IUPUI Women’s Soccer – Coach Chris Johnson

On today’s episode, I speak with Coach Chris from the IUPUI Women’s Program in Indiana. We talk about how he builds his recruiting database. He describes the upcoming changes at the school, including their name. Lastly, we discuss how he approaches coaching as a teacher. Learn more about IUPUI Women’s Soccer.

Matt: [00:00:00] Hi everybody. Welcome to Discover College Soccer. Today I am lucky enough to be joined by Coach Johnson from Indiana University, Purdue University. Indianapolis, if I think I got that right.

Coach: That is correct. For the next 12 months, we will remain I U P U I and then beginning January or July 1st, 2024, we will, the schools will split and we will remain or we will be IU Indianapolis.

At that point in time, we will remain division one. Uh, we will be the Jaguars and we’ll continue to to participate in the Horizon League. Awesome. 

Matt: Awesome. Well, we could talk, we’ll talk more about the school here in a couple minutes. Uh, you know, I’m, I, I coached down in southwestern Indiana for a couple years, so I’m definitely familiar with you guys used to work the IU camps in Bloomington, uh, and, and play some of the schools, uh, up, up in that area.

But, but let’s talk about recruiting. Uh, to start, we’re just less than a month past that. June 15th deadline that, uh, all the division ones and twos, uh, are, are looking forward to, to talking to that next year’s class. So for you guys specifically, you know, what, what’s your calendar look like? Are you just start, you know, are you, are you wrapping up 20 fours?

Are you starting 20 fours hitting 20 fives hard? What, what’s your normal calendar like? 

Coach: So we have 3 20, 20 fours committed for us right now. We have an ID camp coming up in two weeks, uh, the July 29th, and we have a fair amount of 20 fours that are attending the camp, [00:01:30] and our hope is to, to try to get that process moving forward.

So we should be done with that class by September, October. Is is the plan? That is, that’s our hope. We have a couple of offers currently out for that class, and we should hear back from one of those. Either at the camp or, or shortly after that date. And, and we’re still looking to fill about three spots, but that’s kind of where we are right now.

The 2025 class, we will graduate seven players. And I, I have, I’m, I’m hesitating a little bit because we have, that’s the last class that still has their covid year left, and that has, as I’m sure you’ve heard, it’s complicated recruiting across the board for everybody. So we, we know that six of them at least are moving on.

One is remaining. So we will, uh, or I should say the, the 2024 is coming back, so, so it’ll impact that class. But anyway, we will, um, for the 2025 class, we will, we’re looking to bring in a goalkeeper, probably two defenders, and then three attacking either two center mids and a forward or center bid in two forward, something like that.

So about six players on scholarship, and then maybe a couple of non-scholarship players after that. 

Matt: Okay. Well, for, for you guys, I mean, looking at your roster, it seems like it’s fairly, let’s just call it regional. Uh, yes. With, with your focus. So what, what are some of the events that, that you make sure you hit that are kind of, must, must go to events in your, your recruiting?

Coach: So, so as far as events that are local here, we [00:03:00] will attend in the fall, kind of going through the, the calendars out. So we’ll do the I C L showcase, which is up at Grand Park in the fall, we. Then we’ll do, there’s a Memphis E C N L showcase, which usually has a lot of the Midwestern teams at it. Uh, we usually attend a GA event in the fall, and then where I, I haven’t seen their schedule yet, so I don’t know exactly where, where those are.

And then we will attend one of the US wise events. I think theirs was in, or Orlando last year is where it was, but it’s a lot of Midwestern teams going down there. So to, to kind of, uh, finish that off, um, January. I’m trying to think of, I go back to this a little bit real quick. There’s some, uh, I think Chicago Winter has event on Martin Luther King Day, and then we will do, there’s another event around there too.

Then, um, there is a Grand Park showcase. That is in February. We usually attend that. We also attend Blue Chip and Crossroads here in the Midwest. And then there’ll be a couple of others, like we’ll do the, the E C N L and the E C N L RL events in Florida in January. Probably hit another GA event sometime in the spring next year.

And then over the last few weeks we’ve been to, or yeah, the last month, um, We, we attend kind of quite a few of the GA and, and uh, E C L club events at [00:04:30] our, like Indiana Fire has some FC Pride, not some, and then Indy Premier, so we’ll attend a lot of those events at their home fields. We were at U S Y SS regionals in St.

Louis. Two weekends ago, I was at the Chicago Inter Showcase this past weekend. Then my assistant, she attended the E C N L RL Championships in St. Louis three weeks ago. Uh, and I say all that, but I feel like things keep changing a little bit every year. So that’s the plan. It may adjust because there’s new stuff happening all the time.

Yeah. 

Matt: Just wake up tomorrow, there’ll be a new, a new league is what it seems like. Yeah. So, uh, I hear you. You’re well. In terms of when you’re at, at those events, can give me an idea what, what’s the mix between players you’re going to watch because you’ve already scouted and we’ve already talked to ’em, they’re kind of in the mix, versus going to an event and discovering somebody else that you wanna put in your roster.

What’s, what’s that look like?

Coach: Yeah, so the Chicago inter event I was at this last weekend is a good example of, of kind of how that works. There was about a dozen players we already were aware of or had some contact with that I went to watch, but, There’s a lot of 20, 25 players there that I, I don’t really know them very well yet.

Uh, we know some, but, but don’t know as many as, as we want to know, let’s say, so I probably identified another are 40 players. We’ll put into a database that, um, and, and we’ll kind of rank, you know, you know, by position and, and we’ll start emailing those [00:06:00] kids about ID camps or things that we’re having events that we, you know, that we have going on.

And then as, as you kind of go through that process, you know, with the 2025. For our program, what we’re kind of doing at the moment is, you know, we, we’ve identified players, what we really like. The challenge is that a lot of people like those players too. And you’ve gotta start figuring out, okay, who’s gonna commit to, uh, you know, a Power Five school, and then maybe, you know, the Big East or a couple of conferences, you know, slightly below that.

And then see like who’s kind of, you know, still available after, after that happens. So we had one player that we, we had, we did like that we’d emailed a little bit with, or we’d emailed before. She responded to an email, but then she committed to a Big 10 school last week. So she’s obviously off our board.

And so for us it’s like, okay, you know, good identifying that player. But, uh, and, and we have a, a lot that I would say in the, in the beginning of this, this process, you are growing up a lot of players that you think are gonna really make a difference in your program and. Those are the ones that, that we’re trying to pursue and trying to figure out do we have an end with one of those players?

And I think that we can get them, we have two that are attending our ID camp that we plan to make offers as soon as we can get them on a campus and visit. And, and that is, I, I, I think there’s a good likelihood of that happening, but I think they’re very talented young ladies that we hope to get early, but I, I don’t think this process will end for us much before this time next year.

We’ll possibly be pursuing one or two 20 fives to kind of round out that class. 

Matt: [00:07:30] No, that makes a lot of sense. Well, I mean, obviously you just mentioned that camps are part of your, your process, so whether it’s at a camp, whether it’s at one of these events that you just mentioned, kinda what, what makes up your hierarchy of the, the things you’re looking for in a player and what, and are they on the field stuff, off the field stuff?

What are those attributes that really make a player attractive to, to you?

Coach: So on the field, let’s start, start off the field first. So, off the field, we want kids who academically have a chance at receiving academic scholarships at our school. And, and so that’s usually 3.5 g p a or higher. And that’s kind of where we start.

It doesn’t mean we won’t re recruit, recruit players lower than that, but the, the challenge we have is we’re just not a fully funded program. So we need to stack on top of academic money as much as possible to make what we feel are gonna be competitive offers. So that’s, From an off the field. That’s one perspective.

The other perspective is, you know, them getting along with players on our team. So a big part of that process is that these, you know, the young ladies that we’re talking to, they need to attend an ID camp. They need to come in and visit our campus so we can get them an opportunity to meet our players because we wanna make sure that this young lady’s gonna fit into the.

I don’t know the, the, the social life of what our, our players wanna do and, and what our campus is all about. So that becomes a, a very big part of the process. We, we can identify a lot of young ladies that can help us in the soccer field, but until we till, until they come and really visit our campus, and we get to [00:09:00] know them a little bit.

You’re not sure how they’re gonna fit in off the field. And I, I think that we have a team that has great chemistry. All of our upperclassmen live with other women’s soccer players. Like they all live together in the same apartment complex, which is just a couple blocks off campus. And all of our freshmen come in and li what happens, the freshmen come in and live together in a dorm.

Then they end up moving to this apartment complex and they live together over there too. And, and it’s a, it’s a very good group of young ladies to work with. Um, there are years that we. We are not as successful as we want to be, but I very, very seldom have any complaints about our players off the field.

You know, it’s academically they do really well. We have about a 3.65 team, G p A. We have a lot of kids who are pursuing graduate level programs that are having a great deal of success getting into those. And so from that standpoint, kids are doing fantastic. But part of that stems from them being a close knit group off the field.

And that’s what we wanna continue to have. 

Matt: Okay. No, that’s fantastic. Well, let’s talk a little bit more, uh, about the school. Um, obviously you mentioned you guys are going through a little bit of a transition here, starting next, next year, but you’ve been there as the head coach for, for quite a few years now.

Uh, which means you, you got some great insight and perspective for us. So, you know, help, help, uh, everybody understand what are some of the great things about the school. Maybe things we wouldn’t know just by going through the website. 

Coach: Yeah. So the, I’ll start off with just. When, when Purdue pulls away, the only things we’ll lose are the engineering majors and, and some of the computer science majors, but not [00:10:30] all of them.

So we’ll retain School of Nursing, Kelley School of Business, the, uh, all the liberal arts programs. We have education programs, social work, criminal justice. Um, it’s, it’s a, it’s a very extensive, uh, variety of majors except for engineering is only where we’re gonna lose. So the Kelly School of Business program we have on our campus is the same program they run at iu.

It has an iCorps component to it, which is an integrated core program you do your junior year. The, I think the great benefit of being at IU Indianapolis as, as we’ll be called next year, is that you are walking distance to a city of a million people and there are lots of opportunities to do internships and co-op type things through Kelley School of Business and the businesses we have downtown.

So I think that’s a, a huge benefit to coming and choosing our school within the school of nursing, which we have. Uh, two nursing majors presently on the team. We have two freshmen looking to come in and, and go into the nursing program too. We have well over a dozen, maybe two dozen graduates from the school of nursing, is that we have four hospitals on our campus, and when you wanna do your clinicals, you can literally leave practice, jog, let’s say run across campus, you know, in about five minutes.

You can be in your clinical setting at that point in time. So, There are schools I know of that do not allow soccer players to major in nursing because of the conflicts they can have. It is not a perfect system here, but it is the best I [00:12:00] think that that anybody can do. So when I say it’s not a perfect system, it is that there are still chances where you might miss practice once in a while.

Not consistently, but it does happen. Or you might have to leave practice early to get to your clinical or to your class. But we’re so close to, to the hospitals and to the classroom that it, it’s, it’s, it’s a very doable situation. We have never had a player within the school of nursing that has had to quit soccer or quit or major because of conflicts.

It’s always, we’ve always been able to work it out 

Matt: and that is impressive. ’cause I know I’ve talked to, to a number of schools where that. That’s the major that has the biggest issue a lot of times. So that, that’s fantastic. Well, and on, on that front. So can you just walk me through, let’s fast forward, let’s say it’s October, uh, we’re in the middle of the season.

What, what would an average week look like for a player in terms of, you know, classes, meals, practice times, game cadence? What, what would those things look like? Even for a nursing major or, or any other major really? 

Coach: We are fortunate to be on a Thursday Sunday format for our, our scheduling. So, uh, if I start with Monday, that’s probably the easiest way to do.

Start Mondays off Tuesday. Training is seven 30 to about nine 15 in the morning. Then for those who don’t have class, beginning at 10 or at nine, uh, nine 30. Then those kids will go to about a 35 minute wait training session, and they’ll start classes at 10 o’clock. There’s a few of those start classes before that.

So, uh, 7 30, 9 15. Then waits. Wednesday is the day before a game. We do seven 30 [00:13:30] to, uh, it’s a, we’ll do a video session to about seven 50, and then from seven 50 to nine o’clock is the training only lasts for an hour and 10 minutes. Then Thursday’s game, Friday’s, a recovery session, lasts about an hour.

Saturday is that same day before a game. We have about a 20 minute video session, about an hour and 10 minute training session. Uh, that is in the morning too. It’s eight to about nine 30 is when that whole thing is done. Then Sunday’s your game again, and then you repeat that cycle. There are two weeks during our season the way our, our, uh, conference sets it up where you have a game only on Saturday and they’re actually.

Uh, both of those are in the month of October. So the month of October ends up being a very, I don’t wanna say easy month, but I think we have, I think there’s, including exhibition games. There’s six games in August. There’s nine games in September, and then only seven in October. So October is, is really a, it’s kind of spread out.

It’s not as busy as you would think it would be, which is nice to have during the conference. Part of the. 

Matt: Absolutely. That is a different kind of, kind of schedule, but, uh, very nice. Well, let’s talk a little bit more about the team and the soccer side of things. In terms of roster, is there a roster that number you feel is ideal that you’re trying to be at every year?

I. 

Coach: We shoot for 26 is where we try to be at every year. It, it’s always, you know, there’s a little bit of fluctuations that happen. We were at, we’re at 26, we have two players that due to injuries, will not be able to play this fall. So we’re down about [00:15:00] 24, which is a little less than ideal ’cause three of those are keepers.

So you don’t have a lot of field player, uh, you know, subs to, to kind of trained during the week. But, um, We’ll make two. We, we, we were this size last fall too. Just we didn’t have the two injured players. We were about 24 for last year. So that’s kind of where we were. We tried to be right about 26 in, in that ballpark.

Matt: Okay. Well, you mentioned, you know, your assistant coach doing recruiting and stuff. So what does your staff look like? You know, how big is it? What, what other staff might be part of the team that are maybe just more from the athletic department, like strength training or anything else like that? What, just gimme an idea of the staff.

Coach: We have Rachel Fulkerson, uh, Lance now ’cause she was married. Is is, uh, she’s my full-time assistant coach. There’s just one full-time assistant coach. We have a Goal Q Trainer that we, I’m not allowed to announce yet, but we, we do have a goal queue trainer with joining the program soon. Uh, and then we have a guy named Jacob Martin that helps us out, video stuff at the moment.

And then we’re looking to, we, we have another young a we’ve talked to about maybe join the staff as a, as a second. Assistant coach wouldn’t, it would be like a, on a part-time, time basis, there’s a strength coach named Mike Bloom, uh, that, that handles, uh, all of our strength and conditioning program. And then we have Lauren Ross as our athletic trainer, and she’s with us pretty full-time.

Matt: Okay. Well, in terms of you, how would you describe your style of coaching team style of play and, and what you’re trying to do with a team each year? 

Coach: So my background is I was a high school teacher at one [00:16:30] point in time, and I, I really look at this as, uh, I’m still teaching, but the, the sport is soccer or the subject matter is soccer.

I should say it that way. Subject matter is soccer. So I’m, I’d like to, I, I probably talk in some of the meetings a little more than I should, trying to make sure that everybody understands what we’re trying to do. I, I wanna make sure we, that we, that the game plan has been, Has been communicated, you know, verbally and, and visually as, as well as possible.

I like to, to make sure that, that, you know, the players know the why of why we’re doing things. I always encourage our players to ask questions. Um, so style of play, things like that. We, we, I. We played a 4, 4, 2 this last year with a diamond in the middle. We’ve played a 3 5 2 this spring. We try to box in the middle a little bit.

We’re pretty comfortable floating in and out of, of those three formations, we are a very offensively aggressive group. I, I like to throw numbers forward. I like to, I guess when I, when I talk to recruits about a lot of the thing I phrase is that I wanna enjoy what I’m watching on the field and I enjoy attacking soccer.

So I want to coach my team and, and we try to, To set ourselves up to be a very attacking oriented team. To a fault. Sometimes, you know, we, we probably do that, but, uh, I, I think our outside backs, they get forward. You know, there’s a lot of times you can probably look at us and say, man, there’s only two people in the back.

And yeah, that’s, that’s the way we do it because we wanna get numbers forward. We like to, we, we like to work very hard out there. Uh, we we’re a very high pressing and counter pressing type team that, you know, we wanna win the [00:18:00] ball on the end of the field and kind of make them pay for turning it over.

Matt: Okay. I love it. Well, we just, uh, you know, obviously we’re talking here in July, so, but the spring kind of wrapped up a couple months ago. Can you gimme an idea of what your off season training and schedule looks like? 

Coach: Yeah, so when we come back in January, there’s a couple weeks where the girls. Just participate in weight training and conditioning for the first two weeks.

Then, so that’s like the first two weeks of, of January. They’re back when we get past that. Then there’s a newer facility. We rent about 20 minutes off campus. We train there on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and they do weight training on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Schedule stays intact about the last week of February and the last week of February, we are allowed to start playing games.

And so we switch from those eight hour weeks to your 20 hour weeks, which is like an N c A designation there. And once we have the 20 hour weeks, then we, uh, wait for Monday, Wednesday, Friday morning practice is Tuesday, Thursday morning, and then we have a Friday afternoon training session. We played five different games in the spring.

Uh, this last spring, we, we had one got canceled ’cause of the team didn’t have very many numbers, so we played four, but typically it’s five games every spring. 

Matt: Okay. Awesome. Well, coach, you’ve been generous with your time. Appreciate all the insight. I’d like to end these all the same way. And that’s, if you had one piece of advice, one, one nugget of information you’d love, every parent player, anybody going through this college recruiting [00:19:30] process to have, what would that be?

Coach: I think it’s this. You need to spend the night with the players, the team you are considering joining. You can, you can talk to a coach. You can really enjoy that coach as much as you want, but. Under NNC rules, we’re not allowed to spend 20 hours a week with you, and most coach, most coaches don’t go that high.

So the rest of the time you’re gonna be with a team and a scholarship and a major may get you to a school. But what will keep you there is if you actually enjoy being there. And the closest thing you can do to, to really investigating that part of the, of the, of the process is, is going and spending the night with the players.

You need to get away from the coaches. You need to. Players often come in and ask me, and they’re like, what’s your coaching style? And, you know, do you value academics? And, and I, I can say what I know they want to hear, but they need to, they need to get away from me and get to the players and be like, okay.

He says he values academics, but is that the way it works out for you? Do you have enough time to get your schoolwork done? I would like to think that our, our team, G p A, you know, being above a three six. It indicates that our, our players are, have the time they need to get, to get things done. But I, I think that’s the most important piece of advice.

I’ve seen too many players over the years commit to a school because, They were immediately offered as soon as the recruiting window allowed that to happen. And they’re put under pressure and they commit to a place. They get there and in the first semester they’re like, I don’t [00:21:00] like it here. They wanna transfer out.

And what we want is we want players to come in and be here for four years. We wanna develop them over that time period. I think we’ve shown a great deal of success in developing the players that we do bring in, making ’em into better players and helping them, you know, pursue the careers they want to and their lives.

Matt: No. Love that. 

Well, coach, wish you the best of luck this fall and, uh, when you come down for the EC elements in Lakewood Ranch, gimme a shout. We’ll, we’ll grab a cup of coffee or something and, uh, or, or I’ll show you the good fish places around here. Oh, that’d be great. 

Coach: I love how that, thank you very much.

Awesome. 

Matt: Alright, 

Coach: coach, take care. You too.