Messiah University Men’s Soccer – Coach Brad McCarty
On today’s episode, I speak with Coach Brad McCarty from the Messiah University Men’s Program in Pennsylvania. We talk about how he looks for players with that competitive muscle. He describes how their school has a genuine caring for others that you see everywhere on campus. Lastly, we discuss how important modeling their core values is within their team. Learn more about Messiah Men’s Soccer.
[00:00:00] Matt: Hi, everybody. Welcome to discover college soccer. I am lucky enough today to be joined by coach Brad McCarty from Messiah. Coach. Uh, it’s great to have you on, I, you know, there’s a lot of folks who may not be familiar with Messiah, but if you’re at all familiar with, with men’s college soccer, uh, you, you, you absolutely should be as a, and I’ll let you brag about your, the, the accolades of the school later on.
[00:00:25] Um, but you know, let, let’s start first off, just talk about the recruiting and how you bring players in and that sort of stuff. I mean, And I’m really curious to answer this, especially since your program has such a story history, but when do you usually start hearing from players? What year in high school are they, when do you start actively recruiting players?
[00:00:46] Coach: Sure, sure. Um, well let me, let me kinda, I’ll give you our recruiting process and then the timeline associated with that is that work. So we’ll work with, uh, you know, maybe 200, 250 kids in a recruiting class, some other schools that that may be. Lot broader, like, you know, maybe it’s 500, maybe it’s depending on the type of school and how wide that net gets thrown.
[00:01:12] Um, for us, it’s, you know, a couple hundred kids, um, you know, I think our recruiting is similar than some schools, different than others. We bring in a set number of kids based on a handful of variables. First of all, you know, we won’t carry more than okay. Between 23 and 25 field players, uh, two to four goalkeepers.
[00:01:32] So we won’t, we don’t want to carry less that we don’t want to carry more than that. And, um, we don’t, we don’t cut kids. Um, you know, we don’t push them out the door. Uh, kids don’t quit very often thinking my 14 years as a, as a head coach, we’ve had seven players walk. You have some programs, all of seven kids walkway and a single class.
[00:01:56] Um, you know, so, uh, then what you just talking about is spots based on graduation. Now COVID has made things really wonky. Maybe it has an impact that some programs for us, you know, uh, I had a six year senior, two fifth year seniors and seven seniors on my team last year. And out of those seven seniors, six are returning next year.
[00:02:20] So, you know, when someone says, well, how many people are graduating? I’m like, I don’t know. I got to work on that, you know? And so, but normally it’s based on graduation. And so, uh, based on that, we know how many spots traditionally it’s between five and seven kids. Uh, COVID has had an impact on that. My last couple of classes have been smaller as a result of fifth years.
[00:02:44] Um, you know, but traditionally between five and seven. And so we’re looking at. You know, for specific things to try and narrow it down to about 25 kids. Um, kind of like on paper, who we think would be a great fit. Um, you know, what are we looking for? You know, first we want a kid that’s just a great kid.
[00:03:03] Good, good heart. Um, great teammate. Uh, high-level buy-in second. We want a kid. Who’s a Christian kid just wants to be at a Christian school. That’s part of, you know, they want that to be a part of their college experience, whether it is. In the dorm, uh, on, in the classroom or on the field. And so, you know, um, that’s an important part of, of our recruiting process.
[00:03:28] Uh, you know, we don’t want a kid who’s mature, uh, emotionally, socially, spiritually, academically, that’s important, but when a kid with a growth mindset, belief thing, get better through hard work. Um, we call it the healthy, you know, just like a healthy grind, uh, an unhealthy growing, like weight of expectation, but just honing your crafts.
[00:03:49] And so we want guys that want that, um, you know, we want a kid who’s, who’s a good student. We don’t have study halls. We don’t check grades. Um, we don’t make sure they go to class or teach them how to read a syllabus. We would like our team GPA to be above a three. Oh, it’s been above a three, five for like the last eight semesters.
[00:04:07] Uh, that’s pretty high from men’s athletics and, um, you know, uh, but we want kids to, to care and to work hard and, um, you know, be committed to that. And I think our guys do a good job of modeling that for each other and for the younger guys, um, you know, maybe on the field, First such skill comfort on the ball.
[00:04:34] Um, decision-making right. The tactical piece, how quickly they can make those decisions on both sides of the ball. Um, it’s kind of how fast you are. Um, it’s a big field, one 20 by 75. And so, you know, we’re, you know, just that we also call like area of influence, just the ability to cover grounds. Um, you know, I think, uh, the other piece is kind of.
[00:05:01] Um, you know, we, we call it, uh, a competitive muscle, um, just burning, burning desire to want to win, um, coupled with, you know, the emotional discipline that you’re not getting yellow cards thinking every game. So, you know, the other piece would be just like, Do they fit into our system and style. So we’ve been playing the same, same system and style for a long time by 4, 3, 3, which isn’t rocket science.
[00:05:32] Lots of people play that, but we do play a particular style of, of soccer. And so, um, when we watch somebody play, we watch someone through that lens to see if they have the characteristics that did a particular position within our system. And they play a style that would fit. Um, the other piece is like, alright, well, if I do know who’s graduating, who’s graduating.
[00:05:57] What positions are, are they? And, you know, do those positions open up? Um, you know, I think, um, kind of leads into timeline, timeline. Uh, we’ll start to connect with kids, you know, summer before their junior year they’ll come to one of our ID camps. You know, we’ll connect with them. They fill out an online questionnaire or they send us an email.
[00:06:24] Um, you know, in November, if we’re not, if we’re not playing, you know, we’ll try and get the some tournaments. Uh, we’ll have a winter ID clinic where the touch point for us. Um, we’ll get to some of the major tournaments, um, ECL showcases, Tomi, Jeff cups, stuff like that. Um, but don’t get out as much as some other schools.
[00:06:48] I know we don’t. Um, because you know, if I’m looking for a Christian kid, it’s more about filtering than it is identifying, uh, that doesn’t work for everybody. And I’m standing on the shoulders of, you know, latent Shoemaker and Dave Brandt, who, um, allows players to reach out to us. Um, you know, for me to just go.
[00:07:12] Put a chair down and Jeff cup and circle kids that are good fighters. It just doesn’t really work. So, you know, we want kids that care about their faith. And so, you know, that’s an important piece so that our ID camps, um, in, in June, we, we added one in July, uh, but that’s a Christian college ID camp. I invite other Christian colleges to come and recruit.
[00:07:34] Uh, I don’t pay them. They don’t pay me. They don’t work the camp, you know, recruiting. Really inefficient process. Uh, choosing a college is a really inefficient process. You got to drive it up and down the Eastern seaboard spending money on Hampton in every weekend tournaments. And then you got to go visit a school which takes all day long, or you go into a region and to visit three schools and it takes four days.
[00:08:00] So. I mean, I’ve had a couple, a couple of my daughters go through that college process and it’s not, it’s not easy on either side. So that college ID camp is trying to help us be a little bit efficient. That’s where we kind of figure out where someone falls on the depth chart. No.
[00:08:17] Matt: And it’s, that was, I mean, you, you managed to answer probably half a dozen different questions.
[00:08:22] I was going to ask you in that answer. So, so well done. Um, but yeah, and that’s one of the reasons I kind of started this was hopefully people could at least have that initial thought and conversation with a coach that maybe they didn’t have and learn about some schools they weren’t aware of. Um, you know, Let’s talk a little bit more about, um, you know, the, the hard, the hard, uh, topic of money, you know, obviously besides three, no athletic scholarships, what does the academic scholarship and, and just the overall financial aid situation look like for most of your players?
[00:09:02] Yeah. I
[00:09:02] Coach: mean, high rate, higher ed is a little bit of a mess right now. I mean, it, it’s not unfair to call it a broken model. No, we’re in this litigious society, which jacks up medical costs and healthcare, and we’re in this industry that requires a lot of people to work. And so it’s just like, it’s just facilities and there’s teachers and there’s, you know, there’s just a lot of individuals.
[00:09:31] And so didn’t, it didn’t help in the nineties when administrations across the U S. 6% on top of 6% on top of 6%, it was like compound interest the wrong way. Um, so that’s, that’s hard. Um, the reality is, you know, for a lot of middle income families, um, private, higher education has been priced out for them.
[00:09:59] You know, you’ve got a kid who’s like a 3.0 with a thousand on his SATs and Scott, a couple of teachers, you know, his parents are teachers. Like, I don’t know. That’s really challenging. Um, you know, I think, uh, Messiah works hard, uh, to do that. And, and, you know, I think, um, there are schools that, that maybe do a better job of, of meeting need, but, um, it’s, it’s very merit based.
[00:10:28] It’s based on GPA and sat score. Uh, there’s need-based aid. There’s also, you know, opportunity to interview for scholarships, academic scholarships. Um, you know, for, for the right kid, you know, I think, I think it’s, it’s certainly affordable, but like anything there’s a spectrum there in regard to what that means, what that looks like.
[00:10:50] It also depends on what major you’re, you know, interested in youth ministry. Like, you know, I think that’s not something where you can handle those, those loan payments afterwards. Engineering or accounting, you know, I’m like, you know, I think you can find ways to make that work.
[00:11:09] Matt: Okay, well, let’s talk a little bit more, you know, you mentioned majors, so let’s talk a little bit more about the school itself.
[00:11:14] Uh, you know, I went to school in the Mid-Atlantic and so I knew of Messiah, but, uh, you know, now that I’m down here in Florida, I’m pretty sure that most of, uh, Well, most of the people that I’d run into at our club, uh, wouldn’t have any idea. Um, so besides what I can find on the website, you know, cause everybody can click around there, but give me some of the, the in-depth, uh, awesome things about your school.
[00:11:39] Most people wouldn’t know you’re an alum as well, so you’ve got a unique perspective. So, so w you know, help sell Messiah, uh, based on that.
[00:11:49] Coach: I mean, I think it’s a great location, um, in, in the Mid-Atlantic region, um, there’s 10 million different highways that come through here. And so it’s easily accessible, you know, New York, uh, Philly, um, Baltimore, uh, you know, Western PA, Ohio, um, you know, Maryland, Delaware, Jersey Carolinas, like it’s, you know, it’s you, you got.
[00:12:19] Three four hours and you, you, you can catch a lot in different individuals. So it’s a great location. It’s a beautiful campus. So strong Christian school. That’s really important too. Uh, just it’s just woven into the fabric of the school. Um, so if you’re not interested in going to a Christian school, Mussai, wouldn’t be a good fit, but if you.
[00:12:44] Hey, my faith is important to me. I want that to, you know, my experience to be through that biblical worldview lens then it’s, it’s, it’s awesome. Um, you know, I think it’s about 2,500 students, uh, and you know, I think they’ve done a really good job of pursuing excellence academically. They do a really good job, um, in sciences and math, uh, education, uh, they’ve got, you know, I’ve got kids that are, you know, in med school.
[00:13:19] Um, so pre-med is, is a good, um, major here, bio all kinds of different stuff like that. Um, we had a lot of accounting majors. We’ve had a lot of engineering majors. Um, you know, we’ve had education majors, kids who’ve gone on to teach and coach. Um, so they do, you know, I think good job. They just added a finance major, you know, several years ago.
[00:13:42] And so, uh, that’s been something that a number of our players have have joined in. So, you know, I think just that, that pursuit of like, man doing a, doing a good job back then, like, like I think the biggest difference is just, um, you know, the quality of the kids we attract the quality of. The faculty that we attract and what I mean quality, I just mean like, and how they, how they interact with others, how they treat others.
[00:14:11] And so it just permeates the campus and it just feels different than if you went, when you visit another school, just in regard to, uh, people’s genuine, willingness to care for others. And to put others first, uh, is something that’s a bank makes size.
[00:14:31] Matt: That’s awesome. Um, sorry, I’m always writing notes, uh, for, for these, but, um, well, on the academic side, kind of what, what support mechanisms does your school provide and how do your student athletes balance the commitments between school and sport?
[00:14:49] Coach: Yeah. Good question. Um, Messiah has has support, um, No, there’s, there’s not, not too often. Am I bringing in a kid that needs those services? Um, like I said, we don’t have study hall and check grades and help kids out besides just man. It’s really expensive. If, if you’re coming in as an average student, you can come in as an average student, um, and Messiah would work with you and they have student services for that.
[00:15:21] Um, you know, for us. One of the most important things is recruiting a kid who’s mature. Um, oftentimes not always, oftentimes there’s a correlation between GPA and matured. Uh, and so, um, for us, um, you know, I think we, we recruit kids that they’re intrinsically motivated and they’re pretty, they’re pretty driven academically.
[00:15:50] Is it hard? Yeah. It’s hard. It also depends on your major. I’m like, you’re a business major. I’m like, you’ll have more free time than, than your roommate. Who’s an engineering major. If you’re an engineering major, if you’re premed major, you know, like, man, those are, those are brutal. Those are hard, but you can do it.
[00:16:10] Um, I think Messiah is a great place for that. Like I said, we, we don’t, uh, Being in the Midland and can beam where we are and being accessible to so many areas. Um, you know, our kids, don’t miss class very often, you know, division one, you could be flying around and I’m like, that’s fun the first couple of times, but I’m like backing get old.
[00:16:34] Um, half our games are at home. It’s under the lights. You don’t miss class. Quarter of our games are on the road on a Saturday. You don’t miss class. So. What for midweek games and, you know, three of those are within a half hour or hour and you know, they’re under lights, so we probably don’t miss class. So our kids don’t miss class for practice.
[00:16:55] They don’t miss class for games. Um, but it’s, it’s certainly challenging. It’s certainly difficult. Um, but there’s been tons of kids that have done it before them. And there’ll be tons of kids after that can do go here.
[00:17:10] Matt: So that, that kind of leads me to my next question, which I think you already somewhat answer, but, but a typical week, uh, during the season, it sounds like you’re going to be classes earlier practice later and games are, uh, are you on a Wednesday, Saturday cadence then?
[00:17:27] Coach: Yeah, typically, I mean, we practice four days a week. We practice, you know, Monday, Tuesday game on Wednesday. Sometimes we’ll have a game on Tuesday. And then practice Thursday, Friday, we practice four 15 to six class ends at three 50. So some kids class ends at two 15, so they have plenty of time to, to get out and train with a lot of our guys come out before practice or say after, uh, I tell guys I’m like, you know, if I can’t make you better in an hour and 45 minutes, like you’re going to have to, you’re going to have to put in things that are specific to your position.
[00:18:03] We do lots of functional training. Uh, but, uh, we still need to find time to either stay late or get out there early. Um, yeah, so we’ll have a game on, on, on, on weekday Tuesday, Wednesday, we’ll have a game on Saturday and then we are off on Sunday. We don’t practice or play on Sundays except for NCAAs when, when we’re forced to.
[00:18:25] Yeah.
[00:18:27] Matt: Well, and, and again, you mentioned it a little bit before, but you know, you’re in a great location. So your. Your travel doesn’t have to be that far, but as kind of the, the nationally recognized program that you are, are you trying to have some, some longer road trips? Non-conference stuff that to play certain people or, or, I mean, obviously there’s conferences amazingly strong, but in terms of non-conference stuff, how does that work for your scheduling?
[00:18:52] Coach: Well, we will, but I’m like, we can find really good teams to not travel very far nationally ranked teams, but we will, I mean, we’re opening, um, our season up, uh, Washington and Lee and, um, in Lynchburg. So we’ll do stuff like that. I’m like, like the days of like flying out to Chicago to play Wheaton, I think those, those days may be done, but, um, No, I think, um, we play a great schedule.
[00:19:22] We have a strong schedule, um, every year, whether that’s, you know, whether that’s us finding, you know, NYU, you know, in the city or, um, Oneonta, stuff like that. I’m like w we, we find ways to play quality opponents. Carthage is gliding in, um, you know, for, for this fall. And so we play, we play, um, you know, a great schedule to try and get some Centennial team.
[00:19:49] Um, so it’s been good. Good.
[00:19:52] Matt: Well, you know, you already mentioned like your, the number of players, you try to carry on your roster. One of the things I noticed, uh, that’s a little bit different probably than most, uh, division three and even division two programs I’ve talked to is you have a decent size, a assistant coaching staff.
[00:20:09] So what, uh, what is, what is your, your coaching staff look like? What is it? What roles do they play, et cetera.
[00:20:15] Coach: Yeah. And that’s a great question. So I have an assistant coach that’s on campus. It’s a quarter of his load. There’s not like in my office, 24 7 asking me questions. He’s the director of aroma, which is, um, uh, just kind of, um, a sports ministry arm here on campus.
[00:20:34] And then he’s got another quarter responsibility between admissions and getting management. So he, but he is here, he’s accessible, um, to both myself. Uh, and my players, that’s Aaron Farrow. So he’s been here a long time. Um, I hired him away from Mai. He was out in Chicago. Um, I figured if I could get him here for two to three years, that’d be great.
[00:20:58] And he’s been here since I took over the program. So, uh, this will be our 14th year together. Uh, my last, a long time assistant coach, Sam Woodworth. He had been on our staff for about half of his life or. Part of the assignment soccer he’s around 30 play here for four years and was like an assistant for, for 12.
[00:21:21] So they’re around for a long time. Um, but we hired a recent grad. Who’s a local, uh, in addition we have, uh, Benji kennel. Who’s an alum. Um, so local businessman works at soccer shots. Um, and, uh, we’ve got Justin Johnson. Who’s. Uh, goalkeeper coach he’s, uh, also a businessman that’s local, uh, he’s the goalkeeper director for a local club as well, Keystone.
[00:21:51] Um, you know, I think other than Justin, you know, uh, we have, uh, we have a volunteer, um, just, uh, he’s a student in the PT school that we have here. So he’s a grad student, so he he’s volunteer system comes and helps us. Um, but that’s short term. I mean, for the most part, you know, our assistant coaches and also Trevor Goodling was a fifth year, senior last year.
[00:22:15] He’s joining our staff. Those guys are. And you can make practice twice a week and lead a Bible study. That’s, that’s what I need. And so, um, you know, I think we asked them to be relationally invested and do a good job of putting their arms around guys and having relationships, taking them out to eat. Um, like I said, you know, lead a Bible study and if they can make it to practice, that’s brilliant.
[00:22:40] So we’ll, we’ll, um, we’ll put them to work when they come.
[00:22:45] Matt: Um, what, you know, we’re talking here in April. Um, what, what does, what does your off-season programs typically look
[00:22:51] Coach: like? Yeah, this year is a little bit different. Uh, we took our, um, uh, we took a trip over spring break down. So Columbia, uh, NCAA allows you to take a trip every three years overseas.
[00:23:05] And so we were supposed to go to 2020 and it was. Do you remember when the world ended? And we all put on our PJ’s we’ll like that, that Wednesday, that the NBA canceled their season, we were supposed to leave two days later, we were supposed to fly out that Friday and we were told that Wednesday, you guys can’t go.
[00:23:31] Um, so. Fast forward two years, we were able to go this past spring and they allow you, uh, practices prior to that trip. Uh, we played four games down in Midean. Um, we, we never had the ball and we won all four games. It was weird, just, um, not typically how, how it works. We’ll take it. Um, that’s a great experience.
[00:23:58] That’s with a sports ministry organization. You know, has been working in Marine for 30 years. And like, that was a bad place 20 years ago. Uh it’s it’s different now. Uh, so, um, you know, needs the Lord, but man, I’m like, they’re not running around shooting each other, like. Good. Two Escobar’s. I don’t know if you ever seen,
[00:24:24] we show that to our players every before we go. So yeah, that’s, that’s pretty sweet. So in that respect, you know, we’ve, we’ve been playing for a while. Um, this spring, typically NCAA allows five weeks and you know, we’ll, we’ll play a alumni game. We’ll play an inner squad scrimmage. If we can, we’ll play the D one opponent, if possible, we’re scheduled to play Bucknell.
[00:24:51] Uh, tomorrow, uh, Dave Brandt former head coach, uh, is, uh, is, goes up there. So. But man, I’ve got like, I have, like, I got so many guys that have gone under the knife. I think I have, um, 13 field players that were, um, not typical for us. Um, but sometimes just, it just happens that way. So.
[00:25:16] Matt: Yep. Well, I you’ve covered a lot of ground.
[00:25:20] I really appreciate your time. I don’t want to keep you too long. So I’m going to leave you with one last question and maybe this is where you can, uh, you can maybe do a little bit of bragging about the history of the program, but you know, what else would you like people to know about Messiah that we haven’t talked about or anything you want to reiterate kind of the last, last, last chance to talk about.
[00:25:41] Coach: Yeah. I mean, I, I don’t think Messiah is for everyone. Um, but I think for the right kid, you know, there’s, there’s no better place in the country to play soccer and, you know, that’s our vision, you know, we have strong core values, um, that I think we, we do a great job of communicating to incoming freshmen.
[00:26:03] And so, uh, you know, whether that’s a recruiter, incoming freshmen, where they understand those core values, Sophomores. We want them to embrace them where they’re like, Hey, these are important to me because of what I want, juniors and seniors, we asked them to model it. So that’s, that’s our whole, our whole program is based on our upperclassmen modeling our core values in the standards that we have in the program.
[00:26:29] You know, we’re really intentional about culture. We’re really intentional about our environment. Um, Know, I, I talked about, you know, what we really interested in recruiting a mature kid. Um, the opposite is, you know, if someone’s immature, someone’s a really good player, an idiot, we just don’t recruit that kid.
[00:26:50] And so their character, the quality with which to how they handle themselves in our program is tremendous. And so, you know, I think that culture environment, you know, our vision. You know, certainly, um, is to, is we say we want to be the best place to country to play soccer. And so there’s other programs that are division one or costs less, or they win more.
[00:27:14] That’s fine. Uh, but our, our passion, you know, is, is to just be the best place to be. Where if you go back to what I said before, Man. We got a team full of kids that great kids, great teammates, you know, high level buy-in they love the Lord. Um, they have a great work ethic. They’re dedicated academically. Um, they skillful athletic, smart, you know, and, and they’re all pulling in the same direction.
[00:27:45] Like that’s, that’s brilliant. People are like, oh, are you going to go anywhere? Are you looking to change jobs? And this place is brilliant because the guys are dying to be here. There’s no other there’s, there’s no higher calling. Whether you’re a club coach, a principal, a businessman is to get the people part of your organization to have a high level buy in, makes your job better, makes their job better.
[00:28:11] It’s all in alignment. And that’s one of the things that we do really well here and makes us.
[00:28:18] Matt: Oh, absolutely. Well, and, and it shows on the field, I think you guys have had like 11 national championships, uh, at the division three level, which is just amazing. I remember, uh, always even when I was playing division three, 20 odd years ago, you know, looking up and always see a Messiah there, uh, at the top.
[00:28:37] And so congratulations on all your success, best of luck with all your players under the knife and, and, uh, you know, represent T3 well and go, go smack Bucknell around tomorrow. Uh, but we really appreciate your time coach and best of luck next season.
[00:28:51] Coach: Awesome. Thank you.
