Cape Fear Community College Men’s Soccer – Coach Giovanni Vlahos

In today’s episode, I speak with Coach Giovanni from the Cape Fear Men’s Program in North Carolina. We talk about how he focuses on teaching players on the field. Coach also shares about their wide variety of academic programs. Plus, we discuss their old school, hard-work style of play. Learn more about Cape Fear Community 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 Giovanni from Cape Fear Community College in North Carolina. Welcome coach. Thank 

Coach: you so much for having me, Matt. Appreciate 

Matt: it. Yeah, thanks for being here. I, I, I, it’s been a few years since I’ve talked to somebody at Cape Fear, but it was on the women’s side, so nice to get the men’s perspective here and, uh.

All, all I hear is, is nothing but good things about Wilmington and how it’s just growing up there. Is that, is that, is that the case? 

Coach: It is. This is the start of our, or the end of my third year at the program. Um, and my wife and I were, were here back in the late nineties and, uh, Wilmington’s grown, uh, quite a bit since then.

So we’re super happy to be here. 

Matt: Nice. Very nice. Well, uh, I’m guessing we’re talking here kind of early, early, mid-November, your season just wrapped up. Uh, so how, how much time do you give yourself between the end of the season and, uh, when you, when you’re hitting your, your first re recruiting tournament?

Coach: Um, about a week, um, a week. I’m, I’m pretty ready to get back at it. The, [00:01:00] the boys and I just started again with some, some light training. As well just to keep them, um, going as well. ’cause you know, idle hands, but, uh, ’cause Wilmington’s got a lot to offer the beach and everything else, and I just don’t want them to get too far out there that it’s hard to reel ’em back in.

Matt: Uh, that makes sense. Um, well with, on the recruiting side of things, like as a junior college, obviously you guys gotta recruit twice as much as, uh, the four year schools. So when. When is it that you’re hoping to kind of wrap that class of 26? Um, and you know, how much of, how much of it is helping the guys that wanna move on to the, to the next step and, and all those things.

Coach: I mean, in all honesty, you know, getting up there in age now. Um, at the end of the day, it’s all about the boys moving on. Um, you know, you were, you’d hope to have ’em for two years, um, to develop ’em, not just on the soccer side, but also as young men and, and also, um, academically. But at the end of the day, it’s their dream that they’re chasing.

If they’re, [00:02:00] if they want to come and, and just try to do a semester or a year and then move on, uh, that’s our job as, as a, a staff. Um, it’s no longer about our wins and losses and our egos and wanting to win and do all that and keep the best players around, even though you want them. Again, it’s about them.

Uh, we jump. We have a ID camp November 30th already. Um, we got about 63 kids already signed up for it. Uh, so it’s, it’s pretty good. I mean, Wilmington sells itself. It’s a beautiful beach community. Um, so that’s been a blessing for us is that sells itself. The, the, the city does. But we try to get after it all the way through to, um, summertime, uh, just because with the juco, you know, kid might commit to you, but at the end of the day, if a D 2D, mid major D one comes in, those kids are gone.

They’re, they’re jumping because. Our society nowadays is all about D one or bus. They, you know, it’s all what you can post on social media and tell your friends, you’re, even though you’re sitting on the bench for four years, you, you played D one or D two and they didn’t really play. But again, it’s, it’s, it’s a different generation.

So we just have to keep working hard and [00:03:00] try to get as many kids as we can committed and then, um, hope that we pick the right kids that are a man of their word. And when they shake their, your hand, they’re actually coming to you no matter what, uh, comes their way after. 

Matt: Oh yeah. Well, where is it that you like to go to, to scout for kids?

Are you like going to high school games? Is it mostly club? It doesn’t look like you guys are heavy international, which is different than some juco. So where are you, where are you finding kids? 

Coach: It is actually, this is the very, this past season was the very first year of the school actually allowed internationals into the school.

Um, they never had it before, which was crazy on the soccer side of things. Uh, ’cause everybody else is littered with internationals. Um, we’re still looking at internationals, but again. Um, I, I also scout with US soccer, so I’m, I’m a massive, uh, person of wanting to make it as homegrown as I can. Um, I know it’s a, it’s a farfetched, crazy idea, but I truly believe we have the talent here in this country.

You just have to lift up every rock. Um, I know a lot of people don’t go to high school games because, let’s be honest, um, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s high school, but you might find that diamond in a rough that just doesn’t have the [00:04:00] money to pay for club. Um, and you know, I’m not beyond doing the work. I don’t mind going to five games in, in a week or six games in a week if I have to with my staff.

Um, you know, you, you reap what you sell. You know, you, you, you, you do as much work as you can and you hope to find that that rare kid that plays just high school. Um, we go to tournaments, uh, as most, um, big colleges do, just because you get to see more bang for your buck. Um, being a juco, we don’t have a lot of ton of money, so we can’t travel as much outta state.

Um, but North Carolina’s littered with great clubs, um, great talent here. So, you know, we, we got a kid this year from Texas. We’ve got one from Louisiana. Uh, we had a couple kids from Cali last year. Um, so, you know, they, it’s, it’s been a blessing all, all around, but we’re, we’re hoping to get one or two internationals just to dip our toe in that water to see how it works.

Matt: Okay, well, whether it’s kids from an ID camp or internationals or a club player, what, what is it that kind of makes up that hierarchy of things you’re looking for in a player both on and off the field? 

Coach: Um, on the field, you [00:05:00] just have to love the, the work. If you don’t like to run, um, and you don’t like to, to get stuck in, you don’t want to come here.

Uh, we’re extremely in your face types team where we just love hard workers. Um. Our staff hates excuses. We’re more so that, you know, if you can’t get through a solution, we have to figure out a way to get through it. We don’t need, um, people to make excuses up, um, day and night. It’s just that’s the kind of player we’re looking for.

We’re looking for technical players. We love to play on the ground. Um, you know, and, and that’s all we’re looking for from a player. The hard work, at the end of the day, it, you know, the, the soccer fields are our classroom. You know, we as coaches have to still coach. We have to teach them and. Um, I enjoy doing that.

Uh, I love being on the field. I love teaching. I love when a, the light bulb goes off and a kid and you can see that light bulb go off when he’s looking at you. Um, so that’s what we’re looking for on the field. Off the field is just a, a, a good kid who was raised right. Um, like we tell all the kids when they come to our ID camps, so they come for a tour.

You might be a great player, [00:06:00] but you’re just not a right fit for us. Um, we want kids that, um, you know, we’re more about a family environment. We don’t need kids, um, that come in and constantly out, constantly doing things. Um, you know, when they see their parents on the sidelines, how do they act at games?

You know, do they go through their mom and dad and say hello? Do they give ’em a hug? Those are all big things for us. As a kid that just doesn’t care if they’re, you know, when they have that support from family there, we think that’s big. Yeah. ’cause we, we wanna have that kid for two years and we want their family to be with us for two years.

Matt: Okay. Well, we talked a minute ago about, uh, moving kids on kind of, what has been your success, the team success in those kids moving on to places that they were, they were trying to get to? 

Coach: Yeah, we, we’ve had some really good success. We just had one kid go to A-C-C-S-M-U. Um, and played and he, he played his first game versus Cal, the Cal Bear.

So we were really happy about that. Great kid. Um, he deserves all that. Uh, the accolades for that. Uh, we had one last year that went to Barry University. I mean, sorry, Lynn University. I apologize. Who won the national Title? D two. [00:07:00] Um, so we moved in, in two years. We’ve moved six kids to D two and one to D one.

Um, you know, and, and being a, a trade school, we have other kids that we could have moved on. But you know, their goal in life was to, you know, do HVAC or to go into, uh, you know, landscaping or, or become a firefighter. And we have all those programs here at Cape Fear. So, um, even though you could have moved them on, they, their, their life goal was to go the different route and just use soccer, um, basically as a hobby for two years.

And, you know, it was a great thing for us ’cause we get to see them, um, you know, flourish and become young men and get out in their, in the working world. 

Matt: Yeah, absolutely. Well let, let’s talk a little bit more, uh, about the school. Um, and I learned a little bit more just recently on my own about, uh, the, the trade offerings you guys have.

’cause I’ve got a, a girl on our team that’s, that’s looking to, to go than I suggested to she reach out to you guys just ’cause I think the, the fits there. So you’ve been there a few for a few years now. What are some of the awesome things about the school that you’ve found? Some things [00:08:00] maybe we wouldn’t, we wouldn’t even know by going through the website.

Coach: I mean, I just, I love that, you know, you can, you can go and you take the general education classes that most kids do to transfer to a four year school, but then there’s little things that you might have wanted to dabble as as a kid. You know, that we’ve got, um, a good marine program where one of my kids is always on the boat or out sailing and, and fishing and doing things, uh, trying to learn about the marine life.

Um, he just loves being on the water. We have a barber school. We’ve got. The, the law enforcements where they’re, they’re training MMA style as well. So it’s all those little things where it’s like, uh, automotive, you know, hey, uh, I don’t have any desire to become a mechanic, but, uh, I’ve gotta do an elective.

Let me do this. I learn how to change the oil in my car. I can learn little things and all things that every, you know, person in the world should really know how to do is change a flat tire, or, you know, do work little things like that. I think it just makes a well-rounded person. You get to dabble in things and you know, we have culinary arts.

Uh, one of my players this year wasn’t [00:09:00] gonna do that field. He took a class in it. And, uh, now he loves and that’s the, the pathway he wants to go in. And he never would’ve done that if he would’ve gone to a big school that doesn’t even offer it. So it’s little things that you might have in the back of your mind that you’re scared to take, like drama with theater, you know, Wilmington’s a massive movie community.

Um, you know, we put plays on and everything on every single week here, and a lot of the kids dabble in that, and all of a sudden they have a spark to, to go into the arts and maybe go up and try Broadway or try something. You know, they’re young. They might as well try it. 

Matt: Yeah, absolutely. That sounds amazing.

Awesome. Well, you know, for especially a, a high school student coming into college, even at the junior college level, balancing the demands of being an athlete and and a student can be difficult. Kind of what, what support systems does the school offer to really help the students be successful both on the field and off.

Coach: Um, you know, us as, as a staff, we, we try to give them a little bits of nuggets of, of our personal life. You know, little things like, you know, nowadays they don’t have the old school, [00:10:00] um, alarm clocks. They yell to use their phones in and we’re like, Hey, if you have an 8:00 AM put that phone all the way across the room so that when the alarm goes off, you actually get up to turn it off ’cause you’re up and going.

You know, that’s for us, little things that we help them. On the general side of things, we don’t have dormitories or cafeteria. So a lot of it’s hard is, you know, trying to teach them how to balance their money, uh, when they go shopping, using a Sam’s or a, you know, Costco to buy in bulk and, and, and, you know, little things like that.

That’s what we do as a staff, um, athletic department. We’ve got great people there that help ’em with their classes. Um, academic advising, we have a learning center that tutors the kids, that’s all included. Um, they can go there, um, you know, five days a week, um, which is great. Our, our students use it, you know, we have study hall, we have.

Tons of facilities and spaces and computers and everything that the kids are not, without having a computer and things. And now it’s just a matter of, um, having them understand how to budget their time. Um, you know, we, we, we do that quite a bit where. We explain to them how much time they [00:11:00] spend and we ask ’em, how much time do you spend on, on video games?

You know, just gimme a, a day in your video game. And they start giving it to us, and then we composite and put it together in a weekly thing for them in a monthly thing for them, and then we start showing ’em where they could actually benefit more if they cut that screen time down just a little bit and use it in this avenue.

So it’s, it’s mostly just us being old, um, and helping them out in that sense, uh, from life experiences. 

Matt: Well, hey, there’s, there’s nothing wrong with being old. Um, been up there, man. Yeah, tell me about it. Um. So I, I mean, you just wrapped up, but let’s rewind maybe a couple weeks till you’re still in the heart of that season.

Kind of walk me through a typical week in the life, right? When classes, practices, games, meals, all that kind of stuff. 

Coach: So we, um, we did where our, our, our players have to be in person. I know a lot of the, um, the student athletes, uh, go online as well. Uh, we found last year that our GPA just wasn’t where we wanted it to be.

Uh, in the, in the mid [00:12:00] threes. So we, we made it a, a, uh, we talked with our athletic director and athletic department and, and made it, all of our players have to go in person. Uh, we just think that’s, it’s getting them up, getting ’em going. So they’ll go to a class, they start at 8:00 AM usually on a Monday.

Um, after that, then they have lunch. We’ll, we might do video, um, if we have a, a game coming up versus an opponent that we can actually get film on. Um, we’ll do some video work and then, um, we basically, you know, the kids have off till about the women’s team trains. Um, we only have one field, so we have to wait for them to finish.

So we usually get on at about 4 15, 4 30 and go till about 6 30, 6 45 every night. Um, and then, um, after that, the very next morning, if they don’t have a class, we have ice baths for them. Um, and um, that’s pretty much the day, you know, it’s hard not having dormitories and um, uh, cafeteria facilities because we can’t monitor that side of it.

Um, but we try to do things, especially in the off season when they don’t have [00:13:00] classes. We try to do more, um, team bonding, team building things. Um, during the season’s kind of hard because a lot of them do have classes. Um, and then we have to, to balance their study hall time with their, um, their study time at home.

Matt: Okay. Well, let’s talk a little bit more a about the team. Um, is there a roster size that you’re trying to hit each year that’s kind of ideal for you guys? 

Coach: We did 30 this year, which was kind of big. Um, but then by the beginning of, of, um, preseason training, the fitness part, uh, it chopped down to about 27, 26, uh, just because if they don’t come in fit, we, we, we have nothing we can do with them.

You know, we, we give ’em all the tools during the summer of what to use and how to train. Um, and then again, it, it goes in the hands of the young man. Um, he’s got actually trained. Um, you can tell which ones come in fit and which ones, uh, wait till the last week to think that they can hit those fitness levels.

Um, but we, we try to go between 25 and 30, um, only because again, we, we can’t guarantee that all [00:14:00] 25 of those kids are gonna show up come August 1st. Uh, that’s the, that’s the hard part for us. If we could, we’d love to have it between 22 and 25 players, honestly. 

Matt: Okay. Now what about. The other side of the roster, the staff.

Who else do you have there helping you out? What roles does everybody play there? 

Coach: Um, I’ve got Coach Steve. Uh, Steve’s been with us, uh, for the all three years. Um, as has, uh, coach Connor, coach Steve works primarily with the goalkeepers as well. Um, you know, the hard part is these guys are volunteers. Um, what they do for the program, uh, I couldn’t do it without them.

Um, you know, coach Conner works primarily with our strikers as well. Um, but he has a, a a day job. You know, he comes whenever he can coach. Steve works on campus as well, which is great. He does game day management for all the athletic, uh, sports. So it’s good ’cause he works there and in the admissions department.

So he’s always on campus. I’m always on campus as well, which we think is, is key for the boys so that they can always come and talk to us. Um. We spend hours just doing tactics in inside the, inside the, [00:15:00] the office, um, in between classes for these kids. But, um, I can’t do it without those guys. 

Matt: Okay. Well, what about you?

Talk to us about your coaching style and the style of play you look to play there. 

Coach: Um, I love just, um, extreme if you compare rock and roll versus opera. I love the old school rock and roll. Just get after people. I just, I just, I love warhorses. Um, you know, growing up you, you never wanted to do all that kind of work as a, as a player.

Um, but as you get older, you see the benefits from it. I love, uh, players that just like to get stuck in the tackles, like to, uh, run, like, to make the overlapping runs, like to, uh, challenge defenders, love to defend, love to attack. Um, they just love every part of the game. I just, I, I, I really, truly enjoy, um, just getting after people.

Matt: Okay. Well, what about your off season, uh, the non-traditional season? What does that look like for you guys? Uh, during, during the spring? 

Coach: It’s a lot more relaxed for us just because we try to give, have the kids take a little bit, uh, more [00:16:00] credit hours in the spring just because it’s, it is a lot more relaxed.

And, um, sometimes those, uh, classes are offered more in the, uh, late afternoon. So they might miss a training on a Tuesday, Thursday, but they’re there three of the five days. Um, and we’re completely o okay with that. We don’t, um, you know, kids get jobs usually in the spring as well, um, just to make extra money.

And again, we’re okay with that. Um, as long as they just keep us posted so that when we’re doing training sessions, uh, we know what numbers we have. But we’re super relaxed in the spring about, about that part because we understand that unfortunately they have to make money. Uh, they have to live in apartments, they have to buy their own food.

Um, and again, at the end of the day, they’re different education. So if they need a class, they have to. Just keep up with that side of things. Um, and then we just try to schedule games. Um, you know, in the preseason during the fall and also the spring. We try to always play D one or D two, possibly some D three schools, um, just because our job is to get these boys seen by other colleges and, and moved on.

Matt: Okay. [00:17:00] Well, coach, you’ve given us a bunch of information. I really appreciate it. Can a leave you with one last question, and that is, if you had one piece of advice for, you know, any high school boy going through this process right now, what would that be? 

Coach: Um, just don’t, uh, don’t push aside Juco. Um, especially now that’s changed where you’re not losing eligibility.

Um. I know that the big, you know, uh, glitz is the D one, but would you rather sit on the bench at D one and, and never play, um, as opposed to actually playing, like we, we played, uh, top 15 D one teams. We played two of ’em this off season. Um, you know, we played the, the big schools. It’s just we’re a junior college.

Um, so, you know, I I, if you’re not, if you’re not ready yet, just jump the, the junior college route. Play a year, see if you like it. Play two years and then you’re, you’re only gonna get better. Um, and you’ll get used to the speed. ’cause the speed is the biggest thing for high school kids. They don’t get, the speed of the, of the game is so different between high school and club and, and college.

’cause sometimes you’re playing, especially in Juco, some grown men that are in their mid twenties that might’ve [00:18:00] gone military for four years and all of a sudden they’re coming back to school and they’re, you know, 24, 20 5-year-old grown men playing in a 17, 18-year-old boys. The speed and the physical side is, is massive.

So just take a look. Um, don’t go with all the glitz and the glamor. Sometimes it’s all smoke and mirrors, but just take a look and you’ll feel in your heart if it’s the right thing to do. Yeah, for sure. 

Matt: Well, coach, really appreciate the time. Wish you the best of luck on the recruiting trail and, uh, if you get down to any, any events down here in Bradenton, gimme a shout.

All right. 

Coach: Thank you so much. Have a have a great, uh, holiday with you and your family. 

Matt: Thanks. You too. Take care. Take care. Bye-bye. 

Bye.