Cal State Maritime Men’s Soccer – Coach Mike Carvalho
On today’s episode, I speak with Coach Mike Carvalho from the Cal Maritime Men’s Program in California. We talk about how his roster is made up primarily of domestic players. He tells me about the fantastic jobs their graduates get after leaving school. Lastly, we discuss their adaptive style of play and the different formations they use to execute that. Learn more about CSU Maritime.
[00:00:00] Matt: Hi, everybody. Welcome to discover college soccer. Uh, and I’m lucky enough today to be joined by coach Mike from Cal maritime. Welcome.
[00:00:07] Coach: Thanks, Matt. Glad to be here.
[00:00:08] Matt: Happy to have you. So, uh, well, let’s just jump right into it. When talk about the recruiting side of things, um, how many inbound contacts would you say you get in a given week and, and what your students are?
[00:00:21] They usually.
[00:00:22] Coach: Yeah. In a non COVID year, I would probably expect to get maybe 10 to 15 emails. This year has been crazy. I think, you know, with the eligibility issues that’s happening in NCAA and NAIA, I’m averaging probably 50 emails every single week. This recruiting year has been.
[00:00:41] Matt: Yeah, that’s that I’ve kind of heard the same thing across, across all, all programs.
[00:00:46] I’m talking to the, that’s just thrown a wrench in it and less spots, but more people kind of thing. So, um, well, what are some of the things you’d like to see in that first communication from, uh, from a potential
[00:00:58] Coach: recruit? Yeah. So, you know, if someone is reaching out to me, I really want it to be personalized.
[00:01:03] You know, I, I think there’s not, there’s no bigger turnoff than somebody giving me a form letter that they send to everybody in. Right. I mean, if you take the time to learn about me and my program and the players that I have on my team and my roster and the schedule, then I’ll put the time in to spend, to get to know you.
[00:01:19] I mean, I think it’s a fair trade. Yeah,
[00:01:21] Matt: no for sure. Well, where do you tend to spend a majority of your time recruiting? What tournaments do you like to go to? Where are you finding players? Mostly.
[00:01:30] Coach: Yeah. So there, there are really where I live, we’re in the San Francisco bay area. Right? So obviously the first location that we go to is the Davis showcases.
[00:01:39] Right? So that’s, uh, nor Cal is our, um, youth sports organization up here. And that. The focal point for the top clubs in Northern California is the David showcases. But I also see a tremendous amount of value in surf cup in San Diego. Um, and I spend time at surf cup and then I just, this last weekend, I was in Las Vegas at the player showcase, which is a pretty great event for recruiting.
[00:02:02] Yeah. I’ve, I’ve heard
[00:02:03] Matt: a lot of people saying they were stuff I’ve had in the past. If people said they were going to go to that one. So that’s a, that’s good to hear. Well, what about camps? How to camps fit into your recruiting? Do you do ID camps on campus? Are you working other schools? Camps?
[00:02:17] Coach: I do we do.
[00:02:18] We like to do our own ID camps and COVID is kind of thrown a monkey wrench into this as well. But, you know, we like to do our own camps. Um, if not for fundraising before actually recruiting. I mean, I like to, if you’re willing to put the time into my camp, I’m going to put the time into giving you a fair shake and, and the recruiting process.
[00:02:34] But I also do some other ID camps. Uh, I think that’s a great opportunity for me to recruit, um, because that’s the reason. Right. It’s not to make a few bucks. Right.
[00:02:42] Matt: That’s good. So when you’re at either camps or at any of these showcases, what’s your kind of checklist, your hierarchy of what are you looking for in a player, whether that’s on the field
[00:02:53] Coach: or off the field, you know, I’m really looking for a complete player.
[00:02:56] You know, I think one of the biggest mistakes a lot of athletes do is they focus on their strengths instead of their entire game. Like if you’re at a defense. I expect to see defensive place, but I also want to see what you can do combining in the attack. And the same thing is true. If you’re an attacker, I mean, if you were forward and you send me a video and all assets of you scoring goals, that doesn’t show me how you play off the ball.
[00:03:18] It doesn’t show me how you support your teammates in passive and being a target. It also doesn’t show me what kind of its fender you are, because that’s what I’m looking for as a complete player.
[00:03:30] Matt: Now, you. And AI, uh, school. So, you know, a lot of men’s in AI programs, programs tend to have a, a large, uh, international flavor to them.
[00:03:42] However, just looking at your roster, you got have maybe one or two, but, uh, how, how does international recruiting kind of fit into your
[00:03:48] Coach: overall scheme? You know, because I am a state school that. You know, and that’s, that’s a real shame because I don’t have a launch, a lot of money to support these foreign players.
[00:03:57] Uh, I actually, excuse me, I just had actually had a call with a Swedish player and he’s really interested in coming into play for me. But the biggest obstacle he has obviously is, is generating the funding to come and study in the United States. Um, and some of our opponents that do have a large number of foreign players, they obviously don’t have the money to recruit those players.
[00:04:19] You know, and that’s, and I think that’s one of the biggest difference between our programs, but I think that’s something that you see across, I mean, all across all schools, if you have, if you have the funds to be able to attract that kind of talent, you do. Um, and it’s funny that you mentioned the international flavor of, I don’t know if you have had a chance to see the NAA top three teams.
[00:04:36] There are no Americans on those teams, you know, it’s, it’s kind of sad when you hear all American and it’s all foreign players. Yeah. It just, it just, I think it speaks to us as a conference in that we’re starting to attract a lot of talented players in the right. Yeah, for sure.
[00:04:55] Matt: Well, in terms you mentioned, you know, international players, you know, trying to put the funding together.
[00:05:01] Well, let’s, let’s talk, just funding in general. So obviously you have athletic money to give, but how does the combination of academic and athletic money work specifically at your
[00:05:10] Coach: school? Yeah, uh, because we are a state school, uh, tuition is really affordable. I mean, you can attend Cal maritime if you’re in state tuition in front of 9,000, That’s total tuition, right?
[00:05:20] And then you have your living expenses. So someone can expect to spend 20 to 25,000 and cover everything, including room and board and education uniforms and everything else that goes along with it. Um, which is great. I mean, if you’re an in state student, we also have the Western undergraduate exchange, which is an option that’s available if you live in one of the Western states, right?
[00:05:42] So South Dakota, North Dakota, all the way to California, any of those. Um, have reduced tuition rates available, uh, through that program. And we participate in that program. So you can expect to pay maybe three or 4,000 more than what an in-state student would pay, which is still very affordable in the scheme of things, um, per year.
[00:06:01] Right? So there we have mechanisms of attracting, um, scholarships is not one of them, but I do give scholarships, but I focus on giving my scholarships to my returning players. I think that a player that has come on campus demonstrated to me that he can not only perform on the team, but he also has the acumen to complete his education requirements, keep his grades up and also do his volunteering work that we expect from all our student athletes, um, in the local community.
[00:06:28] I mean, that’s the complete athlete that I’m looking for. And what I do is, um, I, and I think, um, might be one of the few people that does this. So I take all my. And I divided equally amongst all the people that I qualify for scholarships. Right. So they have an incentive to.
[00:06:44] Matt: Okay, that’s great. Um, well, let’s talk more about the school because your school is definitely a unique amongst a lot of schools that I’ve talked to and, and want to kind of get that across to players, uh, that might be interested.
[00:06:57] So, you know, I clicked around the website and, you know, you learn a lot real quick, but, but kind of give me the, the non website, uh,
[00:07:07] Coach: Information I need to know about, about your school. Absolutely. I love selling Cal maritime. So Cal maritime is part of the Cal state university system. Uh, there were 23 schools and what makes our school unique is that we’re the number one school in the entire system.
[00:07:21] You know, you don’t realize that when you take a look at our smaller schools, we have seven majors. Um, but we’re number one for employment. After graduation, 98% of our students have jobs, career entry positions in their career fields within three months. And there’s not a lot of schools that can, that can, I can brag about that.
[00:07:39] Uh, we used to be really proud that we could say our average starting salary salary of our graduates was right between Cal Berkeley and Stanford. We actually, this year, we’re the number one school in the entire Western states. Um, our average starting salary is way over night, $80,000 a year. So our graduates have jobs and they have great starting salaries.
[00:07:59] Uh, the other thing that really makes us unique is that every. We’ll do at least one year of an international experience and that international experiences that happen one of two ways, either. You’re going to go with a, a cohort of your classmates to a foreign country and it could be France. It could be South Africa, it could be Vietnam.
[00:08:15] It could be Japan, or you’re going to take a ride on our training. To get your coast guard licensing hours, which is a requirement for getting licensed. Right. And, uh, what’s really unique about that. Crews are students, they navigate, they pilot, they crew, they engineer the entire ship themselves, and we’re not talking about a cruise out to the bay and come back in.
[00:08:38] We’re talking to last long cruise that they had. They left Vallejo, they went to the Panama canal. They went up our beta. Lisbon Portugal. Fort Lauderdale in Galveston, Texas 60 minutes. And they had a phenomenal experience this year. They’re going to Mexico, Japan, and I’m sorry, Mexico, Hawaii and Washington.
[00:08:58] And that will be their cruise for this year. So there’s opportunities, not only learning here in the United States, but also going overseas and experiencing culture. And, um, Um, especially in maritime and other places, um, we do wear uniforms, but it’s not a military academy. Um, but if you’re, if you’re looking for a military type career at the end, it’s a great starting point because we’ve had many of our players, uh, and students that have gone on to military careers.
[00:09:25] Um, I love bragging about one of my captains from a couple of years ago. He graduated, never had any ideas about getting into the military. Uh, I helped them with a letter of recommendation. And this last year he reached out to me and told me that he got, uh, he got a commission in the us Navy. And, uh, he’s now learning how to flight fighter jets.
[00:09:44] So, you know, pretty proud of him, you know, that was something he did. Out of the blue would that just, you know, without that education, uh, Maritime’s really unique too, in that it was originally started by companies that work in the maritime industry and then the state of California came in and bought it, which is, which is kind of cool because now we have a state monies coming into the program.
[00:10:03] Um, but the thing that was really cool is that a lot of our graduates went to work for these companies that started this program. So it’s like the hiring manager. And the people in charge are graduates of our school. So they know the value of our graduates and it’s like, that’s a direct connection. We’re also real big on internships.
[00:10:20] So our school will go from September to may and then between may and we come back on campus as an opportunity for you to do an internship and almost all students do internships of some type. And a lot of times these internships turned into the career opportunities that are offered when they graduate.
[00:10:35] And that’s, I mean, if the work experience, the, the opportunity to learn, uh, we’re also a Polytech, so everything is hands-on, there’s a tons of hands-on experience. Our engineering programs are our students. They learn how to weld. They learn metal fabrication, they learn machine tool, they learn CAD. Um, and they’re, they’re really well-versed in everything that has to do with engineering and the trays that go along with it.
[00:11:00] That’s
[00:11:00] Matt: awesome. Well, I mean, with all that going on, How is it that your, your athletes balance. Sports and studies and all of those things that you just talked about, what support systems are there to help them as well?
[00:11:14] Coach: Yeah. So the education includes any tutoring that they need. If they need any kind of help with any of their classes, it’s available as part of their educational cost.
[00:11:22] There’s no additional fees for that. Um, and that’s, that’s, that’s a resource that’s available to everybody and we encourage everyone to take advantage of that. I spend time with all my players following up on their education and making sure that they’re putting that front. I allow students to miss practice.
[00:11:37] If they have tests labs, they need to catch up on homework. I’m fine with that. I mean, they’re there for an education. Soccer is great, but I don’t make it their primary responsibility. Um, you know, and then the other things that come into play too is, you know, uh, one of the things I learned a long time ago, and we see this as some of our very, very best students in the school around.
[00:11:57] And a lot of them has to do with the, when they were, when they were club players. I mean, yeah. I asked these parents will ask, well, how can they balance education and cycle? How do they do it when they were in high school? You know, a lot of these kids played high level soccer. There was 3 45 training days a week, plus their tournament and ID camps and showcases, how did they do it?
[00:12:15] They balance their time. Well, the same thing is true. Cal maritime. I mean, if you come in and you already have that discipline, you’re able to do time management. You can to be really successful on the flip side. If you don’t, you have a tendency to procrastinate, you’re not going to be successful. W w and
[00:12:29] Matt: let’s talk about that time.
[00:12:30] So, so what does a typical week look like in season, from what, you know, waking up to school, to practice, to games, to go into bed, you know, what does it all look like in a. Average week.
[00:12:44] Coach: Yeah. So there, we have a number of opportunities for taking classes throughout the day. So classes will start early in the morning and they’ll go to a late at night.
[00:12:51] And then, um, you know, most of my players, if not all my players try to make their athletic time available during our athletics windows, which is a couple hours in the afternoon. When you normally practice from five to seven, um, we’ll practice four days a week. And then, uh, in season we’re playing two games.
[00:13:07] And I always give them a day off between games for recovery, and I encourage them to use our sports medicine department and they’ll take ice fats and do, you know, therapies that are available to them in our sports medicine department. Um, so, and then I have them for 13 weeks in the fall. Right. So it’s real fast.
[00:13:24] It’s really. It’s really intense in the training and the gameplay. Um, when we travel, we have a tendency to starting this year to fly as opposed to take buses. So we’re trying to minimize the amount of time there are off-campus. Um, I make them responsible for making sure that they’re tracking their education.
[00:13:41] So they’re communicating with their professors about when they’re going to be on the road and I’ll Proctor exams. If that’s something that falls on a game day, we can work that out. What we’ll take the test in the hotel room. But it’s usually not a problem. 40% of our students are athletes. So, you know, and I think you start seeing that a lot in smaller.
[00:14:01] Matt: Yeah, definitely a higher percentage of athletes. Um, well, let’s, let’s talk about the team and the soccer side of things for a bit. So, you know, how many players do you typically like to carry? What’s your
[00:14:11] Coach: ideal roster size? I would love to carry 24, you know, and that’s usually what I strive for. I’d love to carry more.
[00:14:17] If I had the money, I don’t. So I’m trying to keep a roster of 24. I think that’s a good number to keep. Cause I can pretty much get everyone into the, into the game sometime throughout the season. Right. Which is important. Cause I want them to have participation time. Um, what else can I tell you about that?
[00:14:37] Yeah. When I picked up the program, I had primarily walk-ons. So recruiting has been a really big part of my program development here in the last couple of years. Um, this year is going to be a phenomenal recruiting year. I’ve already got seven commits and I’m expecting maybe to have 12 to 14 and a lot of quality players coming into my program.
[00:14:55] So, um, I have talented players. I think I’m going to have talented players now and a talented bench, which is going to help us develop.
[00:15:04] Matt: So in terms of, of that bench, uh, who else is, is next to you on it? You know, how big is your staff soccer staff? What role does everybody
[00:15:12] Coach: play? What’s that look like? Yeah.
[00:15:13] So, um, I came on board, uh, Cal maritime about five years ago. I was a women’s assistant coach with Emily C she’s the head women’s head coach. And she gave me a chance to be here. Um, and, uh, when I picked up the men’s program, she’s my assistant, I’m her assistant. So we’re helping each other. We traveled together.
[00:15:30] I also have another assistant. That’s a high school, a local high school coach, and his name is PJ. And he helps me when he can, um, you know, I’d love to have a couple more assistant coaches. The only issue too, is that they’re volunteer positions. Right. So I don’t have budget for a assistant.
[00:15:46] Matt: Yeah, no. When I was coaching D two, that’s how I was.
[00:15:49] I was the women’s assistant and the women’s head was my assistant and we just had to do it all together. Cause that’s the way
[00:15:54] Coach: it was, especially during COVID. Cause you never want no one to get sick. Right. So it’s nice having that other coach on the road with you.
[00:16:01] Matt: Well, so how would you describe, you know, your style of coaching, your team’s style of play, kind of like the culture of the team?
[00:16:07] Coach: Yeah. I don’t know if you can guess from my last name, but unfortunately, right. So I have a little bit of that Portuguese influence on my stylist soccer. Um, I’m not real big on traditional us styles of soccer, you know, possessions important. It’s not the focus of my, of my, my program. Um, I’m real big on some of the initiatives that us soccer had a few years back.
[00:16:27] So I really liked the poaching and dueling styles of soccer play, you know, high press trying to turn the ball over and that, and that attacking third generate scoring opportunities for my attackers by playing defense. And that’s where the complete game comes in. I’m also real big on dueling, right? So, um, when I, when, when we train, we train the way we play, uh, I’m not going to do a lot of exercises where.
[00:16:49] For V3 or five before, I always make sure that I have an equal number of defenders, if not more than they’ll have the attackers so that they can actually, you know, emulate in training what they’re going to see in a game. And I encourage my players not to be afraid to take on more, more than one defender, you know?
[00:17:05] So I think that develops our gameplay. Um, I liked the tactical corners. I like getting my defenders into the attack. So combining in the middle, third is really. Um, and then finishing strong. Um, I like to use pattern play. We spend a lot of time working on patterns. Um, set pieces are a real big to me too.
[00:17:23] I’ve had, I’ve had some really good teachers throughout the years of teaching me how to do some set pieces and some of them are really. Um, and then, you know, just keep developing my games. System-wise I can play any system. I like playing a 4, 3, 3. I can play a 4, 4, 2, 3, 1. I’m okay. With playing a 3, 5, 2.
[00:17:40] So, I mean, I think it depends on the talent that I have, how I’m going to build my system. Um, but I’m open to, I mean, and that’s one of the things I think that’s great about this game is there’s no real one way to do it. You know, any, any, anybody with a vision can develop a program.
[00:17:54] Matt: Yeah, no, I like, I like the adaptability is always crucial, uh, especially in college when you, your players are changing every year, so yeah, absolutely.
[00:18:04] Absolutely. So, you know, we’re talking here in the spring, uh, w what’s your, what’s your off season program?
[00:18:10] Coach: Typically? Look, I get them 10 weeks. You know, I don’t put a lot of emphasis on, um, on them having to participate in the spring because you know, school’s tough. They have a lot of things they have to do.
[00:18:22] So I asked them to put off what they would do in the fall to the spring so that they can, so it doesn’t conflict, some of their lab classes and those kinds of things. But most of my players spend at least one or two days training with us. We have two formal days that we train, like we’ll train Wednesday and Thursdays.
[00:18:38] Is there a formal training? And then on Fridays we have something will be developed called Friday night lights. That’s open to the entire campus and it’s basically just come and we’ll play pickup. And we combine men and women, and everybody has a blast. I get out there, throw my referee shirt on and, um, we just have fun, right?
[00:18:55] It’s a great opportunity for bringing recruits on campus so they can actually play with the team and they can measure their skills against our collegial. But one of the things I think that’s really great is the amount of talent we have on campus that doesn’t even play collegiate sports. Right. They just get out there, you know, we have a great rugby team, so some of these rugby guys get out there, you know, they may not have the skills, but they’re athletes, right.
[00:19:16] So they’re strong and fast and they can do a lot of things that, uh, sometimes you have to take a double look.
[00:19:23] Matt: That sounds like fun. Um,
[00:19:26] Coach: and that’s the whole thing, right? I mean, one of the things I learned a long time ago is people will keep coming back. If you keep. Right. I mean, I’m sure it becomes work, right?
[00:19:36] Yup.
[00:19:37] Matt: Yup. Absolutely. Well, you know, coasts, we, we, we talked about a lot. Everything’s covered a lot of ground, but you know, my last question is just the catch all. What, what didn’t we talk about? What else would you like people to know or, or something you want to reiterate or, or anything else that’s kind of your, your last ditch effort, uh, to give us any, any nugget you want to share?
[00:20:00] Coach: Yeah. I mean, I think one of the things that, uh, you know, Cal Maritime’s is a Juul. I mean, we, a lot of people don’t like by then realize it’s there, right? It’s rather than the guy it’s on the right side of the quirkiness, Brits coming in from Sacramento. Um, it’s a great location, you know, we’re 23 miles with.
[00:20:22] And Cisco seven 20 ones to do off the campus. If you want to work part-time you don’t have to work on campus. There are tons of employment opportunities around campus, um, but it’s a great place to study and it’s a, it’s a phenomenal family. And that’s one of the things I want to stress is that, you know, we’re a great family, you know,
[00:20:40] Matt: Awesome.
[00:20:41] Well, coach, I appreciate the time. Wish you the best of luck with this recruiting class and your season in the fall. And, uh, if I, if I get up to the San Fran area, I’ll have to come stop by and then see what you guys got going on up there.
[00:20:53] Coach: Thanks, man. I appreciate it. Thanks for your time. Thank you.
