Herkimer College Women’s Soccer – Coach Damon Neish
On today’s episode, I speak with Coach Damon from the Herkimer Women’s Program in New York. We talk about their bargain price of attendance. He describes the safe and secure, picturesque campus. Lastly, we discuss how he likes to build confidence in his players. Learn more about Herkimer College Women’s Soccer.
Matt: [00:00:00] Hi everybody. Welcome to discover college soccer today. I’m lucky enough to be joined by coach Damon Neish from Herkimer College up in New York. Welcome coach.
Coach: Yeah. Thanks for having me.
Yeah. Thanks for being here. You guys are a two year program up kind of between Albany and Syracuse, a lovely part of, of New York up there.
Probably a lot cooler than, uh, we are down here in Florida right now.
Coach: Yeah, it’s nice up here just now, we get some, uh, the winter’s getting incredibly cold, the summer’s getting pretty nice, um, but we don’t have to worry about passing out on the turf or anything like that with the heat, so it’s nice, a nice place to be.
Yeah,
Matt: I bet, I bet. Well, um, Let’s talk a little bit about recruiting, you know, we’re, we’re talking here end of July, uh, and I know, you know, the, the, the two year colleges have have a little bit of a different calendar, uh, you know, especially compared to some of the other schools, the division one and whatnot.
But so I guess, uh, the right question for me to ask right now is, is your class of 23 done? Are you still looking to add a couple more before the season starts? Yeah.
Coach: No, we, we think we’re pretty much done. So if we, um, if we were to, to start tomorrow, we’d be incredibly happy with our, our class, with it, you know, being at a junior college, there’s, um, there’s always room, um, for people coming in.
We, we always have room, uh, to accommodate. I try not to pack the squad out too much. So we, we are sitting at, uh, 23 players right now, [00:01:30] um, which is actually, this is gonna be my third year. This is the most players I’ve I’ve ever had. Um, but we, you know, we don’t. want to get close to 30. We don’t want 26, 27, 28 players.
We’re quite happy to have, you know, 20 to 24 players, you know, with injuries and, um, and all the rest of it players come here to play. Um, so we’re not, we’re not recruiting people for three, four years down the, down the line or development projects. We want girls that are maybe, um, not being really happy with their offers.
from four year schools, maybe not being promised to play in time, maybe, you know, academics aren’t quite there and, and I’ve got something to prove. Um, we want girls that are wanting to come in and from day one stamp their authority on our programming and really be, um, pushing to, to get to the next level.
Matt: That’s fantastic.
Well, and You know, I, I recruited from a few junior colleges back in my day, but I know that it can be challenging filling that roster every senior and you’re constantly reloading, you’re recruiting really twice as much as, as, as a four year school. So where are the places? You like to go whether, you know, tournament wise, or I mean, are you, do you look at a lot of high school soccer kind of where, where’s your fertile recruiting ground that you’d like to use?
Coach: Yeah, so we’re really lucky here up in the northeast that there’s a really vibrant club soccer program. Um, around between New York, [00:03:00] New Jersey, Vermont, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, there’s, there’s a really vibrant, um, soccer community. Um, so where we are just now, we’re right in the middle of, of Syracuse and Albany, we’re, we’re really blessed around here because we’ve got some fantastic soccer clubs, um, In this area, you know, in this area that compete within the ECNL, the Girls Academy or within DPL, a bunch of different local leagues as well.
So there’s a ton that we have locally. that keeps me interested. I try and get out during the fall season to as many high school games as I can. Um, you know, we’ve got so many, um, like I said, club teams, club competitions around. We just got back. I actually just got back from Ohio. I was there for the DPL national championships.
Um, I was in, uh, Boston for the surf, uh, college showcase. Uh, one or two ago, um, Pennsylvania just had the Hershey Tournament, you know, so, so within a five, six hour drive down here, the Girls Academy, um, National Championships and all that. We’ve got so much within the Northeast, um, that, you know, I try and get around.
I work with club teams as well, a club team as well, uh, we call the CM Soccer Club. So, you know, I managed to get to these as a coach and as a recruiter as well. But yeah, the Northeast has got So much good soccer going on that we’re really are [00:04:30] lucky to be able to, you know, one week I can be out in Boston the next week down in Long Island the next weekend in Hershey, Pennsylvania, and it’s all, you know, relatively close.
Matt: Well, one of the questions folks always ask me, though, is, you know, how. How much is it me, you know, doing some outbound communication versus, you know, Oh, I always hear that the good players are going to get found kind of thing. So when you’re at an event, let’s say you’re in a tournament, Hershey or wherever, how much of it is.
You going to see players that you have had contact with versus you’re sitting down to a game because it’s a Syracuse team versus a Harrisburg team and, and those are kind of both in your area. And you think maybe I might have some some luck here.
Coach: Yeah, so a lot of it is me looking, um, um, on the websites to see the older age groups kind of, um, Who’s playing who and what, um, what teams are from, um, this sort of area because mostly we get, um, we get players from around about three, four hours away for, you know, four hours away is kind of the max of where we get.
We’ve got a couple of girls coming from abroad and a girl coming from, um, Georgia this, this year and, um. You know, that’s just with having good contacts in some places, but when we’re going to the tournaments and things like that, really, it’s sometimes players will reach out, [00:06:00] sometimes we’ll get emails from players.
Hi, I’m going to be at surf tournament this weekend, and they’ll send their schedule and stuff like that, and we’ll have a look at it, um. On the whole, so it’s more for me personally, I tend to reach out to the coaches of these teams. Um, and I’ll, I’ll send an email first saying, Hey, I’m going to be there. I got an email from one of your players.
Um, you know, we’d love to touch base where you’re at the tournament or afterwards, if you’re too busy, please, you know, here’s my cell number. Please let me know if you’re, if you’re available. And a lot of the times the coach will get back to me and just saying, Hey, yeah, we’d love to chat to you. I can kind of build, um, a better relationship with the coach.
The coach has got a better relationship with 18 to 20 of their players. So, you know, a lot of the emails we get will be mass sent out. Someone sending, um, an email to every coach that’s going to be at an event. Um. We, you know, there are people that I know that we know that are reaching out to us because they have an interest in here, but a lot of people are just sending mass emails out.
So I try and touch base with coaches. Um, and then that way, you know, I’ll say, Oh, um, Stephanie sent me an email. She was saying, have you had much talk to her much about her plans when she graduates high school? And it’ll be, you know, Oh yeah, she’s, she’s really got her sights set on a D1, D2 school. Yeah, these are kind of schools or no, I’ve not really spoken to her.
She’s kind of quiet. She, you know, I don’t know if she’s going to play in college or whatever. And that’ll give me a more of a basis to then when I speak to the player or, or, [00:07:30] um, reach out to the player through phone, I’ll have a bit better. understanding of what their thoughts are.
Matt: Yeah, no, that makes a lot of sense.
Now, do you guys do any ID camps or do you or your staff work any, any camps? Do they fit in at all?
Coach: Uh, I’ve not put any ID camps, um, on for, for the general public. I’ve put, um, this year, my first year, I’ve worked with, with a number of high schools in our local area to, to provide, uh, an evening where they can come and use the facilities or whatever.
Um, And any player that wants to come, they can do it as a high school practice or whatever. And then it gives me an opportunity if any parents want to or players want to speak to us about our program or about the academics here. You know, I have a bunch of information about our courses and about our soccer program and can speak to them.
But I’ve tried to do that more than any sort of ID clinic. Um. Just that I like getting out and trying to help the community and being an option for the community. We run high school weeks here at our facility, um, as well. So, you know, it gives us an opportunity to bring in players who maybe are a little bit shy about whatever they want to do or haven’t thought about it or, um.
Or looking to play soccer and still haven’t made a decision. And maybe, uh, the junior college route is something that they’ve not really considered, um, because they don’t know much about it. Um, so I try and get those players in so we can show them, you know, what we offer, [00:09:00] how we can help them take the next step and, um, yeah, all, all the rest of the good stuff.
Okay.
Matt: Well, I know that one of the big selling points that I keep telling people about junior colleges is the cost savings. Right. So, um, What does, and I’m not holding you to hard numbers here, but can you just give me what the financial aid situation packages costs look like for an average, uh, student athlete coming into your team?
You know, do you offer athletic or is it just academic or what kind of costs might they, they see even if they’re not from New York?
Coach: So the, um, so we don’t offer any sort of athletic scholarships. We are all academic scholarships with financial aid. Um, I think, so our tuition is around about, is a little smidgen over 5, 000 a year with, um, uh, with financial aid.
I think the average person pays around about two and a half a year with financial aid. Um, so yeah, it’s a, it’s a big saving. It’s a big saving. You’ve then got, you know, living expenses on top of that. Um, but you know, for, for the tuition it’s with financial aid that there are, if there are people within the state and within our area, then.
there’s a lot of kids that pay nothing at all. Um, if you’re out with the area or out with the state, like you get, like I said, with financial aid, um, the most that they will pay is, I think it’s 5, 100 and change. Um, but [00:10:30] with financial aid, the average student ends up paying about two and a half thousand dollars a year.
Um, which we have, you know, some fantastic academic courses here. Um, we’ve got a lot of, uh, incredible, um, Transfer agreements with schools, and we’re now building a lot of good relationships with, um, soccer programs in and out of the state so that players, um, have opportunities to go and play at the next levels.
Um, and then one of the, you know, one of the big, um, selling points for, for, for the school for, for me as well, not for me, but from, for the athletes is that we try and run a program that is very similar to D1, D2 schools. I’ve done some visits to D1 programs, to D2 programs, um, and we’re trying to mirror a lot of the things that, um, that the players will see when they, when they step out of here into there, so that when they, um, When they walk in the door there, it’s not, you know, deer and headlights kind of thing.
They can, um, step in day one and they’re used to having the, the, um, start sport GPS stuff. They’ve, they’ve got the, the huddle, they can break down film properly. They can, you know, do all these things that are, um, that when you’re going into a program and, and, you know, maybe coming from a junior college or from a, from a, uh, club program that doesn’t spend that much time or, or, um, money.
To, to go over these things, they can, you know, they can look at how do I break down film, how do I watch a game, I’m not just watching a game, I’m [00:12:00] looking for this, that or the other, how do I, you know, assess my performance as a winger, centre midfielder, centre defender, how do we do that, um, how do we get the, um, the data analysis from the, from the GPS stuff and, and what does that mean, um, in relation to our game, not just numbers on paper, um, So, you know, one of the big things that we try and do is not just make a successful program, win games here, which is always important, as you know, but make sure that when players walk out of here and walk into the next, um, place, whether it be a D1, D2, D3 school, a semi pro, a pro, go abroad, whatever, um, that when they walk in the door, that they’re comfortable, that they’re, they can focus on their soccer and they’re not, you know, taken back by, Oh my God, I have to do this, or I have to do that, or I have to wear this, or I need to do this, or whatever.
Yeah. Um, so that’s a big, that’s a big thing for me for what we’re trying to do here.
Matt: Okay, great. Well, let’s talk a little bit more about the school. You’ve been there a few years now. Kind of what have you found to be just the amazing, uh, terrific selling points of the school? Maybe some things about the school we wouldn’t know just by going through the website.
Coach: Yeah, so one of the nicest things about our school is our location. Um, we’re up in, in central New York, so, um, we’re right in the middle of Albany, Syracuse. We’re about three and a half hours from Manhattan, um, 45 minutes away from Albany, an hour away from Syracuse, but we’re in a really nice little isolated area.
Um, Herkimer’s a nice little town, but our [00:13:30] campus is a Beautiful, beautiful campus on top of the hill. Um, you can see right out onto, uh, onto the valley, um, some beautiful scenes, nice and secure. We have a secluded campus, so safety is a big, uh, selling point, especially for young females who may be leaving home for the first time coming to live.
We have, um, one of the most secure, uh, campuses. In junior colleges, we’ve got fantastic teacher to student ratio. We have small class sizes. So again, there’s a lot more of the interpersonal, um, relationships that work for our student athletes. Um, so when, when a student comes here, not only are they getting a, you know, a high level of soccer education, but they’re getting the, the one on one time with teachers.
They’re getting a lot of, um, uh, FaceTime. Um, in the classroom with people. Um, it’s a blessing and a curse. I, you know, I saw all the teachers know all of the, uh, all the athletes. It’s, we’re a big athletic school. Um, so for these kids that have come in here, they can’t fade into the background. The teachers know them.
The president, uh, comes to our game. She’s got her own box up in the press suite. So, you know, they’ll be walking through the halls and the president of the, of the college will be stopping our players and saying what a great game it was and all the rest of it. So we’re a small, uh, small college. Um, but like I said, there’s a lot of emphasis put on, uh, interpersonal [00:15:00] relationships, getting to know.
Um, this area working within our community and, and, um, and really getting the best soccer and academic experience that is, that is physically possible for a player.
Matt: Awesome. Well, let’s fast forward to October and you’re in the heart of the season. Kind of walk me through what a typical week might look like for the players in terms of winners, practice classes, games, mealtimes, whatever else that.
Makes sense to be thrown in there.
Coach: So when, um, once we get into the heart of the season, that once we, you know, get through the preseason, which preseason has its own challenges, we’ve got, we do about a three week preseason, um, before we, before we start. Um, in that time, um, we go and play some games and, you know, a lot of hard work.
Once we get into the season, um, we tend to play two games. A week. So we’ll play on say, a Wednesday and a a Saturday. Um, the day after we play a game, we, we don’t practice, we only do recovery work. So the girls will come in usually, um, and they will, um, they’ll ice bath, they’ll do some yoga. They’ll, they’ll use our facilities.
They’ve got the bikes. Um, whatever they need to do, they get, um, information away for them. So whenever they, um, yeah, whenever they played a game, again, they’re recording. Required, well, not required, but that we try and encourage them to get the eight hour sleep, to drink properly, to eat properly, proper recovery.
It’s an intense season. Um, and I think there’s, when I [00:16:30] stepped into the, the job a few years ago, I don’t think there was enough emphasis, um, for the players that were here. On recovery and looking after body and making sure that we’re properly prepped. So, so you’ve got, you’ve got two game days, you’ve got, um, two recovery days.
So that gives us three days left for practices. Um, so generally what it will be again, different days with different things, but the girls will have their classes 3 p. m.
So they’re done, their class is generally about 1, 1 o’clock, 2 o’clock. We practice 3 to 5, 3 to 4 30 usually, um, but no later than 5. We give them that time that if they need to study, if they want to get uh, jobs to work, if they need to do anything else, they want to have a social life. They’re usually done with practice by 5 o’clock.
Uh, one day of the week we’ll have video analysis, so we’ll do video 3 to. 3. 45, four o’clock, and then it’s usually four to five week practice. It’s usually the day before a game or the day, uh, two days after the game, we’ll break down or we’ll look at big games coming up and we’ll generally be a, an easier session, a walkthrough, um, shadow play.
little things like that, um, working on corners or set pieces so that we know that we can get everything in, in that hour. Um, so yeah, we’ll have two, uh, two practices based on, uh, upcoming games. One, um, practice will be a, a video [00:18:00] breakdown and then set pieces or shadow play or whatever like that. So the girls, like I said, the girls know.
Uh, they come in and they’ve got two games, they have three practices, and they’ve got two recovery days. That’s how their, uh, week’s broken down. Practices are three to five. After five o’clock, they’ll, you know, do whatever they need to do for the recovery, and then the evening is theirs if they need to go and, you know, work, uh, study, have a social life, do all the things that, you know, they want to.
We don’t, I don’t, really believe in or like this, um, you know, we’ll practice seven to eight o’clock or practice late. I like the having it done and letting the girls experience being a, being a, a student as well. Um, so that’s a big thing for, for, for me, for the, when the girls come here that, you know, there’s a lot of focus on soccer.
We, um, ask a lot of them, but we also give them the freedom to be students, to have a good time and, um, and be social, sorry, be social or work or do whatever they need to do. Awesome.
Matt: Well, let’s talk a little bit more about the soccer part, right? We talked about being in season. So how would you describe kind of your style of coaching and the team style of play?
Coach: So the, the, the biggest thing for me, for my style, I would say is, is, um, We want to build confidence within the girls. We want, like I said, a big factor of what we do here is getting them prepared, be that with a video analysis, the GPS stuff, all that sort of stuff so that they’re used to it [00:19:30] and they’re comfortable with it.
It’s the same as when they go on the soccer field. We want them to be comfortable. We want them to know their positions, what the roles and responsibilities are. Um, and we want them to play with the freedom and, um, confidence to go and play well. Um, So we want to challenge them in that way. So I suppose year to year it changes.
Um, two years ago, we, you know, we wanted to, to be a possession based team where we held the ball and we played. And then last year, different, we had a big turnover, a lot of new players. We tried that to start off with and work out. So we changed it a little bit. Um, I personally, I like, I like scoring goals.
I like Good games are like, we’ve played, we played games last year, um, that, you know, we won and it was great. We had games last year that we lost and we came off the field and said, you know what, it’s just one of those games we played well. We came up against a good team, um, you know, we attacked, we tried things, we weren’t, you know, we, we tried to do that.
That, that’s the biggest thing that we encourage, um, We encourage the girls to be expressive. We want to build confidence within them. And part of that is, you know, them knowing their roles and responsibilities, what we, what’s expected of them. So at the end of the day, you know, we can say, listen, we’re playing with two winners.
We really want to get these winners on the ball left or right. We want them on the ball and when they get on the ball, we want you to attack players. We want you to take players. And I don’t care if you get tackled nine times out of 10. I want you [00:21:00] trying to get better. I want my strikers to hold the ball up.
I want my midfielders to link. I want the fullbacks to be up and overlap and I want my centre defenders to be loud and obnoxious and all the rest of it. Um, so these are the things that we set out at the start. These are what is expected of you. And then of course, there’s different levels of ability, different levels of experience.
So we can’t always play the same way. We can’t always, you know, say we’re going to be a team that plays for crossing and finishing or because we might not have the wingers that are comfortable doing that. So we might, you know, we want to play more centrally. We want to be more compact and play shorter stuff.
We might say that we want to miss the midfield altogether and look for the striker. It depends on year to year. We certainly recruit with a vision in mind. When the girls walk in the door and two, three weeks of pre season, the first couple of games, you might say, okay, this isn’t working. How do we change this?
How do we become more successful? Um, and that, a lot of that comes down to, uh, conversations with the players. You know, why isn’t this working for you? Why, why are you not doing what we’re asking? Or what is it? And a lot of the time will be, I’m just not comfortable doing that. Or I’ve never played there.
I’ve never been asked to do that. Um, and so we, then we can break down. Okay. So. Let’s try and get you, you know, let’s try and get you further in the field. Let’s try and get you on the ball more by dropping you deeper. Let’s try a different position for you. Um, so I, I wouldn’t say I have a way of playing or, or our team has got a way of playing.
Like I said, the biggest thing is we’re trying to build confidence. We want girls who want to be on the ball. We don’t like, [00:22:30] I personally don’t like players who just get rid of the ball. I like girls who want the ball, who want to be on it, who want to keep it. Um, And through that comes, you know, trying to build confidence within them.
Um, so yeah, that’s, that’s, I’d say that’s my biggest thing.
Matt: All right. Awesome. Well, we’ve talked about a lot of different things, coach. I like to end these all the same way. And that is if you had one piece of advice, one nugget of information, you’d love to share with parents, players, families, anybody going through the college recruitment process, what would that be?
Coach: Um, What I would say coming from a junior college is be open minded. Um, I think a lot of people, a lot of players, a lot of families have their dream scenario. Um, and in college soccer now, you know, we’ve got the transfer portal. Um, we have junior colleges. I think people get stuck very quickly on one thing.
Um, I want to play it. Clemson. I want to play at North Carolina. I’d love to be the coach at North Carolina, but you know, there’s a process to it. And there’s only so many players, you know, 56 players taken to these big schools. So, you know, it’s good to have that dream. But if that’s not happening for you right away.
How do you end up getting there? And the conversation I have a lot with a lot of people who, you know, haven’t thought about the junior college route and listen, you’re not being offered the things or maybe you are being offered from the school that you want, you’re not being [00:24:00] promised, you know, they’re saying you’re going to have to come in maybe red shirt for a year.
Um, so are there other options that can help you get to that? Because you don’t need to be there straight away. Um, one of the things I always say to players here is once you get your degree from your four year school, if you go and play Syracuse, it doesn’t say. Studied here for four years, it just says.
degree or a bachelor’s or whatever. So if you get there going through the junior college route, if you get there going to another school and then transferring in there after two years, it doesn’t, your paper you get doesn’t say played at a junior college for two or studied at a junior college for two years and then came to, it just has your, your degree, your, your path to get may be different from what you want, but, um, You know, just because you’re not getting the offer right now doesn’t mean you can’t get an offer a year, two years down the line if you, you know, keep your options open.
So that would be the biggest piece of advice I would give to players and parents. Be open minded. If you don’t get your one, 1A, 1B, 1C offer, you know, you don’t automatically have to go down to your 2, 3, 4. You can, you can, but maybe there’s another option through a junior college, through someone else that can help you get there.
Matt: Well, I’m going to add a PS question then. So, so, because I forgot to ask this earlier. Sure. Of the girls who, who want to continue on and play at a four year school, you know, how has the [00:25:30] success of that placement been for the girls who’ve come through your program?
Coach: Well, I, so this is my, I’m going into my third year.
So, uh, last year we had some success. We had, um, players going on and playing at four year schools. Um, the year before that, we had a couple of going into it. Uh, we’re, I’m trying to build a program here that is successful on the field. We want to win regionals and national titles. That is our goal and ambition.
But that’s not my job description. My, me personally, my own job description I make for myself, my job description for myself is to help these players get to the next level. And that could be a four year school. It could be that they want to go and play in. Europe or somewhere. It could be that they want to go straight from junior college and won’t try playing in Iceland or France or England or Scotland, where I’m from.
Um, so again, relationships with are critical to be able to know what those things are. So I’m Bill. I’m trying to build this program with a lot of help from the college and build relationships with four year schools. D1, D2, D3, um, to try and help our players take the next step. That is, that’s my biggest mission, more than winning games, championships, whatever.
Um, hopefully by doing that, we will be able to do those things. You know, my biggest thing is, is meeting a player, understanding where they want to go or what their ambitions are, and then how do we help them get to that? So is it, again, there’s a player, there’s a coach, [00:27:00] uh, So let’s say Syracuse, are they looking at a D3 junior college, um, for players to come and play?
Maybe. Can you be an All American for two years? Can you help the program? Can you be big in the community and be helpful and be, you know, that good person?
Then yeah, then we can help you if you know you’re just going to do come here be part of the team, you know, help us but not really push yourself to get these individual and team accolades, then probably not. So again, it’s really having that, that, um, relationship with other coaches, other schools, and the players coming in.
Matt: Well, coach, wish you the best of luck this fall. Really. Thank you for your time. And, uh, we’ll check in on you and see how you do. And, uh, hopefully you’ll be bringing home one of those regional championship banners.
Coach: Appreciate your time. Thank you for your time, man.
Matt: Thank you coach. Have a great one.
