Maryville College Men’s and Women’s Soccer – Coach Pepe Fernandez

On today’s episode, I speak with Coach Fernandez from the Maryville Men’s and Women’s Programs in Tennessee. We talk about how he recruits players that fit with their culture. He describes the gorgeous, small school near a big university and the Smokey Mountains. Lastly, we discuss their long tenured staff that covers both teams. Learn more about Maryville College Men and Women’s Soccer.

Matt: [00:00:00] Hi, everybody. Welcome to discover college soccer today. I’m lucky enough to be joined by coach Fernandez at Maryville in Tennessee. Welcome coach. 

Coach: Thank you, Matt. I appreciate you having me on. 

Matt: Yeah. Thanks for being here. Don’t want to confuse you with the other Maryville. It’s kind of like, you know, we’ve got the, there’s maybe what six trinities out there and like the Lord knows how many St.

Thomas’s and all that jazz, but, but, but, but we got you at Maryville, Tennessee, and, uh, we were just talking. The crazy thing is you’re one of the few left that’s still doing both the men’s and the women’s and you have been for, for a number of years, haven’t you? We 

Coach: have, you know, it’s, uh, I came here and just took over the men’s program.

And, uh, probably plan on staying two or three years. And then, uh, the women’s job came open. We started a women’s program and I said, well, I’ll do both for a couple of years and, uh, next year will be 37 with the guys. And I think 36 with the 

Matt: girls. Unbelievable. Well, so as we’re going, I’m going to ask you these questions and if you don’t mind, just, you know, maybe if they’re, if the answer is different based on the program, just let us know, uh, you know, based on the guys or girls, but you know, we’re talking here, mid December last weekend was, uh, was a big weekend for, uh, showcases this weekend’s a big showcase weekend.

So. During the season, give me an idea, maybe what percentage of your normal week, would you say is spent on recruiting future classes? 

Coach: Yeah, you know, [00:01:30] I’m lucky now, you know, for a while I was doing it without a full time assistant for years. Um, and just recently we’ve gotten A third full of a third full time.

I mean, yeah, for third full time assistant Jameson Elmore, who has been unbelievable. And what we decided to do was to split the recruiting, uh, up between the recruiting coordination up between coach John Baker, um, and, um, and coach Elmore. So coach Elmore is doing the boys. Coach Elmore is doing the girls.

Now they both work together on everything. Uh, this place would not run without them. But to answer questions specifically, we’re pretty, um, they keep me on top of things during the season. We’re trying to, you know, identify kids, obviously the best we can. We can’t get out during seasons much, but they’ll run to local high school games.

You know, I’m lucky in that my boys both played club and high school soccer. So during that time, they’re 27 30 32. Now, I was still able to sneak out, see some games here and there and get the club games even occasionally during season. Coach Baker has two girls and he’s able to sneak into some games to, you know, But the primary part of our identification process takes place, you know, right after season.

And then, but during seizing season, we’re trying to stay in contact with this year, 25 and 26 is on 7 to 12 days. We want to be in contact every 7 to 12 days and contact either with the [00:03:00] kid themselves. The parents or combination of both either by text email or a phone call. For And, and again, coach Baker and coach Elmore, both, you know, really keep me focused on that, which isn’t easy to do, but they’re involved with it too.

So it’s one of us reaching out with them with the, we’re still a little bit old school. We’d like to send out some letters to, uh, so, so, so we’re trying to do that. And we, we do a really good job of staying with the timeframe, uh, I think throughout the season on that. 

Matt: No, that’s awesome. Well, with, you know, now moving into December and the spring.

So what, what are some of the. The places you like to go to, to see players, uh, what are some of the tournaments on, on kind of your, your must see TV list? 

Coach: Yeah. You know, we, so, so last weekend, the, our goalkeeper coach Luke wheat and Jameson went to the ECNL boys showcase. Uh, and then Coach Baker went to, uh, to Raleigh for the girls showcase over there.

And then I had a recruit visit that weekend. So I was here, me and Coach LaCava were here that weekend. So, uh, we’re, we’re, we’re, we’re hitting the showcases. Uh, you know, Disney used to be a big one. We don’t get down to Disney, you know, with the movement on Disney. We don’t get down there as much. But we’re trying to get the ECNL events, the RL events, and, uh, you know, trying to.

We still go to high school games. Um, you know, and try to catch some local high school games because this is a very good soccer area with the clubs in this in this area. So, and I still enjoy going to high school games. It is a. A fantastic [00:04:30] place to play high school sports deal. So, I mean, a beard and Farragut game will draw 3000 people.

Uh, the 2 of 2 of the local high schools, Maryville high school will draw big crowds. So, so it’s a fun place to play high school and there’s some good kids here too. 

Matt: Yeah. Well, I’ll be, uh, I’ll be out on that high school field, uh, tonight, we, you know, Florida here, we play in the winter. So it’s a little bit, uh, a little bit different, but, um, What about I.

D. Camps? You know, there’s kind of been a big push to those. Do you guys run your own? Do you or your staff work external camps? Are they an important part of your recruiting process? 

Coach: They are. You know, our goal is to keep our we do. We have a great summer camp business that I’ve owned for years, and we get we get several 100 kids, you know, for summer camps and, you know, and it’s a lot of fun.

I’ve got amazing people. Bobby Earl’s who’s been he’s been running our dorm and coaching is a high school coach in Georgia. Been running our dorm for, for, for 28, 29 years. We’ve got people who have been working for 30, you know, for, for 20 years. And it, our summer camps are great. Our ID camps, we try to keep small and really just bringing kids that we are actively recruiting.

There’ll be kids that reach out to us too, that will say, yes, we can’t get to see you. But we want to see them in the environment. We want them to hear about core values, our team culture, and most importantly, we want them to meet our players to see if they’re a good fit at the ID camp, but then our players to give us good feedback that that’s getting is probably every [00:06:00] college coach will tell you getting the right person these days, in particular, Is one of the most important things you can do that’s going to fit your culture and, um, and, and, and fit in with your team.

And, um, you know, the, the, the, the, the, our kids are really good at helping us out on that process. And they’ll tell us, you know, we think this player or this person is a great fit or, you know, no, they just don’t seem like a meritable person to them. 

Matt: Okay. Well, on top of that, like, whether it’s at a camp or, you know, a high school game or.

Club tournament or wherever you’re at what what kind of makes up the the hierarchy of things you’re looking for in a player both on The field attributes and off the field stuff 

Coach: Right. You know, you know, the first thing that we look at, you know, like every coach, can they make us better? Right? Can they come in and make our make our program better?

And I think that’s the easy part of the job. Everybody can walk out there and see who the good players are and make that decision. You know, the next thing is, you know, like I just mentioned, are they going to fit our culture? Are they a kid that’s going to go to class? Um, you know, we are in a very fortunate position at Maryville.

They want us to have a really good soccer program and um, but there’s not the pressure on us that there is at some, you know, some of the bigger schools. And um, so we’re looking for kids that, you know, are going to go to class, are going to work hard, they’re going to be good teammates. That part of the culture is really important.

They got to be happy sitting the bench [00:07:30] some, even if they’re, you know, Even if we know they’re going to be our starting center forward or our starting center back, we’ve got to play other kids and they’ve got to be kids that are just as happy sitting on the bench as they are on the field and just as happy for their teammates.

Uh, we want them to want to play. And then lastly, and this is this, this is. Is a simple one, but it’s so important to us. Are they just fun to be around that? They show up the field, even if they’re having a bad day, they can fake it because we fake it sometimes, but they do. They show up the field and they’re a lot of fun.

They’re happy to be down there. They’re happy to be in training. They’re happy that they’re a college soccer player, and that they, their parents are working hard and that they’re working hard and they love this opportunity. Um, so, so, so those are really just in a nutshell of what we’re looking for in a kid.

And, um, you know, the kids that we come across that that tend to be all about themselves and not really the team type kids, um, just just have not been as successful here. And so, so, so we’ve identified that again, they really need to be bought into the team atmosphere. Uh, and we’re so lucky here. I mean, we get amazing kids.

Um, you know, we’d all like to have messy and and Rinaldo and everything, but but we get some really good soccer players and they just amazed me the type of people they are and and it’s and I think it’s really, um, you know, some of that’s the recruiting part part, but some of it, Maryville College draws a type of kid.

Matt: No, that’s [00:09:00] fantastic. Well, how many of those kids do you like to have? What’s kind of your goal roster size for both teams? 

Coach: Yeah, we’re lucky. Our A. D. And our school is really committed. They want us to have the number that’s best for our soccer program. Uh, we’ve experimented with all kinds of things over the years.

We’ve experimented with J. V. We’ve experimented having a varsity. We just since we’re coaching two teams, the JV just about makes sense. So we think a good number is somewhere between 26 and 28 players, depending on what you have, three or four keepers. We’d like to have three keepers, but it’s necessary, uh, you know, sometime to have four.

I mean, we went the whole women’s season this year. with two keepers and one of them was sick. It was sick or injured most of the season. So we played the whole season with our fingers crossed with the senior with the senior keeper. But we think that 26 27 we’ve had our numbers above 30 before and it just does not work for us.

It’s just the management of it. And we feel like the kids once you hit past 26 27 unless you’re really Doing a great job with the JV program or in a position where you can play that number of kids. Um, we, we, we just don’t think those big numbers work for us as well. 

Matt: Okay. No, it makes sense. And, well, 1 of the big things, or I guess, uh, trends we see now is, is obviously.

around the new D one limits and the transfer portals exploding and the number of international players on each [00:10:30] team seems to be growing. Do you guys dabble in the transfer portal or international recruiting at all on either team? 

Coach: You know, it’s difficult for an international kid. We’ve always had the philosophy and the thought to is One of our enjoyments is it’s my favorite time of the year.

Still, when we bring 18 year old freshman in here, they’re so excited. They’re ready to play soccer. You’ve got it as a false sport. It’s still I still enjoy that so much and we really enjoy the process of watching an 18 year old mature not only as a soccer player, but as a person and and what you know how we can develop them.

Uh, we’ve had a few international players and some really good ones, but they’re really few and far between. And usually they’re kids that have reached out to us. Um, we’re not set up as a school to have big numbers financially for international players. There’s a couple international scholarships, but there are tons of kids competing for them and there’s biology students and, you know, tennis players and everybody else competing for them.

Um, Uh, we, we had a fantastic, uh, international player with the boys team 2 years ago, who was an All America force Henry into Boise, but he was, he was a typical freshman, 18 year old came in during the pandemic was stuck here and want to be in a great player for. So, we’re not against recruiting international players.

We’re just not set up for it. The transfer portal is, you know, is new to a lot of us, as, you know, [00:12:00] it’s, it’s, I mean, when we see, we saw it click on with the women and saw all of a sudden. From the 1st minute it opened up to the to the 5th minute. There’s hundreds of players in there. Um, you know, it’s a really interesting process.

Uh, James and Elmore are our younger assistant has been really heavily involved in that and has looked at it and we’re talking a few transfers right now. I don’t know. I can’t really tell what the future is going to be. Is it going to be a big part of our recruiting? I’m not sure because really, we don’t have a lot of experience with it.

And, um, you know, we’re still we’re a college. We have 1 graduate level program, and it’s very specific. So, you know, bring in a 5th year or something like that. Some of the other schools can do. We just don’t have. What they need, or what some of those treats for kids are looking for as a 5th year. But we’ll see, you know, you never know.

It seems to be kind of the crazy days for for kids to jump in there and, you know, and and and see who’s interested in them and. Um, and, and, and, and, and, and 

Matt: always take 

Coach: a 

Matt: look. Yeah, that makes sense. Well, let’s talk a little bit more about the school for folks not, you know, familiar with Maryville. Uh, you know, I, I think you, you’re, you’re the man to ask having been there for, uh, three decades now.

So what is it that’s kept you there? What are the things that you find that, that are great about the school? Maybe some things we wouldn’t even know by going through the website. 

Coach: Well, first and [00:13:30] foremost, you know, it’s a fantastic academic school. It’s small, but. We are in an unbelievable, unbelievable location.

Um, it’s you go to a lot of small schools and you see they’re tucked in the middle of big city or some of them are in the middle of nowhere. And those work for some kids, but we are in a nice little town. But the University of Tennessee is 1520 minutes from us and Knoxville is and so you’ve got 35, 000 other students just up the road from us and Knoxville is a great college town.

But then 15 minutes the other direction. In fact, our soccer field overlooks the Smoky Mountains is the biggest wilderness area. This east of the Mississippi, the Smokies and it’s, it’s, it’s amazing. We do a lot of our classes in the Smokies. Um, kids that want to be in outdoor recreation, tourism. Uh, just it’s a great place for them to go to school.

We have those majors. But really, it’s interesting. Most of our female players right now, it goes in cycles are in the sciences and a lot of our male players are in engineering and we have a great engineering program to with, uh, with University of Tennessee and a couple of schools for like, they go here and play all 4 years.

But then they, they finish up their degree at the University of Tennessee or 1 of the low other engineer scares schools. Most importantly, it is 1 of the best places in the world. And this is not an exaggeration. We moved here not knowing anything about it. It’s one of the best [00:15:00] places in the world. to raise a family and to live.

There’s fantastic people. Um, people are very kind and nice in this area, and it’s still a little laid back. We haven’t got hit with all the traffic. I’m from Middle Tennessee originally, and we haven’t got hit with all the traffic that’s in the Nashville area and all the booming growth. We’re having some growth, but the smoky saves us from that a little bit.

So it is just a great, great place to live. 

Matt: Yeah, absolutely. Well, and you mentioned it a little bit, you know, in terms of the academics, sometimes those 18 year old freshmen get in there. They’re all jazzed to go, but balancing the demands of a college soccer program as well as being a student athlete, you know, can be challenging.

So what, what kind of support systems does the school offer to really help students be successful both on the field and in the classroom? 

Coach: Yeah, I mean, I got to brag on our kids 1st. I mean, last year, our girls team GPA was like a 375. I think there was 1 girl on the entire team that had 1 seat. It was insanity.

The boys, you know, really good. They were at a 313 to some, and we’ve been consistent. Over the years that our kids, you know, they always, you know, when the United soccer coaches team award, those sort of the team academic award, those things, they’ve been really consistent on that. So we’re really lucky. And I think soccer coaches will tell you this across the country.

For some reason, the soccer kids tend to have better grades and are really good academically, but we have a great support system. If they don’t [00:16:30] classes are really small. So our, our kids have fantastic relationships with their teachers and, you know, can. Go get help from them. We have a Cooper success center over here.

Now, the soccer players usually wind up being tutors over here instead of actually needing the tutoring. Um, but then, you know, our campus has a big learning center on campus. We have a library that has you can walk over there at any time and there’s somebody staff that works to help you with your with the English side of writing papers.

And, you know, and, um, editing papers. We have a math person that’s in there almost full time to that’s there for the math students. So there’s tons of support. And really, I tell kids. When they get here, the only way you’re not going to do well, whether they’re an average student or an exceptional student is if you don’t go class to go to class and study.

And really, that’s the case here. Those are the only kids that we haven’t seen do well, and those are really the only kids you can’t help. And we try not to recruit them, but, you know, occasionally there’s a kid that their freshman year, um, you know, they have to figure out I got to be in every single class and I’ve got to study because.

Everybody, you know, the pluses and minuses of a small campus. One of the big one is everybody knows you, which is fantastic. But then everybody knows you. So, so, you know, it’s not you can’t sneak through the cracks at a small campus like you [00:18:00] could, you know, up the road at the University of Tennessee, obviously, 

Matt: yeah, for sure.

Well, rewind back to, you know, maybe the heart of that conference schedule walk me through what’s a typical week look like for a player in terms of when his practices classes meals games, that whole kind of thing. What’s what’s a normal week look like? 

Coach: Yeah, it’s, it’s changed drastically over the years. I mean, as a young coach.

If I showed you my practice plan for my first few years, you would call the police and say, this guy is insane. The kids come back and tell stories. It’s, you know, we thought more was better, you know, 30 years ago, we had football coaches and basketball coaches and, you know, and we couldn’t watch Pep Guardiola do a practice on the Internet and say, I can do this one.

Uh, so, so we thought more was better. We’re practicing three times a day, running sprints after every practice and usually morning run during preseason. It was insanity. Now we figured out one. Kids are coming in a lot. They’re very fit. They’re very conscious of their new nutrition. They’ve played at high levels in clubs, and so we don’t have to spend the time in preseason on fitness as much.

And so our weeks, we’ve really, we’ve narrowed it down. So to say, listen, we can’t train super hard every single day and then expect the kids to perform all weekend. So our typical week. say we just have, we don’t have a game midweek, which we do have some midweek games. You know, Monday we would be off or Sunday, depending on what [00:19:30] we played Saturday.

You know, if we play Saturday, we would recover on Sunday. The kids that didn’t play were GPS tracking the kids. So the kids that didn’t reach our thresholds will play a little bit on Sunday, just inner squad and the other kids will do recovery. Monday will be our day off. Tuesday, we’ll come back and start game prep for the weekend.

And Tuesday would probably be our longest practice. And the kids are really shocked by this. They’re shocked by two things. One, we’re probably an hour and a half for our longest practice, maybe an hour and 45 minutes. And, um, And but they’re really intense. We’re moving through the practice with some sort of theme and, you know, either improving on things or working on things for the weekend.

And then, as we move through the week to the following Saturday practices decrease in intensity and then also Uh, in time. So the day before game, we might be going a half hour to 45 minutes, and it’s kind of a light walk through and no more than, you know, than five or 10 minutes of some sort of a little intensity.

So, you know, recovery. It’s so important during the college season and so difficult to do. Uh, you know, the tough times are when you have a midweek game and and then book end games on each weekend and figuring out how to train during those times and really, We’ve started listening closely to our kids and how they’re feeling, [00:21:00] um, and, and, and getting good feedback from them and then also watching our trackers to see, you know, really how much we got those trackers.

We could not believe how much some of the kids were running. 

Matt: No, I believe it. Well, let’s talk a little bit more about the team and we talked about roster size and you’ve mentioned names, but. Talk to me more about the coaching side of the roster and maybe what other, you know, what is everybody’s roles, maybe what other staff are in the athletic department that help out with the team or that the kids might interact with.

What does that look like? 

Coach: Yeah, we’ve got, I mean, I’ve been so lucky. I’m around other good coaches here, but, you know, with our within our staff, um, you know, the, the, we share a lot of a lot of roles, but we try to give each coach ownership. Appreciate it. Things that they’re really good at and things they really enjoy.

And we have a goalkeeper coach. He’s not full-time, but he changed trains, trains both teams. Um, you know, coach Baker, uh, you know, has two daughters, loves the girls, loves the boys side. But, but you know, it, it makes sense that he is the recruiting coordinator for the girls. He does. Coach will do a lot of, uh, the film.

for the girls and scouting reports. And then Jameson will do do a lot for the boys. I’ll still do some one thing that we’ve done different. I’m trying more and more. to delegate some responsibilities. And for the first time, two years ago, I really looked at it. I’m like, especially with our women’s [00:22:30] team, I was not doing a good job rotating our squad.

I’m like, Oh, we want to win this game. No matter what, let’s keep these girls out there. And so I took our basketball coach, Darren Trevelyan, who is a major, amazing women’s basketball coach. He lets his assistant Run his substitution patterns and we did that with coach Baker. Coach Baker is the associate head coach here.

So he’s done the substitutions during the games, which is hard to let go as a soccer coach, right? But he’s been so good at it and it’s kept our squad rotating. I can’t say that it’s cost us any games. It’s probably 1 of some games. And, uh, so he’s taken on that role. Coach LaCava, who I’ve mentioned earlier, has been with us for 30 years.

Um, most people that volunteer want to show up at games, watch games, and, you know, talk to you about tactics. He does so much of the dirty work. If balls need to be pumped up, he does that. But he also does our game day, uh, management. So he does the warm ups. He so he’s talking to the girls and the guys all the time about the warm ups.

He has the warm ups dialed in. He starts coming in and managing the crap out of me every 5 minutes. They’re gonna be ready to walk out of the locker room. They’re listening to last song. If you’re not walking in there 2 minutes, everything is gonna be behind schedule. So he’s managing me and stressing me a little bit.

He watches the weather. So he and then he gets the kids to the field 1st and does all the warm ups and puts them through a fantastic warm up routine. And, and, and, and teaches that teaches that routine for the practice stuff. [00:24:00] We’ve been really lucky to that are within, uh, the past five years, we have a full time strength coach that comes over and does lifting for our teams, which has been, I mean, honestly, I probably know more about lifting than the average person on the street, but we were googling good workouts for soccer players.

And that’s what we’re gonna do today, guys. But now we have a guy that speed agility and lifting. And they’ve changed our, not only the soccer program, but all of our programs drastically. We have a performance group that comes over from U. T. That their sports performance coaches, the graduate level students, and each team gets assigned them and they brought some, some really good stuff to us.

And then a pretty amazing staff of support. At the administrative level that helps us to and miracle college from our president down. really supports athletics. And it’s been That’s a lot of fun because, you know, if you don’t have support and you just feel like you’re in and on your own, it can be very difficult.

So, for a small school from, we’ve got a full time athletic trainer that travels with us and goes, you know, and does all the soccer training from a small school standpoint, it’s come from me coaching soccer with a student assistant to where we are now to all those things I’ve mentioned. And I think it’s been one of the support that we’ve gotten has been something that’s.

Really impressive for a small school, but also that’s been so great for [00:25:30] student athletes. Yeah, it sounds like it. 

Matt: Well, now training the guns on you. How would you describe your style of coaching and the style of play? You guys are looking to play there. 

Coach: You know, our style play, you know, I’m I could be pragmatic, but but I really enjoyed a short passing build up game, getting the other team out of position and trying to take advantage of them.

Uh, we’re a high pressing team. I don’t have a lot of patience. So we want the ball back as quickly as possible. We want it as high as possible. That is my style. We’re forced by the team. Some of these really good teams. We just can’t play that. They will. We can’t keep the ball against them sometimes, or they’re pressing us and it’s a back and forth game.

That’s my style. I like to bring a lot of energy on the sidelines and, um, and really keep our kids at a higher energy. Pace, but I think most importantly, some of the things I’ve learned is. I really have learned to trust our kids. You know, I was the 26, 27 year old coach over there. They’re like, trap it, pass it, shoot it.

Oh, why don’t you do that? You know, I’ve tried to get away from that over the years and I really try to put a lot of trust in the kids, give them some structure, give them a system, you know, put them in spots where they’re comfortable and have them feeling comfortable about coming to talk to our staff about, you know, How can how they can become better, but trusting them to play out there and realizing they’re going to make [00:27:00] mistakes.

But as long as they’re fighting, those are showing good sportsmanship, fighting hard to win the ball back. We’re okay with mistakes, and we’ve got to give them that freedom. And I think the more in this game, you trust your kids. and you give them freedom, the better off you are. And that’s what we see with our older team.

You know, our men’s team was very young this year with our women’s team. They were an older, more mature team, and we trusted them across the board. And you just start seeing things. They’re coaching each other out there on the field. They don’t need us on the sidelines. We become less important as the referee, and that’s when you have a really good team.

Matt: Yeah, well, and it showed with the conference championship, right? So yeah, they were, they were a 

Coach: fantastic group to be around. Both teams were. 

Matt: Yeah, 

Coach: no, 

Matt: that’s fantastic. Well, coach, you’ve been generous with your time. I’m going to leave you with one last question. And that is, if you had one piece of advice for anybody going through this college recruiting process and looking at schools and all the fun stuff wrapped around it, what would that piece of advice be?

Coach: You know, I would tell them to be proactive, to really listen, to their club coach, their high school coach and people. And really, if they have a local college coach in their community, if they will go to school there, reach out to that person and ask for honest advice. You see so many kids now that say, Oh, my buddy’s playing a Clemson and I’m, you know, I played on his team [00:28:30] and I, you know, and well, that his buddy might have fit an exact role for Clemson at that time.

And so, so, so I think really try to figure out where you are, and that’s not aim high and reach high and maybe have a couple schools that you feel like I might not. I might not fit there. I might not be at that level, but I might try to reach there and see, um, I would get good, honest opinions. And then I would be very proactive.

I think the. You know, across the board, people think that there’s a lot of money, like, there aren’t some of the bigger sports and football and basketball, uh, to, to, to, to fly all over the country. And see every kid play that you need to see play. That’s not the case. And I, I would venture to say, when you, when you ask the division 1 coaches this, they want kids that are also interested in them.

Right? Yeah, we’re recruiting kids that want to play at a little higher level on us because we have to have those kids. Um, but kids that are interested in us. Are just so much more appealing and we’ve taken kids. We’ve taken a shot on a kid that we thought probably can’t play for us or, or, or, you know, we’re just not sure and not sold on them because they’ve loved Marable.

They have been proactive and they really want us and a lot of times that kids worked out. Um, the other thing is really do your homework. The first question you [00:30:00] asked me, some kids might want to go and play on a JV team for two or three years, realize they need to do that and their senior year they’re playing.

That’s fine. And a program with the JV and 35 40 players is a great experience for them. Um, some kids Some soccer kids. I want to play all four years. And if they’re looking for that, they’ve got to do the research not only on the numbers at that school, but they got to drill down on the roster. Um, they, they, they’ve got to see, well, are there three or four players in my position already?

Uh, are there. 15 international guys playing and then five American guys sitting the bench in those 15 international guys are 24 25 years old. And that’s not the that’s not knocking those programs. It’s just the reality of college soccer and the reality of recruiting. Be very proactive. Reach out, make it personal.

Uh, 200 other coaches, uh, names on it, it doesn’t work. Does not carry as much weight as a kid emailing me or calling me and saying, I know a little bit about your program. I know a little bit about the direction that it’s going and I know you and I’m interested in you and your school that carries a whole lot more weight than a mass email.

Cause we get mass emails every single day. 

Matt: Absolutely. Well, great advice and, uh, really appreciate a coach again. Congratulations on a great season with both teams and, uh, looking forward to, to seeing you, you continue your [00:31:30] successes there. And hopefully if you get down to liquid ranch for any of the events down here, you’ll give me a shout and we’ll hang out.

All right. Great. We will Matt. 

Coach: Thank you very much. And I really appreciate you having, having us on. 

Matt: Thank you.