance, they pay for their own flight. We pick them up at the airport and we drive them back to the airport. So we can kind of minimize costs by doing that. Most of our costs are just meals, um, when they get to campus and we’re, we’re not paying for the cost of dorms. Um, so, um, yeah, we’ve had a ton of success.
I would say almost 100 percent of our us players, um, have done an official or unofficial visit. Okay.
Matt: Awesome. Well, let’s shift gears. Talk a little bit more about the school. I’m sure there’s folks who, you know, some, some folks out there may not have heard of Franklin Pierce. So you’ve been there a few years now.
Obviously, I think you, you played against them when you were, uh, a player yourself. So, um, what have you found are some awesome things about the school? Maybe some things we wouldn’t even know just by going through the website.
Coach: Yeah, I played against him in college and then I coached against him for And 16 years at my other school.
So, um, you know, it was not, it was not fun when I played against him and it was not fun when I coached against him. So, um, you know, Pierce [00:13:30] has always been a very, very difficult place to go on the road and play. And so we embrace that when we came to Pierce, one of the first things we said was as a player and as an opposing.
Coach, we hated coming to this place. Um, you know, it’s, it’s kind of off the beaten path a little bit. It’s got a lot of history, a lot of tradition. There’s, you know, five national championship banners hanging up there. Now we have windscreen around the, uh, the entire, um, kind of stadium showing all of the accomplishments of the men’s and women’s team.
It’s pretty, it’s pretty overwhelming when you come in as a, as an opposing team or fan. Um, so we really embrace that and, and, and we want to kind of. You know, tackle that head on and use that to our advantage. Um, some of the things that I, that I, that I love about the school, um, the campus is absolutely beautiful.
Um, it’s like a postcard. You stand in the middle of campus, you look down, you’re looking into a lake and you look into the background. It looks like the campus is built into a mountain. Um, the older I get, the more I kind of embrace that, that outdoorsy, um, you know, uh, almost serene, quiet lifestyle. Um, so I, I think that, um, I enjoy every day coming to campus and just kinda maybe taking a walk on campus.
Um, it’s a very family friendly environment. Um, there we, I bring my dog, I have a puppy, uh, bring my puppy to work every day. The dog goes in the training room. It’s like a therapy dog for all the athletes. And there’s probably about Four or five other dogs in their staff members dog. So, um, you know, our, our staff is fantastic from the president to the vice presidents, to the athletic [00:15:00] director, all the way on down, just a very supporting, um, family environment.
So that part I absolutely love. And then the big thing for us is they want to win in soccer at Franklin Pierce. And that’s, that’s very rare at a small division two squad. Actually, it’s very rare. at a school in the U. S. Usually it’s football. It’s basketball. Maybe it’s ice hockey. Um, you know, lacrosse, baseball at Pierce.
Soccer is a very important sport. Um, and, you know, as you can see that we have five national championships and men have three. So we have eight national championships between the two programs. The expectation is that we’re going to compete and we’re going to compete for national championships every year.
And I love that. And, uh, you know, I think some people And I’ve had friends, I’ve had people in the industry say to me, like, well, aren’t you nervous? You know, you’re going to a program where if you don’t win, you don’t have a job. And I said, no, because I, I’ll bet on myself. I know that I’ll work hard and, and, you know, we believe in ourselves, but I’d much rather be at a school like this that cares about soccer and then invest in the program where we have a chance to win every year.
Um, then a school that just doesn’t care about soccer and, you know, you’re an afterthought and you’re not gonna, you’re not going to compete at a high level every year. Um, so those are the things that I, that I really like about Pierce. It’s not for everybody, right? So, and I’m, we’re very, very upfront with everybody.
There’s two things that I tell everybody on a phone call and a recruiting visit. Number one, if you’re a city girl, you’re not going to want to come here, right? It’s we’re not in the city, so we’re not trying to [00:16:30] trick anybody. We don’t want to trick anybody into thinking like, Hey, we’re, we’re something that we’re not.
And the other thing is we’re very upfront about our roster size. We don’t want people to come in. And, you know, I say to, when I look at mom and dad, when they come on these visits, I say, you know what? I’m a, I’m a pretty good guy. I’m a family man. I’ve got a wife and three kids. I care about what people think.
I don’t want 20 families walking by me, looking at me like they want to kill me next year because I’m not putting their child on the field. Um, so I want to be really upfront with everybody that we’re, you know, we’re going to have 44 players on the roster. We’re only going to play between 22 and 26 players.
There’s going to be a lot of players that don’t get on the field. And then when we assess the players, again, we’re very upfront. We view you right now, assuming you come in very fit and you have a great attitude and whatnot, we view you as being in that top 26. Um, or we view you right now as being in that, that player 27 to 44.
It doesn’t mean it can’t change either way based on hard work and and whatnot. But, um, but right now you’re we don’t feel you’re ready to get on the field and help us. Um, and it might take a year. It might take two years. And if you want to play right away and impact the game right away, you should not come to Franklin Pierce.
So we are very upfront with everybody. Um, because the big thing for us is we don’t want any of that to negatively impact impact our culture. So if you’ve got players that are upset, all the coach lied to me, he deceived me. He wasn’t up front with me. He wasn’t honest with me. I didn’t know there were this many players or I thought it was in a major city.
Um, all of that could [00:18:00] negatively impact our culture. So we don’t want that.
Matt: No, no, that’s good. Well, you, you, you talked a little bit about, you know, the training and, and that sort of thing, but let’s rewind it to October. You’re in the heart of the conference season. You know, can you walk me through what a typical week’s going to look like for a player in terms of timing?
When is practice, is there lifting meals, classes, game cadence? What does all that look like in a. Normal week.
Coach: Yeah. So it’s a good question. So I would say a normal week as you start to get into October, obviously different periods of the season or you have to treat them differently. You’re managing injuries at that point.
Um, you know, you’re managing wear and tear. So we’re usually off on Sunday. So Sunday is typically an off day. Um, our trip we have really, our training sessions are great. Our times Monday we train 5 to 7, That is by design. We could train from one to three every day. But the reason we train Monday, five to seven, as I mentioned to you before, I’m a family man.
And so am I. So is my assistant coach. So we’re, you know, a lot of times we’ll play a game at six, seven o’clock on a Saturday night. Um, and, and we don’t want to spend all day Sunday. Having to break down film and because that’s the only day all week that we have off. Um, so that for us, we’re trying to spend time with our families.
I’ve got 3 little kids or 3 kids are not as little anymore. Um, so we want to be able to spend all day Monday doing that. Um, so we’re getting up early. We’re getting into the office really early on Monday and we’re cranking all day on Monday to. Watch film and get ready to get the scout ready for the next team and [00:19:30] and all of that.
Um, and then the rest of our sessions are all earlier. So Tuesdays and Thursdays, we train from 12 to 2 p. m. And then we do our weight training from 2 to 3 p. m. We try to lump it together. So the ladies don’t have to go back to the dorms and then come back. And then on Wednesday, Friday, we train from 1 to 3 p.
m. So we have a very favorable schedule. We’re not going very early. We’re not going very late at night. Um, and we’re very flexible with the ladies in terms of classes. So, you know, we, we, we say 12 to two on Tuesdays and Thursdays, we don’t start training till 1215 because we have a lot of kids that don’t get out of class till 1205 and then we end training at 140 because we have a lot of kids that have class at two.
Um, so, you know, it’s, it’s just, and that’s fine. We don’t need two hours of training. We actually found that we get more done in an hour and a half. So, um, that’s kind of how we do that. But now what is the in terms of the cadence and what does a week look like? And what is our focus and practice? A lot of our games are either Tuesday, Saturday or Wednesday, Saturday.
So let’s assume the game is going to be on a Wednesday and a Saturday that week. Monday. We will talk about what we saw on Saturday night in the game. Um, we’ll go through. We will have a scout for them. So we’ll show them. Um, some of the things, you know, we’ll put, we have a Google drive and we’ll put stuff on there about, Hey, here’s some of the things that we maybe did.
Well, some of the things that we want to improve. We’re happy to meet with anybody individually to go over film, but then we’ll put up the scout for the game on Wednesday. So who are we playing? Okay, well, we’re playing new Haven. All right. What is new Haven like to do? What are their strengths? What are [00:21:00] their weaknesses?
Um, what is their formation style of play? And then we’re going to show clips on everything. So how does New Haven score their goals? All right. Primarily their score, their goals on playing balls to the flank, getting crosses in and driving to the net and crashing. Um, how do they concede a lot of their goals?
Well, they give up a ton of goals on set pieces or whatever it is. Um, where are they vulnerable? Well, maybe their left back. Isn’t their quickest player. Our right forward is our quickest player, or maybe we’re going to shift somebody from the left to the right. to get a better matchup. Um, so we’re going to talk about all of that type of stuff.
What are the keys to success in this game? Um, if we do this, we will struggle. Uh, so we, we talked through all of that, but then we are, I’m a show me type of person. So it’s not just going to be on that Google drive, but then we’re going to go through all of that stuff in practice. So Monday’s training would probably be because they had Sunday off.
That would be a little more labor intensive. We’re going to get some touches on the ball. There’s going to be movement. a little bit of scrimmaging, um, probably simulating some of the stuff we want to do on on Wednesday. And then Tuesday’s practice is going to be a lot of preparing for Wednesday. Um, so, you know, how do we, are we pressing them high?
Are we in a mid block? Um, you know, how do we want to build out of the back? Are they going to press show a high press? Are we playing long? Um, so how do we want to play against them? How are they going to You know, how are we going to defend them to try to, to try to, you know, potentially win some balls high up the field and, and score, um, set pieces will always run through our set pieces quickly, um, you know, work on some PKs really quick.
[00:22:30] Um, so we’re trying to be prepared as much as we can. Uh, we go through a lot of stuff. Hi, you know, here’s a, here’s a high press. Here’s a mid block. How do we set up in our low block? And then when we have the ball building out of the back, if we want to punt the ball in the final third, how do we want to attack all that type of stuff?
Um, then Wednesday we play. Thursday is a recovery session for the players that played. Um, the ones that didn’t play will train and they’ll train pretty hard. And then Friday, again, we go back at it. Who are we playing Saturday? What does the scout look like? And we’ll go through everything. And then we play again Saturday.
Okay.
Matt: Well, it’s perfect transition talking a little bit more about the team. We’ve talked about roster size, but you know, another big part of roster is the coaching staff. So can you talk to me about. Uh, your overall coaching staff, any of the other staff in the athletic department that help with the team.
What does that kind of look like? What roles does everybody play there?
Coach: Yeah. When I got to Pierce three years ago, um, it was me as the full time coach and I had, I think I had some money for a graduate assistant and that was it. And we kind of looked and we said, you know what? We want to treat this, this is a, this is a program that wins national championships.
We have to be, in my opinion, we have to be staffed and supported like a division one program. But, you know, coming from a small D one at AIC, I knew that I couldn’t just go in there and say, Hey, staff us. Right. So we, we’ve got to get creative. So I put my, I was an athletic director for seven years at AIC.
I put my athletic director hat on. I worked with the men’s soccer coach. They had put together a proposal, um, you know, where they, they go from 25 to 40 [00:24:00] players. Um, and that would give, you know, or 40 or 40 more play 40 or more than 40 players, and that would give them full time assistant coaching, more scholarships, more recruiting dollars, more equipment, budget, all of that.
So they, I guess the former women’s coach and the former men’s coach had put together a proposal. They asked me to take a look at it. And what I found was that, um, it was too. It was very text heavy. Um, and I, I just kind of said, listen, the A. D. S. The president’s V. P. S. They don’t care about that. They care about three things, net revenue, margins and discount rate.
Um, so we put together a proposal for both programs that focused on increasing the net revenue. Keeping our margins the same, if not increasing our margins and and actually decreasing the discount rate a little bit. Um, and I knew that it was kind of a no brainer and it was approved right away. So both men and women, um, we, we got an increase to our personnel budget.
We both hired full time assistance. We have graduate assistance now. Who are basically like full-time coaches. I pay a goalkeeper coach out of, um, money that we make in, in camps and clinics, ID clinic stuff, whatnot. So we’ve got what I like to say, we’ve got three full-time staff. ’cause the GA is always here, never, never misses anything.
Um, we’ve got a goalkeeper coach, we have, uh, a team manager, and then we’ve got athletic training support. We have an athletic trainer that is de designated for the women’s soccer program throughout the year. Um, so we’re, we’re very lucky there and we do have strength and conditioning support. So I don’t have to train the ladies when they get to the [00:25:30] weight room, we have designated strength and conditioning coaches that are working with them all year.
Um, so we are staffed pretty similar to a division one program. Obviously, you know, the bigger you get at those D one programs, there’s going to be some more, some more frills, some more bells and whistles. Um, but we wanted to do everything we could to, to provide that D one experience to our players.
Matt: No, sounds great.
Well, About you specifically, kind of as the head man, how would you describe your style of coaching and the style of play that you’re looking to implement there?
Coach: Yeah, so this new age coach, um, I’m very lucky because a lot of people, it doesn’t fit them and it does fit me. I’m not a, I’m a pretty easy going guy.
I’m a pretty laid back guy. Um, I’m not a yeller. I’m not a screamer. Um, so kind of that lead by force, which is what we all grew up with, or at least most of us grew up with. Um, you know, that that style doesn’t really work anymore, at least in my opinion. Um, so I feel like my natural style of being calm and, and having conversations with people, um, is more in line with.
the way of the world now. Um, so, so that’s our, my style is very engaging. Um, you know, we’ll, we’ll talk to the captains, we’ll talk to the players. We’re always looking to get better. Our, our opinion is for, for the coaches and the players have a growth mindset. We never want to pretend like we know everything.
Um, we’re, we’re always looking to learn and be better. Um, so I’ll give you an example. Last year, I had a player come to me and say, Hey, coach, um, one of the, one of my friends plays [00:27:00] on a, at a division one school and what they decided to do was play all of their spring games on a Friday night so they could have their Saturdays and Sundays off in the, in the off season, would you consider that?
And I said, you know what, I think that’s a fantastic idea. So what do we do this spring? We have all of our, our training sessions are Monday through Thursday. We play all of our games on Friday nights. We have one game on a Tuesday night. But the ladies have every, uh, Saturday and Sunday off of the entire winter and the entire spring.
Um, and then to take that even a step further when we were recruiting, I told you we had 60 players up over the last couple weekends in the past. What we would do was we would have like three or four players every weekend. Well, what that meant was we had to have a training session every weekend in order to try those kids out.
And again, what we found was You know, it was a lot on the ladies. We have a training session every Sunday morning and now they’re kind of looking to go. Well, you know, we can’t really be college students on Friday night and Saturday night. And now we got a training and this is our off season. So I said, you know what?
I completely agree with that. We’re going to bring all of our, we’re going to have 2 big recruiting weekends. We’re going to bring all of our recruits in for tryouts on those big recruiting weekends. And then we’re done with weekends for, for training for the entire semester. And now any recruit that wants to come in and train, they have to train on a Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday.
Um, so we really focus on. what the ladies care about their experience. Um, you know, they, we encouraged them to come to us. There was a game that, um, we played this year. I won’t say the name of the [00:28:30] team, but, um, we, we started out this year. Um, we, we had lost, we lost seven starters and seven all conference players to the portal last year, including, uh, for all region players in an all American.
So we lost some real critical players to the portal are probably our best overall player tore her ACL. And then we had two. Really important goal scoring recruits that were supposed to come in that we heard from a week before preseason. Um, couldn’t come one concussions. The other one mom, I think was dealing with some, some illness issues with a family member at home.
So stayed home. So we kind of got decimated with, with some things. Um, we came into the year saying, where are we going to score our goals? And so we struggled a bit early on and we came into a game against one of the best teams in the country. And, and I felt like I coach scared rather than, you know, the way that we do it normally is we, we want to be aggressive and we want to try to take it at teams and, and try to win games.
And I felt like, as a coach, I let the team down and in that game, because we didn’t start out winning and losing the way I wanted to, I think there was a little bit more pressure, like, 10 team in the country. This is kind of a must win game for us. And we played more not to lose rather than to win. Um, and so after the game.
Um, I kind of said that to the ladies like, Hey, I, you know, I, I really, I think I really, we ended up tying the game. We didn’t lose the game, but I think I kind of blew this one. And, and, um, you know, I, and I talked through, you know, Hey, here’s why and whatnot. And, and so I, I tell them all the time, like when I make a mistake, [00:30:00] I’ll own up to it.
If there’s things that you want to see me change, let me know. So there’s times when they’ll come up to me and say, Hey coach, I feel like, you know, maybe, um, We could maybe we could have done this instead of this, and I tell him all the time. If it makes sense, we’re absolutely going to consider it. If it doesn’t make sense.
And obviously, it’s not something we’re going to do. Um, so, yeah, I think that the leadership style is very engaging. I think we have a great relationship with the players. I would hope that if you asked any of the players, if they enjoyed playing at Franklin Pierce, they would say that they, they did enjoy it because we’re not micromanaging anything.
We let them be college students. We don’t have a lot of rules and regulations. We treat them really well, but that being said, I’m very principle oriented. And so if people aren’t doing the right thing, um, we address it immediately. So that’s the one thing I w I would say that, you know, some people might say, well, if you’re that laid back.
It’s not going to work because the inmates are going to run the asylum. Well, no, I, I would say that the one area that we, that we’re very strict is if somebody’s not doing what they’re supposed to do, um, we don’t wait a week or two weeks or three weeks. We try to call them in right away and say, Hey, Here’s what we’re hearing.
That’s not the behavior we would expect from a women’s soccer player at Franklin Pierce. We’re going to, we’re going to suspend you for a couple games. We know the type of player that you are. We know the type of person you are. We know that you’ll learn from this and you’ll be better in the future. And that’s kind of how it goes.
And we, we really have no issues. It’s a lot of fun. [00:31:30] I have to say, I probably. I probably have one of the best jobs in the world. I enjoy getting up every day of the week. Um, I have a great time going to practice and, uh, and I really enjoy the, the ladies that we have in the program and the coaching staff that we have and the, and the support staff that we have.
It’s, it’s, it’s a great place to be.
Matt: Sounds like it. Well, coach, you’ve been super generous with your time. I got one last question for you. You’ve, you’ve been in this game quite a while. So, so I think you’ll have some good advice for folks, but if you could boil it down, if you had to pick. Just one thing that you would want a potential college soccer recruit to know, what would that be?
Coach: Uh, it’s going to be three things really quick because there are guiding principles for our program and I think that they lead to success in all areas of life. We talk about this all the time. Be a good person. Treat people really well. And work really hard. So those are, those are the three guiding principles that we kind of operate on a daily basis or that we, you know, that help us to operate on a daily basis.
Um, those to me are the keys to success in life. I, you know, when I give talks to high school kids or when I was an ad, I had to talk to, you know, high school kids a lot, not just soccer players. And I would say all the time, we would say that, like, if you’re just a really good person and you treat people really well, and you work really hard.
Okay. You’re going to find success in, in, in no matter what you do. Um, and so I think those, those things are what I would say to a, to a prospective recruit or, or anybody that’s looking to [00:33:00] be successful in life.
Matt: Awesome. Well, coach, really appreciate the time. Thanks so much. Good luck, uh, finishing out the, the rest of the recruiting class and the spring season.
And hopefully you’ll get back to those, uh, banner hanging ways, uh, this coming Coach: fall. All right. Yeah. Much appreciated. Thanks, Matt. Have a good day. You too.
