Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Men’s Soccer – Coach Adam Clinton
In today’s episode, I speak with Coach Clinton from the RPI Men’s Program in New York. We talk about the events they go to and their recruiting timeline. Coach also shares about how they are a school that focuses on return on investment. Plus, we discuss their roster and staff size. Learn more about Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Men’s Soccer.
Matt: [00:00:00] Hi everybody. Welcome to Discover College Soccer. Today I am lucky enough to be joined by Coach Clinton of the Men’s soccer program at RPI. Welcome coach.
Coach: Thanks. Thanks for having me.
Matt: Yeah, thanks for being here. I mean, you guys are well also, I, I, you know, I, I. Spent a lot of time on the East coast, you know, not northeast as, as far as you are, but, uh, but in the, in the D three world and, and in the academic world, I’m sure folks have heard of RPI, uh, yeah.
Ren Rensselaer Polytechnic, right? Is that where Yes. Reser
Coach: Polytechnic Institute. You, uh, if you spend any time in math science, or if you had. Family member in engineering. They know somebody from here.
Matt: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Just a great academic institution. Well, uh, I’m happy to, to be talking here today.
It’s, uh, well it’s, it’s the week, it’s signing week, I guess, if you want to call it. So, uh, re recruits are, are coming in, uh, excited to do their signing. So your season just wrapped up. Where, where are you guys as a, as a. [00:01:00] D three men’s soccer program. Where are you in terms of your class of 26? Like how much of it is wrapped up, or how much and how much of are you looking at 20 sevens at this point?
Coach: So we’re still looking at 20 sixes. Uh, we’re not wrapped up. We had an anomaly last year. And had a very large class, so it kind of made us wait a little bit longer to see where this class pans out. So we would know in terms of numbers. So we’ll spend most of November, December, and even early part of January, uh, on the 26th, the seniors, our last opportunity to see them.
And then starting probably, you know, end of January, beginning of February, we started on the 27th.
Matt: Okay. Well. When it comes to, to spending your time on, on those kids, where, where are you going to see players? What are your kind of must hit spots?
Coach: So we’ve become big fans of the all the ECNL events. Uh, they run a really good event.
The talent level is, [00:02:00] is, uh, at a good quality for us. Um, we’ll do some MLS next, uh, things, and then we’ll do just some. I dunno what you call it, I guess premier tournaments, you know, uh, we’ll go to Bethesda, PDA, um, uh, Potomac in the spring, right? So we, I have an assistant coach, so we’ll, we’ll split our time at different events.
Um, we’ll do the NAL events, uh, MLS next that are, you know, that we can find. We, you know, we. We as a, a university recruit nationally, so we actually get a bounce off of that. But, you know, region one is still our home. You know, new England, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, down down to about Virginia. Uh, that’s still our base.
Um, but we do pretty well. We we’re trying to get more inroads into the middle of the country, but we do very well around the edges. Um, you know, we get out west in, in the Seattle area and California, any of the tech areas we’re always, uh, very popular. And then also down in Texas where the, [00:03:00] the oil companies are, we get a lot of kids from that area that look at us, right?
So, uh, and again, Florida kids, because there’s not a lot of opportunities for them in the state. Yeah,
Matt: absolutely. Well, in terms of other recruiting vehicles, do you guys do ID camps? Do you or your staff work? External ID camps. Are they part of your process?
Coach: Yeah, so we run, we try to run about four prospect days a year.
So we’ll do one, we just did one in the fall. We’ll do, we usually do one in January, one in the spring and one in the summer. Um, and, uh, they’ve been pretty successful. W we did have to pause during COVID, so we’ve had, you know, we now we’re building them back up. Um, but, uh, and it seems like you, you would think that it just ended yesterday or yesterday to a degree, but it was five years ago.
Um, but still there was a, there’s just a residual hangover effect of that, that we’ve managed to now get passed. And, um, you know, uh, uh, so we’ve moved [00:04:00] on from that. So, uh, yeah, so we’ll do prospect days. We’ve had, it depends who my assistant is. They, sometimes we’ll do summer camps. We’ll go out and work. We don’t run a camp.
It is something we’re looking into. We’re looking to start one, so we’d like to try and start one. Actually, this coming summer is our, we’re gonna give it a shot.
Matt: Okay. Awesome. Well, whether it’s ID camp or at a showcase event or any of that kind of stuff, what, what makes up the hierarchy of things that you’re looking for in a player, both on and off the field?
Coach: Yeah, so we have a, I guess you’d call it a checklist, right? So we look for technical ability. We look for tactical awareness, then the measurables, right? How big an athlete, how fast, how strong, all the stuff they can do athletically. And then the fourth piece is a little bit more difficult. We call it the psychological side.
Do they fit in with our guys? And that all happens sort of as the process goes. We get you here for a visit, we do an overnight, you get to meet the guys that are on the team and then, you know, so now you see do I fit in? Are these the kind of guys I want to be around? [00:05:00] Um, it’s just as important for the prospect to interview us as it is for us to interview them, because at the end of the day.
Um, one of the things that I believe in is you have to choose a school that you’re gonna, like whether athletics works out or not, because anything can take athletics away from you. You know, so we try to encourage our families to, you know, make sure this is a choice. You, you really like where you’re coming, because let’s just say the worst case scenario happens.
You don’t want to have to transfer all the time. You want to be settled, but mostly, you know, from a soccer standpoint, right? Uh, uh, technical ability, tactical awareness, and then the measurables, and then how you fit in with the rest of the group.
Matt: Okay?
Coach: And obviously for our institution, any, the academic piece is already, uh, like a, we know what our line is.
Matt: Yeah.
Coach: Yeah,
Matt: for sure. Okay, well, let’s learn a little bit more a about the school. Uh, again, if you’re, if you’re in an en engineering role, you’re, yeah. You’ve heard of RPI, but I’m sure there’s some folks who haven’t. You’ve been there for a [00:06:00] number of years. So what is it about RPI that stands out to you?
What are some awesome things maybe we wouldn’t even know by going through the website?
Coach: Well, a couple things that, uh, I, you know, I grew up pretty close to here actually, and, and I didn’t even know that the campus itself was as attractive as it was until I actually got the job. And came on campus. I had only seen the outside the fringe pieces.
Um, but one of the things is we’re a university, so it’s not just engineering. We have a tremendous business school, but most people don’t know about it because they think we’re just an engineering school. So the Laley Business School is a very good business school. It’s maybe a little bit more analytical than most business schools, but the graduates do great when they get out.
Our computer science, uh, we have a quantum computer on campus now that we’re the only school, one of the only schools in the country that have it. Um, so I don’t, I’m a soccer guy, so I don’t understand all of how it works, but my understanding is it can compute at a speed that is just insane. So from a research standpoint, it [00:07:00] gives us a leg up.
Um, that’s the dumbed down version of what it does. I know it takes up an entire. Uh, room in our, um, in our computer center and it, they had to fortify the floor underneath. It’s a massive piece of equipment. Um, and we, we, our computer science majors are now top, uh, top, um, you know, major as well. So what we really sell here is more the return on your investment.
Than anything else. Colleges these days, there’s no hiding from it. They’re expensive. Um, you know, Mo our discount rate is pretty good, but it’s still, you know, the, the price and the cost are two different things. So our price looks really big, but no one, very few people are actually paying the full, full freight, you know?
But it’s not to say that. 40, $50,000 isn’t a lot of money, right, but you get that money back. Or you can go on our website with an admissions office and you can [00:08:00] see what our graduates are making first year out, and most of them are up in eighties and $90,000 a year no matter what their major is. So your return on investment is really, you know, ultimately what we sell, because you’re gonna play college soccer for four years, you’re gonna work for a lot longer than that.
So, you know, that’s the reason. I’d love to think they come here because of me. Um, I’m just a piece of the puzzle. The, the, the real reason people come here is the degree.
Matt: Yeah, no, that’s a, it’s, it’s impressive and a, and a great way to look at it, but I, I mean, obviously the, the academics there are top notch, so.
For a soccer player, sometimes that’s the hardest thing. Right. I’m now playing college athletics and, and hitting this academic rigor maybe I haven’t hit before, so. Right. What kind of support systems are there on campus to help students be successful both on and off the field?
Coach: Right, that great question.
So, a couple things before I give that answer. One, our athletic department has a higher GPA than the general student body, um, which is over a [00:09:00] 3.0 for 600 athletes. We know it’s only 10% of the school. But it’s still pretty impressive with all the stuff that they have to do for my team. Um, we make freshmen, um, uh, have mandatory study halls.
It’s really just a way to get them to learn how to time manage. Um, the other reason is we have a lot of kids that are carrying. Three O’s are higher. They don’t need me to tell them when and where to study. They’re clearly taking care of their business. So we will deal with any academic issues on an individual basis.
We just ask our freshmen to get in the habit of how to do it. So we help them their first year. We also have an academic advisor that is right here in our athletic building that’s just for athletes. So whenever there’s issues, if they need to find tutors, um, Michelle will help them find that she runs the study halls.
So all of that is, uh, you know, we have hands on right here. We have an early warning system that goes out to the student, the coach, the academic advisor, and then some [00:10:00] other people that, but it’s really about the, the three of us that really matter. Um, so if they’re not going to class. Or doing poorly on tests and quizzes, or not turning in assignments.
Um, they’ll get an email. I’ll get an email, we’ll have a conversation about it. Usually I advise them to go talk to their professor and, and then come back and report to me what, you know, what he said. It’s usually the first quiz, first test of the year, and then it usually sorts itself out after that. So it’s really just learning what to study, what not to study, kind of stuff.
So that’s the, that’s two of the legs. The third leg is the school encourages group study. They used to have a phrase, they used to use the phrase clustered learning, but really what that meant was they want kids to study together so the kids are gonna meet kids. In their class or in their dorm and all that stuff.
But the, my experience is the guys on my team, the locker room is their study groups, right? They’re, they’re getting together with guys with similar majors and they’re working together to help each other. I always tell this story, I had a, [00:11:00] a kid struggling, uh, with chemistry. I had a senior who was an academic all American.
In chemical engineering major, I put the two of ’em together. The kid’s struggling, got a B. We didn’t even have to go outside the locker room, we did it. But if we do, there’s plenty of places where we can get help. Those are the three major legs. The fourth leg is more my opinion than a fact, and that is I just think athletes do better because they’re resilient.
Every athlete, no matter the sport, has suffered a heartbreaking loss or an injury or been benched, and either they’re gonna fight back. They’re gonna fade away. Yeah. So the ones that make it to college are the ones that fight back. So I think, you know, they, they, they do what we do. We have a bad loss. We look at the film, we try to fix the things that don’t go right.
They’re doing the same thing. They don’t do well on a test or a quiz. They’re looking how they went about it, and they’re fixing things. Those are the four major leg, uh, legs that hold you up. Uh, here at RPI.
Matt: That’s great. Great stuff. Well, [00:12:00] let’s rewind it maybe a month ago. You’re in the heart of that conference season.
Walk me through what does a typical week look like for a player in terms of winner’s practice, the game, cadence, classes, meals, all that stuff.
Coach: Okay, so it’s six days a week. It’s basically Monday through Saturday. Here at RPI, we practice either four 30 to six 30 or six 30 to eight 30, uh, based on facilities and, and our game schedule, it’s always after class, so you’re not missing any classes for practice.
Occasionally you’ll miss a class for a road trip or something like that, but we do our best, even if we play midweek, usually we play under the lights, so you’re only missing maybe your last class of the day kind of thing. Um, so we train, you know, two hours a week or two hours a day, uh, on non-game days.
And then, um, you have Sunday off where you don’t have soccer or school a chance for yourself to just decompress and get ready to start the week again. So that’s generally how the week goes. We do do some [00:13:00] in-season weight training, and then we do some out outside of season weight training, which is more of a voluntary thing as a group, because at Division three rules, we cannot make it mandatory.
Matt: Okay. Awesome. Well, let’s, uh, let’s learn a little bit more kind of about the, the team and, and, and that kind of thing. Um, in terms of your roster, is there a roster size that you find is ideal that you try to kind of be at each year?
Coach: Yeah, so we try to stay right around 30. We have 30 lockers in our locker room, so that’s the number.
We’re never exactly at 30. We’re probably usually somewhere between 30 and 33. I don’t like, I’ll never go above 35. Usually the number gets a little bigger depending on how many goalkeepers we keep. So we’re, you know, we’ll last this year we had, uh, 27 field players and, um, five goalkeepers. Okay. So, um.
That’s just the makeup that was this year. It’ll be [00:14:00] different next year. Um, but we’re right around that number 30, between 33 and 30 every year there thereabouts. Um, and, uh, you know, we, we. Well, that’s the roster size. I don’t know what it was, the other question.
Matt: That was the question. You got it. That was the question.
Yeah. Well, I mean, well, but I guess besides the player part of the roster, there’s the, the staff side of the roster. So besides yourself, who else helps out with the team? What other coaches or, or support staff on there? Right. And what role does everybody play there?
Coach: So we have a full-time assistant. Steve Zurich is our assistant.
Um, and he’s with us, uh, you know, he’s here all the time. I have a part-time assistant. Who comes in basically during the season and he’s at training and games. We have, um, uh, we have seven trainers in our training room, so we have a trainer. She’s been with me. I, I, to be honest to you, I, I forgot how many years she’s been with us.
Um. And, uh, so she travels to all our away games and she’s with us on our home games and she’s at practices. Um, so we’re well covered [00:15:00] in that, uh, oppor, uh, in that, uh, space as well. And I have a volunteer assistant who actually, uh, works on campus, but comes and works with us. So we have four coaches, one had three assistants and a trainer that’s with us at all times.
Matt: Okay. Awesome. Well, what about you? Talk to us about your kind of, your coaching style, style of play that you look to play there. Yeah,
Coach: so I’ve been here for, I believe, 23 years. Uh, it’s hard to imagine. Um, I am. I consider myself a possession based kind of coach. We want to keep the ball. Um, we’re not just gonna thump it and chase it, play down cha, you know, we’re, it’s, we play soccer in the Northeast, so at times weather and conditions change a little bit of how you play.
But we train to be a team that can keep the ball. Um, that’s what we want to be. We wanna play as attractive a brand as possible so that when. Good kids are watching us, they’re gonna say, oh, I’d like to play for them. My experience as a former player and now as a, as a coach is I think guys who can play that really like to play, they want to go [00:16:00] somewhere where the team plays.
They don’t want to just chase the ball. And, you know, as a former midfielder, when you’re in the middle and the ball is always going over your head, it can be frustrating. So we’re trying not to be those guys. Um, we’ve had a lot of success here. We’ve had a little bit of a, a downturn these last two years.
We’re just young and we’re trying to come outta some stuff. Um, we just did not. Come out of the COVID issues area. Era as well as we had hoped. Uh, we thought we, maybe one year we would have a little bit more fifth year guys, and then that didn’t happen. And, and then we had some pretty big restrictions here on what we were allowed to do recruiting wise during the 2021 time of year.
And so this year, for example, we had two seniors on our roster, so. That was strictly because we were only allowed to recruit by video for like two years. Um, so we we’re changing all that though. We’re back on track and we’re, we’re, you know, we like our group. [00:17:00] Um, we have some, we have some pieces we need to fill.
Um, but, uh, but we feel like we’re getting closer.
Matt: Okay. Well, obviously the focus is on the fall, but the, the off season, the spring is just as important. So talk to me about what you guys do in that. Second season?
Coach: Correct. So, um, we’re allowed by the NCA rules to go 24 times. Um, that started two years ago. Uh, so we’ve tried a couple of different formulas this year.
We’re, we’re just trying to figure out what’s best. Do we go twice a week for 12 weeks? Do we go twice a week for a couple weeks, then ramp up to three times a week? So we haven’t exactly set that yet. The past two years we’ve gone. Once a week in February and then ramped up as we build through the, the spring and go to two times, and then three or four times a week as we build into our competition days.
Um, so this year though, we may try it a little differently and go twice a week in the beginning, uh, [00:18:00] and then go into three times a week as we go out. So it’s all a matter of. What we we’re gonna look at the calendar, see what work, what works best for us. But we’ll get together the maximum amount of times that the NCA allows us, which is 24.
Two of those dates are play days. One is our against our alumni. It doesn’t count as a game, it’s a loophole. And then the other one it is we’ll play our outside competition day. And um, so we’ll train 22 times. And then play those two days. Um, we are, I think as a group of division three coaches, we’re hoping to change a rule.
We’re allowed to play 180 minutes in the spring, but unfortunately we can only do it on one day. So that’s two full games on one day, which makes no sense and is not even healthy for the kids. Right. So can we just split ’em. Two weekends and play two full matches. That that’s, that’s what we want. But yeah.
We’ll, you know, I don’t make the rules. I just have to follow [00:19:00] them.
Matt: Yeah. I, I remember when I was coaching, we to get around whatever we needed to do to get everybody minutes. We, we had a whole day of seven, we did seven V sevens just to, you know, ’cause it was, or 99 something just to get more people playing, but.
Fit it within the rule. I mean, that was 28. Yeah, you get 180 minutes. Last
Coach: year we played. Three 50 minute games. Right, right. So, and you’re trying to get everybody out and it was, you know, it was great. But sometimes with your group you, you’d rather play like a real game. ’cause they might be at that stage where they need it, you know?
So it can be a little challenging at times.
Matt: For sure, for sure. Well, coach, I really appreciate the time. I’m gonna ask you one last question, and that is, if you, if you had one piece of advice for, for anybody going through this recruiting process right now, what would that be?
Coach: Oh, that’s, that’s actually an easy one.
Do your research wa watch the team play. Get to interview the coach and talk to the players because they will tell you the [00:20:00] school part, you’ll figure that piece out. But you want to talk to the players, you want to wa you know, and get to know the coach and watch the teams you’re interested in play.
’cause their style is gonna be there on and you can usually find stuff or coaches can send you stuff if they want it. So, um, but that, you know, they have, I would say to every prospect, do your research and really. Find a school that you really like, and if athletics works out and nothing takes it away from you, it’s gonna be fantastic.
But make sure that if the worst case scenario happens, you still love the college. I think that’s ultimately, it’s the biggest decision they’re gonna make to this point in their life. So doing their research is vitally.
Matt: Yeah. Couldn’t agree more. Well, coach, really appreciate it. Wish you the best of luck as you, as you wrap up that class at 26.
And if you get to any of events down here in Bradenton, gimme a shout. All right?
Coach: Uh, yeah, definitely. I’m gonna be at the uh, ECNL in January.
Matt: Ah, fantastic. It’s right down the street, so That’s right. Alright. Take care. Hey, thank you, Matt.
Coach: Good luck. I wish [00:21:00] you all the best.
Matt: Thank you. All right.
