Northland College Men’s Soccer – Coach Greg Gilmore
On today’s episode, I speak with Coach Gilmore from the Northland Men’s Program in Wisconsin. We talk about how he recruits both attitude and talent. He describes the small school atmosphere and their wonderful facilities. Lastly, we discuss their heavy strength and conditioning routines in the offseason. Learn more about Northland College Men’s Soccer.
Matt: [00:00:00] Hi everybody. Welcome to Discover College Soccer. Today I’m lucky enough to be joined by Coach Greg Gilmore from Northland College. Welcome coach.
Coach: Thanks for having me, Matt.
Matt: Yeah, thanks for being here. I got a nice, uh, D three men’s program up there, uh, in Wisconsin and. We’ll start off by talking about the recruiting side of things.
It’s, you know, uh, as a former D three player, I got a little soft spot there for, for the D three programs, but, uh, are you still kind of cleaning up the end of your 23 class? Have you moved on completely to 20 fours? You know, we’re talking in March, so what’s the kind of timeframe of your typical recruiting?
Coach: So every year it’s kind of been different for me, I would say this year. I mean, my generic answer is I’m always looking. If I think there’s someone that can help us, maybe put us over the edge, help take us to the next level. I’m never gonna say no. We’ll find a way to make room. But you know, last year I brought in a 21 new players, so this year we’re not trying to, yeah, it was a lot.
We’re not trying to do that. We’re trying to bring in a pretty small recruiting class. We really like. the chemistry of our group right now. So we’re still looking, but we’re really only looking for probably two to three more guys right now. Okay.
Matt: Now, where do you like to try to find those players in terms of, uh, tournaments and things?
What are kind of some of the must hit venues that, that you go to?
Coach: You know, I’ve kind of changed it up every single year. Uh, I’ve usually gone to Florida at least once a [00:01:30] year. , uh, we usually like, we like to go down south a decent amount just because players down there, you know, they can play year round every single year.
Uh, the past two years we’ve hit the Pacific Northwest pretty hard. Uh, we got a couple talented players from, uh, Washington and Oregon. I think I’m pronouncing that right. I found out I was pronouncing it wrong for 30 years after getting some of those kids. But, uh, we really go all over. I mean, we got a pretty unique campus up here.
We’re one of those, you know, 600 person schools right on Lake Sphere. I think obviously at the small school setting, it’s not for everyone, but I’ve found there’s people just about everywhere that are open to it. I just gotta find them.
Matt: So I noticed on your roster you even got a fair amount of international students, which, uh, is not the norm for D three programs these days.
It’s more of a D two kind of thing. Uh, but so how are you finding international students? How are they finding. .
Coach: So we’ve, I’ve been lucky enough to kind of get in touch with a couple pretty big agencies over in England. Uh, one in particular, future elite sports that have that. They’ve been pretty good to us and they let us talk to a couple of their guys.
Uh, international, I mean, you said it best. It’s pretty rare at the division three level. And I, you know, I came from New England and when I came out here, I didn’t think international players played division threes cuz there were so many obstacles. The top two teams in our league, we’ve finished third for the last couple years.
You know, they’re loaded with international guys. Uh, there’s one team in our league that I think they usually only have four to five Americans, or [00:03:00] four to five Americans on their roster. Uh, it’s just all guys from South America. So, you know, we’ve really tried to dip into the international market. We’ve had a lot of luck over in England.
Uh, we’ve got a couple South Americans on our roster right now as. And for that it’s just about trying to, you know, really show them what we can offer here. And from there, just trying to make things work. And like I said, we’ve been lucky enough, I think we have around nine international guys right now.
We’ll never be one of those teams that, you know, is like 80 to 90% international. But we do like to, we like to have a pretty diverse roster. I think it’s helped our guys for, after they graduate, you know, we get four years of playing with guys from all sorts of different backgrounds. It’s gonna make things, it’s gonna make things a little bit easier when you move on to whatever guys wanna do for their careers, just cuz they’ve had to work with guys from such different upbringings, if that makes, makes sense.
Matt: Oh, oh yeah, absolutely. Well, how about camps? Do you guys do your own, do you and your staff work? Other camps? Do, do camps fit into your recruiting at all?
Coach: You know, I’ve probably been slacking on the camp side, if I’m being honest. We’re real far up here in terms of how northern we are, so we don’t get a whole lot of opportunities for camps in the springtime.
Uh, we like to travel a lot. Our school is, our school treats me pretty well when it comes to recruiting for travel. This weekend I’ll be in Denver at, uh, the Colorado, Colorado Rapids id. . Uh, so we go to a bunch of camps in the Midwest as well. There’s a ton of ID camps down in Minneapolis where usually me or one of my assistants is working.
So for guys that wanna meet [00:04:30] us, you know, we’re always willing to travel. We’re always looking to watch kids play at their club games, their high school games. Uh, but again, it’s a little bit limited. We haven’t offered a whole, we usually offer one camp a summer, but, uh, it’s not probably our biggest part of our recruiting.
Matt: Okay. Well, in terms of. , you know, talking to, to players, to coaches, to, to anybody out there, you know. Do you, do you talk to a lot of high school coaches to help you in recruiting a lot of club coaches? What are those relationships like and how important are they, uh, in your recruiting?
Coach: I’d say it’s mostly club.
I mean, I, when I graduated college, I, you know, I coached high school for two years, so I got nothing against high school coaches. The, the biggest challenge for us with high school, We’re so busy in the fall with our travel and our game, so we don’t get a whole lot of time to really build those connections.
Uh, but in terms of, you know, talking to club coaches, we really try to make things relationship driven. And we’re at a point now with our program where, , we don’t need the talent. We also need the right attitude. So we’re taking a lot of extra steps now that we maybe hadn’t done in the past to really make sure, not only are we getting the kid that’s gonna help us, technical ability wise, talent wise, but it’s also gonna be a good fit with the guys that we currently have.
Uh, you know, this program’s come a long ways over the last four years, so again, , this kid comes in that might have the skill but isn’t really gonna get along with the guys we have then we don’t want that. We want guys that are gonna be absolutely the right fit, cuz those are the [00:06:00] guys that are gonna make us better.
Matt: For sure. Well, and and to talk about that a little bit more, what is it that is kind of your hierarchy of things that you’re looking for, whether it’s on the field, attributes, off the field attributes, what is it that makes you want to bring a player into. .
Coach: I mean, we always want guys that are gonna make us better talent wise, but we need guys that are willing to work.
I think the last championship banner, this program has seen it’s way before my time. It’s in the gym. I think it’s from 1990, so I don’t, I’m glad that thing’s still standing there, but it’s long overdue that we hang another one. And I want guys that are gonna feel excited about. , you know, being able to hang that banner.
But I want guys that are gonna be excited about saying, I was the one that got that back up there. I was the first person to, you know, win a championship at Northland in the n NCAA era. We want guys to kind of appreciate the program’s past in a sense that they’re gonna be ones to keep changing it and moving it in a new positive direction.
And for the league we’re in. It just, it, it’s gonna take a lot of hard work and the guys that we’ve brought in the last three years have done a tremendous job. You know, we’ve. Getting higher and higher in the standings every single year. We tied the team that, uh, won the conference last year. We tied them twice, so we’re knocking on the door and we’re trying to just keep finding guys that, again, maybe they’re not upset that we haven’t been hanging banners.
We want guys that are excited about being the first to do so.
Matt: I love it. Well, as a parent, uh, you know, one of the things that I always have to ask coaches about is, okay, how, how much is this [00:07:30] gonna cost me? And as we all know, those, those D three programs tend to run a little bit more pricey than the, uh, the public state schools around.
Um, and being D three with no athletic money, parents are always looking for how, how are they gonna get to pay for this? So, not holding you to hard numbers here, but if you can just gimme an overview of. You know, what’s it cost to go there? What does the academic and other grant money look like? What, what would a, a family expect if they end up at Northland?
Coach: The biggest thing, the first thing I always tell families is don’t get hung up on the sticker price, which I’m sure most division private division three schools will say, cause the sticker price, I mean, it scared me when I was applying for the job. Here it’s, uh, I think it’s 54,000 right now. Our scholarship packages range from the mid twenties to I think low thirties.
And that’s just academic merit money right there. Uh, we do have need-based aid as well. Uh, what I tell families is there’s always gonna be a cost here, but if you’ve done well in high school, We can usually compete with the state schools. Now, we’re very rarely gonna beat the state schools, but again, if you have really good grades, there’s a pretty good chance that you might be paying the same here as you would be at, uh, UW Whitewater or something like that.
Matt: Okay. That’s not bad at all then. Well, let’s talk a little bit more than about the school, you know, besides what I can find on the website, what are some of the awesome things at Northland that, that you’d love to communicate to folks?
Coach: I mean, my biggest thing is the lake. I, you know, I’m from New Hampshire, complete different part of the country.
[00:09:00] And if someone told me five years ago like, Hey, you’re gonna own a house in Ashland, Wisconsin, I would’ve been like, you’re absolutely crazy outta your mind. Uh, you know, I came out here, uh, just I saw the stadium that we had. We have an 11 million stadium. I kind of saw an opportunity where this program could get a lot better, really fast.
I jumped on it and I gotta be honest, the lake, kind of the community out here, it’s really grown on me. Uh, I mentioned I bought my house. Me and my fiance are kind of starting to plan pretty long term here. Uh, it’s a smaller school, around 600 students. Uh, I went to a small school, so I really like the environment that we have in terms of the personal attention you get from professors.
Also personal attention you get from people like me. Uh, I love it here. Uh, again, I know I’ve said it a couple times, a stadium, you’re gonna be really hard pressed to find a Division three stadium as good as our, it’s an 11 million facility that was built in 2017. , uh, kind of around that same time, the school started really pumping money in new athletic facilities.
We got a brand new, uh, fitness center, I wanna say in 2018. Again, I came here in 2019. Some of my dates are slightly off, but for a small school we, we give our athletes a lot. And I think, you know, if you’re one of those people that wants that kind of one-to-one small class size environment, uh, you usually don’t get the kind of facilities that we have.
So I think it’s a good fit for a lot of people.
Matt: Sounds amazing. Um, I love the Great Lakes, so, so I’ve, having grown up in Ohio, I’ve been near ’em. It’s, it’s [00:10:30] a, it’s an
Coach: awesome,
Matt: awesome set of, uh, set of water up there.
Coach: But, um, now storms can be a little bit different. That’s, that’s one thing I wasn’t ready for.
Uh, maybe why I’m in survive
Matt: though, Florida, you know, I don’t have to worry about that. But anyway, um, Well, we talk about the, the facilities in the school, but let’s talk a little bit about academics as well. Um, you know, for a lot of students making the transition from high school to college, kind of balancing their sport commitments and their studies can be difficult.
So, you know, how do your student athletes really, really make those, uh, those balances in between? And what kind of support systems does the school offer to help ’em?
Coach: I’d say probably the biggest support system is kind of just, uh, in terms of the sizes, the relationships that I have with professors as well.
Uh, and again, that just comes from the size of our school as well as the attitude. Um, when you go on a smaller campus like ours, it’s really important that we’re able to look after kind of all our students. So if a guy is struggling in class a little bit more often than not, I’m gonna find out long before it becomes an issue that we can’t still, where we don’t have time to turn things around usually.
Maybe it’s a bad quiz. Professor’s gonna shoot me an email and we’re gonna be able to talk about it and try to turn things around before a little problem becomes a major problem. We try to be proactive as a coaching staff as well. We usually do one to two study halls a week. Uh, varies a little bit on our travel schedule.
Uh, sometimes we’ve done study halls at a hotel. Uh, you know, if we have back to back and we’re gone two days. I wasn’t the greatest [00:12:00] student in high school and my college experience, my college coach as someone who I give a lot of credit for. Change in the direction and as well as my attitude in life. And so I’ve tried to kind of take some of those approaches and some of the things he did and bring it into my own coaching style.
It’s really important to us as a staff that we’re setting our guys up to kind of have an experience at Northland, that it’s not just about those four years on the field, we want our guys to leave here. You know, learning accountability, just I want the experience here to pay dividends for them long after they.
Matt: Oh, it’s a great way to, to look at it. Well, you, you mentioned a little there about, about schedule and, and when things are, so can you take me back to the fall and kind of walk me through what does a typical week look like in terms of classes, practice, games, meals, all those kinds of things? Yep.
Coach: So our guys are almost always done by class around two to three o’clock.
Obviously, it depends a little bit on their schedule. . I like the later practices. Uh, again, I, I don’t have kids or anything, so I can do some things that not every coach can do. So we’re practicing at seven o’clock at night, most normal days. Uh, I like that because it gives guys a little bit of break after classes.
You know, maybe you just had a really tough geometry class. I don’t know, throwing out a random one, random test. You get a little bit of downtime. Now, obviously, sometimes we might be watching film in that downtime. Might be going over some tactical things before a game, but more often than not, guys get a little bit of, little bit of a break before we start training.
Uh, [00:13:30] but once seven o’clock hits little stadium, lights are on and we’re ready to go for the next two hours. Pretty hard. Uh, more often than not, we’re training or playing a game six days a week. So the fall’s, the fall’s pretty busy.
Matt: Yeah. I, I, I, that much I remember as a student athlete. Definitely busy. Well, in terms, The team itself.
Let’s, let’s shift gears and talk more about that. You said you brought in 21 players last year. Is, is there a roster size that you find is ideal that you’re trying to hit each year?
Coach: Um, you know, 21 wasn’t the plan last year. The plan was to bring in kind of like 14, 15, and we got a couple guys really late that we just didn’t feel like we could say no to.
So we ended up with 30, 35 guys on the roster last year. We’re actually trying to trim that down. Our goal is to only really have 28 guys this upcoming year. It’s, it’s important to me that I can have a strong relationship with all our players. . And for me, I know every coach is different, but once we get into that kind of like forties range, it, it just doesn’t work for me.
It doesn’t feel like it’s the same coach player relationship. Again, this is a small school, so I want to try to buy into what small schools are supposed to be able to offer on the relationship side of things. So again, our, my magic numbers personally around 28. Uh, sometimes it might be a little bit over, sometimes it might be a little bit less.
we always want to have the ability to play 11 B 11 at training, but we also don’t want [00:15:00] guys that are so far down on the death chart where they have no hope of getting minutes. We, we really want everyone to be able to be in a position, uh, hopefully think that they can impact games every day.
Matt: Makes sense.
Well, what about, uh, your staff? How big is your staff? What role does everybody pay? What role does everybody play there?
Coach: Uh, we got two assistants. One’s been here a long time and, uh, coach q I apologize, I don’t remember how long, but you were here before me and I guess I gotta study up my homework a little bit there.
But, uh, I also, one of my previous captains, uh, Lee Dennis, he is been our assistant for this past year. Uh, he is also a local, uh, coach is the girls varsity team in town. Cause Wisconsin, they do high school girls soccer in spring. Uh, both are part-time here, but you know, Lee’s got an office here so he is got a pretty big presence on campus as well.
Uh, in terms of roles, I mean, I really dunno how to say it. I’m usually running the show at training but Lee’s at the point where I can turn the team over to him and I might take the goalies from time to time cuz. I like to be pretty hands on with our keepers as well. Uh, all our coaches have gone through a pretty decent amount of coaching courses and everything, so they’re all pretty active in at any point in time with the proper planning and everything.
I trust them to run the team if I wasn’t there, but of course I’m always gonna be there. Uh, they also, one thing I will add is they understand what we’re doing in terms of relationships. I mean, Lee’s got a pretty big advantage cuz he’s played with some of these guys. I mean, he [00:16:30] was a captain here for three years, so he gets it.
He knows. , it’s already got a pretty good foundation with some of these guys, but understand what it’s like to be a college student. They understand, uh, the pressures, uh, some of the challenges and everything, and we’re always trying to look out for our guys, and we’re always looking for any time where we can make, make their lives easier.
Matt: Sounds good. Well, let’s talk a little bit more about your style of coaching and the team style of play. What can you tell me about.
Coach: Uh, we want to keep the ball, we wanna press, uh, I think I mentioned earlier, one of the biggest things I look for is hard work. Uh, we really don’t want to be a team that sits in, we wanna be a team that defensively is pretty aggressive, high up the field.
Uh, we put a pretty big emphasis on fitness in the off season. Cause at this level, if you’re gonna, if you’re gonna press, you’re gonna be aggressive. You’ve got you, you absolutely have to be super fit. Uh, we take a lot of our fitness testing from other programs to be honest. Uh, I looked at what Stanford used to do for fitness testing.
Uh, we looked at a couple things that the US National team used to do. Uh, some of my own stuff as well. But kind of anything we do in there, we make sure that there’s actually a history of, or a track record of success. . Uh, the other thing is we also want to give our guys a little bit of freedom. Uh, we usually play something out of a 4 33, but we want our wingers to have the freedom to go inside.
We want our center mids to have the freedom to run beyond. Uh, we don’t want guys kind of overthinking the game, if that makes sense. We want [00:18:00] guys to be brave. If they think they see something that’s on, go for it. And if not, you know, we’ll watch it in film and we’ll try to learn.
Matt: Okay, well you, you mentioned a little bit there about off-season.
You, we are in it now, right here in March. So what does your typical off-season program look like for the players?
Coach: Pretty heavy in strength and conditioning. Uh, we expect our guys to be lifting three to four times a week. Uh, we guide them throughout that process as well. Uh, we give them benchmarks to go for.
We make sure we do a decent amount of strength and conditioning in the fall as well. So our guys are trained, uh, they’re doing things the right way. They’re also doing things the safe way as well. Uh, we’re gonna start our spring season, hopefully next week. We might have to push it back for two weeks.
Depends on mother Nature right now. . But the goal is that over the, kind of the last two months, our guys have been doing enough where once spring season starts, we’re able to hit the ground running. Uh, we don’t really want a ramp up period. Our guys are expected on day one to be fit and ready to go. And this spring we’re actually traveling up to play Northern Michigan, uh, pretty big Division two school.
So if our guys aren’t fitting ready, we’re gonna have some problems in a couple weeks. Yeah, that
Matt: I could see that being, being tough. Uh, Well, We’ve covered a lot of ground. Uh, we’ve talked about a lot of different things, but I always like to end these the same way and that’s what didn’t we talk about.
What else would you like folks to know, whether that’s about the college recruiting process, whether it’s about Northland, your team or anything else? I’ll leave you with the last word.
Coach: Yeah, I mean for, you know, for anyone that wants to [00:19:30] consider a small school and, you know, isn’t afraid of a couple snowstorms here and there in the wintertime, I think this is truly a great place.
Uh, it’s gorgeous. It’s on the lake and, you know, I talked about the facilities. It’s kind of, it’s very, it’s a very unique spot. Probably the one thing I’m most proud of is the progress this pro program has made over the last four years. You know, uh, I inherited a team that, you know, they think they were finishing dead last in the umac.
I don’t know, over a decade I didn’t look back that far. And the past few years we’ve been in third and you knocked out of the semi-finals three years in a row now. So for anyone that you know, wants to help take, help us take the next step, you know, this is a great spot. I think as a staff, as a school, we do a lot for our players at a couple kids, uh, go us USL two in the summer, N P S L.
So, you know, we take the development side seriously and we really want our guys to, you know, become the best version of themselves.
Matt: Great. Well, coach, wish you the best of luck in the upcoming season in the fall, and uh, hopefully you can crack that, that semi-finals piece and make it to the finals and, and start hanging banners.
So, good luck coach. I hope. Thank you.
Coach: Thank you.
