Millikin University Men’s Soccer – Coach Charlie Ward

On today’s episode, I speak with Coach Ward from the Millikin Men’s Program in Illinois. We talk about recruiting as a new coach to fill this year’s roster. He describes the small school with big campus vibes. Lastly, we discuss how he likes to play an exciting, aggressive, forward thinking style of soccer. Learn more about Millikin University Men’s Soccer.

Matt: [00:00:00] Hi everybody. Welcome to discover college soccer today. I’m lucky enough to be joined by coach ward from Millikin university in Illinois. Welcome coach. 

Coach: Thanks for having me, Matt. Yeah. 

Matt: Thanks for being here. I, I, I got to talk to your predecessor a couple of years ago, but, uh, you know, that’s why we keep, keep rolling this podcast because coaches change and things change, but, uh, you know, we try to stay up to date as much as we can, so it’s good to, to get the new gaffer on here.

So, um, yes, sir. We’re, we’re talking here beginning of July. Um, I think you, you, you, When did you, when did you start there? 

Coach: Uh, December the 4th was my first day. So got on campus and then we, uh, we broke up for Christmas break the week after, so I got in, but I guess it didn’t really start until the January.

Matt: Okay. So this’ll be kind of your, probably your, your first real recruiting class, and it’s only kind of half there cause you started in January. Huh? So what was it like kind of trying to bring in that recruiting class starting in late December for, for this fall? 

Coach: I already had a lot of players on my radar, um, from my previous school.

Um, and on, I’d say the first two days that I got in, I inherited a graduate assistant and, uh, we just went, Hey, here’s my list of kids that I’ve seen. Here’s Mitch’s list of kids he’s seen. And we just spent two days there must have been like 150 kids in total just going through film It’s like all right.

Why do you like this kid? Do we need him? What do we have and then just crossing [00:01:30] names off the list and creating a third list of kids like hey Here’s the kids we’re gonna focus on. Um, and we probably got that list down to I’d say 40 kids that we, we started to look at, um, and, and try and speak to, and I’d say we probably got, we’ve got nine signed right now.

I think we got four, maybe five of those. Um, so it was, it was, it was a worthwhile exercise. 

Matt: Yeah, it sounds like it. So of the other half, kind of, where did those come from? Were you going out to events, talking to high school coaches, club coaches? What kind of what was that process for you? 

Coach: Yeah. So we, um, we picked up two local guys, um, literally from Decatur 11 15 minutes, one way, 1 15 minutes the other way.

So, um, they were pretty easy to see. Um, and then, uh, we had, What, three weeks ago, I went out to a Lindenwood camp, saw a kid there for the first time, I was like, hey, I’ve done a bit of background on you, um, I liked what I saw at a camp. He’s from California, so he’s coming, coming a fair way. But, um, we had, we had a good probably two hour phone call on the Thursday night.

I saw him on the Sunday and he decided, Hey, I’m going to come on the Friday morning. So a little bit of an expedited process, but you know, we, we liked him, um, and thought he was a decent player. So we got him. Um, and again, the rest of it just popping out to events and Um, watching, watching games online, seeing people in person, [00:03:00] trying to figure out what kind of fit they would be.

And then, and then going from that. 

Matt: Now are you kind of doing that while also simultaneously looking at 25s, 26s and kind of doing your future planning or was it kind of, we got to get this one done before we work on anything else. 

Coach: Yeah, I was, it was, let’s do this first. Um, yeah. We had a couple of 25s in the background, you know, when, when you’re watching these teams, you’ve got a mixture of 24, 25, some 26 is, um, so we kind of had notes on, but I hadn’t started any solid conversations with 25s until about two weeks ago is when I’d say we officially started that 25 recruiting class.

Um, But we, we don’t open our applications to come to the school until August 1st. So it’s kind of just feeling out and taking in as many options we can. But again, we’ve probably got, you know, we got a fair few interested and we’ve got, you know, three or four that we, we would really like to sign and get that done as soon as possible.

So, um, you know, once we, once we get into season, I don’t like to do too much recruiting. Um, or too much new recruiting rather, um, until the season’s finished, trying to focus on the guys that we already have in the building and making sure we have a good season. So people want to join us next season. 

Matt: Yeah, for sure.

Well, one of the things I looked at your, your roster here for the fall, one thing that’s a little bit unique compared to a lot of division three schools is you had a handful of international players. Uh, yeah, is that, is [00:04:30] that, is that by design by accident, you know, is that something that, uh, you consider continuing to occur or what’s that like for you guys?

Coach: Um, I love the international players. Um, we’ve brought in. We’ve got one of our nine is, is international. And then potentially one more Norwegian that’s as a friend of a, of an existing player. Um, I inherited the roster with those internationals and, you know, credit to the previous coaching staff to bring those in.

Cause they are some very, very good players. Um, and, uh, looking for the future, um, our international tuition has changed slightly. Um, so it’s going to be harder to find them. Um, with, with the budget that we’re going to need, but if we can find them, we’ll bring them in if, if they’re a good fit and you know, it works for them financially, but I would expect to see us be heavily domestic, um, moving forward.

Yeah. 

Matt: Well, it’s, that’s pretty, pretty standard for division three. Not, uh, not, not, not too, too different. Well, you mentioned a Lindenwood camp. Do you guys do your own ID camps or maybe not yet, but, or planning to, cause you just kind of came in or. 

Coach: Yeah. So Millikin’s had ID camps in the past. Um, they didn’t run one last year.

We’re bringing it back this year. We’re going August the 10th. Um, so it’s a little bit later than I would like. It’s kind of getting into high school season for some guys, so they can’t come, but we’ve still got a good amount of kids interested, um, that we’ve invited cause we’ve seen them out on the road.

And it’s like, Hey, we want to see a little bit more than you. We want to [00:06:00] get to work with you personally. Um, and then some kids that we have signed up that we’ve never come across before. So that’s exciting too. Um, typically. Um, Millikin signed, you know, three or four players from each of their ID camps in the past, so we’d like to continue that because it really helps our recruiting budget if we get to work with you and, you know, really get a feel for the kind of player that you are.

Matt: Okay. Well, whether it’s camp or watching a player at an event or anything like that, kind of, what makes up the hierarchy of things that you’re looking for in a player, whether that’s on the field stuff or off the field attributes? 

Coach: So the first thing we do is figure out kind of what role you would play for us.

You know, do we see you as a project player? Do we see you like, Hey, you’re going to have to, you’re probably not going to play this year, but next year, you know, we can fill a gap, um, and just have you kind of that experience around college. Um, then we’re going to figure out kind of where your attitudes at like, Hey, you’re going to be a role player this year.

Are you mentally equipped to deal with that? Cause you’re, you’re the best player on your club team. You’re the best player on your high school team, but we’ve got a senior that is. You know, defensive player of the year. You’re not going to play over him this year. Um, so figuring out kind of where your mentality lies with what we are expecting.

Now, that can change further down the line, but, um, how are you going to deal with that adversity, to say. Um, then after that, it’s kind of your willingness, like, you know, It’s division three soccer. A lot of people, [00:07:30] you know, are, you know, not wired to say, Hey, yeah, I want to go and play division three. It’s like, yeah, I want to do division one.

Oh, then I’m going to go division two. There’s, there’s some kids that, you know, are hardwired. Like I just want to play division three is my best option. Let’s go. We want to find those kids. Um, and then, you know, later down the line, do we re circle back to those kids if, if they had good attitude and tick some of the previous boxes, um, the world for us.

Matt: Okay. Well, let’s talk a little bit more about the school. Um, you know, sure. Some folks not familiar with Decatur, Illinois, uh, and Millikin. So, you know, you’ve, you’ve been there six months now. Kind of what drew you to the position? What have you learned and kind of learned to love about the school so far?

Coach: Yeah. So the reason I took the job was it was. It was right down the road from where I was previously. Um, I was in Springfield, Illinois. Um, it was the head coaching job. The AD made me feel like he really wanted me, or at least was interested enough to, you know, put the effort in. It was like, hey, this could actually happen.

Um, I went on campus and it gave me like this, It’s a small school, but gave me big campus vibes. Um, a lot of big new buildings, everything’s kind of quite tied in. So it makes it seem a lot bigger than it actually is. Um, I spoke to some of the other coaches. Uh, I spoke to the baseball coach and he’s like, Hey, this is somewhere to be.

I took this job for the first time, head coach 11 years ago. Um, and this is kind of what we turned the program into. So I saw a vision where, you know, if I want to [00:09:00] do something and try and be successful. The mold is there. Um, I spoke to some of the professors about the majors. I spoke to some of the other coaches about the majors, kind of typically what people are studying and what’s good.

And when you look online at the different majors we offer, even if it’s we have some three plus two engineering programs. We can kind of get most kids, um, if engineering, we offer these three plus two programs with like UMKC or Wash U who are two really good schools. So you can kind of use us as a pathway in.

Um, and if I’m going to have you for three years as a player, it’s better than not having you at all. Right. So, um, academically, it lined up with my recruiting philosophy of, you know, kind of being able to bring in whoever we want. 

Matt: No, that does sound pretty, pretty cool with those programs. Well, speaking of academics, you know, that can be kind of a challenging component for a player coming in fresh into college balancing being a collegiate athlete as well as as their studies.

So how do your student athletes really make sure they’re balancing both things? What kind of support systems does the school offer to help students, you know, be. Be good in the classroom as well as the field. 

Coach: Absolutely. So we’ve got our registrar is actually heavily involved with like the student progress.

So he’s watching, you know, a GPA is falling below where they should be. Um, a grades coming in. We also have, I think it’s called the student success center where people can [00:10:30] go and just talk through it. If it’s like, Hey, I’m really struggling with time management. There we go. Go and see those. We have the math center.

We have the writing center. So we’ve got kind of everything covered. Um, if, if you, you know, struggling to do the math or the, the computer science kind of basis stuff, you can go and see them if you’ve got all the ideas, but you just can’t put it on paper. And you’ve got like this, this writing center that can go and help you articulate your ideas and actually make it coherent.

Um, we, we’ll be doing study tables. Um, so my policy is if you, if you didn’t have a 3. 0 in your previous college semester, you’re going to come in and do an hour and a half a week study table. Um, now with our class schedule, it’s, it’s kind of all over the place, so we’ll have a set time, but also guys can do drop in sessions in, in either myself or my assistant’s office and, you know, just do that hour and a half.

Um, so what I say is, hey, if you get a 3. 0 in your freshman, first freshman semester, I don’t have to see you for that study table in spring, but if you drop back down, I’m gonna have you back. So yeah, the 3. 0 stay high on the academics and I won’t have to deal with your academics for the next four years.

Um, so we’ll, we’ll see how that goes. Um, I’ve done something similar with other coaches as an assistant. So we’ll see if I can, you know, implement it myself successfully. 

Matt: Well, let’s fast forward to October, part of that season, kind of walk me through what you envision, uh, a week [00:12:00] schedule looking like in terms of winter classes, meals, practices, game cadence, all that stuff.

Coach: Yeah, so our class schedule is kind of all over the place. We have classes all throughout the day. Um, so we’ll, we’ll train in the evening. Um, you know, there’s, there’s two kids that are going to have labs, um, on a Wednesday, so they’ll miss, um, If we’re training, so we have to get two weeks where we don’t have Wednesday games, they’ll miss those training sessions.

But for the most part, we’ll be able to get everyone there in the evenings. Um, we’ll have, you know, a decent sized roster study. So we’ll be doing a lot of playing, um, and small sided games. Then once we get meals, You know, meals, everyone will eat before training, you know, breakfast, lunch, um, whatever they do.

Sometimes I try to go in there out and eat with the guys in the, in the school canteen. Um, but the schedule is pretty much flexible. Um, right now they have our orientation days where they’re scheduling classes. They already have our training schedule so that they can try and schedule around it. If that makes sense.

If there’s a class they can take, Hey, take it in the spring and take this one now, cause they don’t offer it. So they’re, they’re reasonably flexible with us. Um, but obviously academics takes the priority, right? 

Matt: Okay, well, let’s talk more about the team. I mean, I know it’s your first recruiting cycle, so maybe it’s not exactly the way you want it.

But what do you envision that [00:13:30] roster size looking like? What’s your kind of ideal number for that? 

Coach: Well, we’ll sit somewhere between 32 and 35. Um, and so at the moment we’re at 31. We’ve got five goalkeepers. Um, so, you know, that 26 number is pretty good. Uh, we’ve got some guys that, you know, they know they’re going to need a year as freshmen, which is great because we’ve got eight seniors.

So once we get, they’ll, they’ll take a lot of minutes for sure. And then once we get them out, it’s going to be, you know, how are we going to re recruit to fill those positions? Um, looking at, um, this year, I think our freshmen could contribute. Um, and I think I’m going to need them to, uh, you know, a little bit light in some areas, a little bit top heavy and others that that’s, that’s just how it is.

You know, we’ll, we’ll take probably another year to. balance those numbers out. But I think we’ll still be around that 32 35 number. Um, I think it gives us enough depth, um, to cover the eventual injuries. If we get any suspensions, any of that kind of stuff we should be set. Um, I know they had a low number last year and that just gives me the gives me the shivers.

But I’m thinking I’m kind of coming in with three goalkeepers and I got 24 players. It’s like so, you know, being healthy and being competitive so that we can continue to train at high level when we want to at the start of the week. But also having enough options off the bench where, you know, I can change things.

And it’s not my, my set 11 isn’t going to be my set 11. If people aren’t at the level [00:15:00] we can shop and change and, you know, give people opportunities to prove themselves. 

Matt: Well, besides roster size of players, there’s roster size of staff. So talk to me about your, your staff. What role does everybody play?

Maybe what other support staff are in the athletic department that help out with the team? 

Coach: Yeah, absolutely. So obviously you’ve got myself and then my, my assistant, Mitch. Um, I inherited him from the last staff as a graduate assistant. Uh, we’ve kept him on, on this year and, uh, we’ll kind of see how his timeline lines up, whether we can keep him.

Is, um, He’s a little bit of a quieter guy, which is nice because we can, we kind of balance ourselves out. He has a great relationship with the guys. Um, and his help in the transition was, was massive. Um, he’s a great recruiter. Like I say, he brought in this list of guys that he was kind of talking to or had seen.

And it’s like, these are good players, Mitch. Like we, we were probably looking at this caliber, you know, I was at division two school, top division two school looking at similar kind of players. So, um, I knew that he had a good eye for talent. Um, we have our strength and conditioning coach, uh, Nate, who is the women’s assistant.

He is, um, you know, he’s got his exercise science undergrad and graduate degrees. So he knows what he’s doing. He plans all of our strength and conditioning. Um, I’m that’s not my, not my wheelhouse. So I, he kind of says, Hey, you, you, are you wanting to lift here and kind of what do you want from it? And he figures out the rest and he put together a great summer program, put together a great spring program for the guys that, Um, you know, I really liked and the guys are bought into, we [00:16:30] have our athletic trainer, uh, this season.

We’re going to have, uh, he’s actually our head athletic trainer. So he deals with all our injuries. He’s a no nonsense, nonsense guy. Um, so that’ll be good in terms of, you know, keeping guys where they need to be and there’ll be no excuses. And I like Ben for that. And I’ve spoken to him a couple of times about what that full season is going to look like.

So again, excited. Um, and then, you know, we have our sports information guys that will deal with the media stuff. Um, and we, we hoping that we’re going to have a manager or two that can kind of do some fun things. Expand their portfolio while making our program look a little bit better on the social media side of things.

Matt: Okay. Well, what about you? Uh, what’s your style of coaching? What style of play do you, you know, think you guys are going to look to play and that sort of thing? 

Coach: Don’t want to give away all my secrets, but, um, we, we try to be problem solvers. Now, one of the first things I told the guys was like, if I’m, if I was sitting in the stands watching, I want to be excited.

I want us to be aggressive, forward thinking. Um, You know, and they’re going to be times where we have to deviate from that. If we’re being absolutely pummeled and we have to sit in and be compact and just defend for our lives, then we’re going to do it. But if we can, um, see problems or see situations, Hey, we’re being pressed really high.

Can we play longer? Not necessarily forward, but can we try and skip some lines and just play? Um, and our guys have really bought into that. We’ve got some really intelligent [00:18:00] players. So the challenge is going to be making sure that when we’re recruiting, we’re hitting the nail with, you know, guys that can see things and think and tell me why.

If I say, Hey, why did you do that? You might have done the perfect thing, but I want to know why you did it. Um, so having guys that have a good kind of internal reflection so we can work through, um, hey, this is what you did. We see it on film. We see it live. Would you do the same thing? Why? Um, I’m just going through that little process.

Um, I like to think I’m high energy. Um, and mainly positive. Um, we’ll see how that goes and see if I can keep that up. I’m sure, um, I think I can even when things are good and bad. So, um, and then just connecting with the players the best way we can, you know, at the end of the day, there’s still people, so can we get our desired outcomes?

Um, as people, before we even think about the soccer, you know, are we bought in, are we doing it? And then the results will come. 

Matt: Yeah, for sure. Well, you did get to be there for a, an off season, a spring season. So talk to me about what, what does your spring season look like? You know, I’m assuming. Next spring may look different than this spring, but kind of give me an idea of what that off season looks like for you guys.

Coach: Yeah. So I was, it was a new thing for me. We only get 24 training sessions, which I know was, was increased this year for division three and then the one game. So I was trying to think, how do we, how do we build up to something where. You know, we can actually [00:19:30] go into play the style that I think we want to play.

So we did a lot of, we had a small number, uh, in the spring. So we had to balance that. We didn’t actually go 11, 11 via 11 once. So it was a lot of small sided, seven, seven, just implementing ideas. And the way, well, what we did was we played the division two school. Um, that’s 40 minutes away. That I was the assistant coach at, so we just built up everything into, Hey, this is how they’re going to play, uh, sorry, how we’re going to play.

And then that final week, we kind of had a guess at what we thought they were going to do to show our guys, Hey, this is how we’re going to build. In, in season, this is, you know, how we’re going to scout. This is how we’re going to do film. This is what we’re looking for. This is how things are going to look like for you guys.

And then we went and played them and, you know, we got lucky because they had a new head coach as well. Um, we got lucky that the style fitted what we were expecting. So the guys saw, Hey, this is what we can expect to see. And this is what we got. Um, it would have been interesting to see if we’d have got it wrong in our predictions, how we are, the coaching staff would have portrayed, you know, Hey, the changes that we needed to make to the guys.

Um, but you know, that, that’ll be a challenge for early preseason, um, and early season games. Um, but like I said, lots of small sided games, lots of touches on the ball and just trying to make it as fun as possible. Um, and encouraging those new habits that we want to see from the guys where, you know, maybe I’m a little bit different from the previous head coach and, you know, certain things I want more of, and certain things I want less of.

So just trying [00:21:00] to be positive in those respects. 

Matt: Okay. Got one last question for you. You know, you, you, you were assistant at a previous, uh, institution. You’re, you’re, you’re here now. If you, if you could give potential student athletes kind of one piece of advice as they’re going through this process, what would that be?

Coach: Uh, don’t close any doors. You know, you, you see it a lot where coaches move around and. In some cases, hey, you weren’t good enough for this school, but you’re going to be great for this school. You didn’t have the academic profile for this school, but hey, I’m going to reach out and say, hey, we have your major here.

Do you want to come and play if you kind of don’t reply to coaches and miss out on opportunities? You never know how that’s going to come back around and affect you. Um, you know, there’s a couple of guys I had great relationships with that. You know, I gave, I saw them in the transfer portal or they were high school seniors that, you know, we weren’t going after in previous school.

Hey, do you want, you want to link up? Do you want to come here? And we had plenty of guys come on visits. So definitely keep your mind open to everything because different things, like we say, the reason we do this, you know, not many people have heard of Millikin. So how do we raise awareness or bring guys in that, you know, haven’t heard of it before?

Matt: For sure. Well, thanks coach. Really appreciate it. Wish you the best of luck as you embark on this first full season. And, uh, we’ll check in and see how you guys do. All right. Thank you, Matt. Appreciate you.