Oakton Community College Women’s Soccer – Coach Tristram Bisgrove
On today’s episode, I speak with Coach Tristram Bisgrove from the Oakton Community College Women’s Program in Illinois. We talk about how he likes having recruits train as part of their tour. He describes the school’s beautiful camps that’s only minutes from a bustling city. Lastly, we discuss how the great support from the school and athletic department. Learn more about Oakton Community College Women’s Soccer.
[00:00:00] Matt: Hi, everybody. Welcome to discover college soccer today. I’m lucky enough to be joined by coach Bisgrove from Oakton community college in Illinois. Welcome coach. How’s it going telling me? Oh, thank you for being here. We’re doing well. Um, you have the, the women’s team over there and I, I guess, uh, when now, when did you officially get the gig?
[00:00:19] Coach: So officially it was May 10th of this.
[00:00:24] Matt: Oh, wow. So you were a brand span and new . Um, well, so a lot of the questions then will be how you plan to do things in the future since you, or if you’ve had other stops, uh, as a college coach and you wanna lean on that experience, we can do that as well. Um, but you know, first.
[00:00:43] Set of questions. I’m gonna talk about more on the recruiting trail and especially at the Juco level, you know, you guys gotta do it twice as much as everybody else, uh, reload the roster yeah. With half the budget. Right. So, um, you know, when do you really start talking to players? Uh, you know, I know it’s kind of, you’re always talking to players, but in terms of what year in high school, uh, what, what does kind of your typical recruiting cycle maybe look like.
[00:01:11] Coach: So for example right now, oh, this last year, I mean, coming in, in may, I had to, uh, had to kind of stop gap it. We had eight players, six either graduated or transferred out, um, before I got hired and it was one of those COVID through wrench and everything. Um, you know, to your college, everybody kind of graduates out or decides, you know what, they’re gonna go a different path.
[00:01:37] So. Uh, brought in some warm bodies, some fresh faces, um, and it it’s varied. Uh, we’ve got, I, I talked to, to one woman who decided to go back to school 35 year old. So we just gotta make sure she’s finished enrolling and gets her, uh, her physical done. And she’s good to go. I mean, I, I just coached club for this last, uh, this last summer.
[00:02:03] And we had ranging from 19 year olds to 43 year olds. So nothing new, I, I kind of like the input. She’s gonna be able to, to offer the insight she’s gonna be able to offer. Um, so that’s interesting. Um, but it it’s diverse. Um, I’ve had, uh, I’ve had students reaching out to me that are not planning on graduating until 20 25, 20 26.
[00:02:26] Um, I have temper it for ’em. I mean, one of my biggest things, I wanna be honest with players. Um, if you’re coming to me, we don’t have dorms. You got some nice ones, like, uh, Cape Fear. What have you have have their dorms? We don’t, we got apartments nearby, but realistically that’s, that’s just not, not gonna do it for most people that are coming to community college.
[00:02:47] Uh, so the, the 25 and 26 graduates. You know, Hey, come on by take a look. If you’re close, um, I’ll try to, you know, invite you to get you a tour. The nice thing about Juco is that they can jump right into a practice with us as part of their tour. Uh, so it’s a nice way to, you know, experience me as a coach, my assistant, um, and, and get a feel for the team and the culture we’re developing.
[00:03:11] Um, that said, I just wanna keep him on my radar. Got my nice trusty Calendar and schedule off here to the side. Uh, it’s one of those ones I’ll circle back. See if they’re still interested. Um, see if we’re still on the radar. Mostly I’m like right now, I’m still recruiting for this year, if anybody’s late to the, to the table.
[00:03:31] Um, and then I’m looking at 20 threes with a site on 20 fours as well. So we can kind of get an idea of where they’re, I mean this since may, uh, five tournaments. I’ve attended and scouted. Wow. Um, yeah, my wife’s happy I get out of the house and I don’t have to talk to her about soccer. So , can’t really complain about that.
[00:03:51] Yeah.
[00:03:52] Matt: Yeah. Well, speaking of tournaments, you know, I mean, obviously you don’t really want to be, uh, focusing all your recruiting in the may, June window, but during this next, you know, next 12 months, you know, what are some of the. The tournaments that you plan on hitting kind of your, your must attend events or, you know, are there, are, are you focused a lot on, on high school stuff or are there different leagues that maybe you’re attending or different tournaments you’re attend that maybe most people wouldn’t think of a college attending or, or what’s it kinda look like for you?
[00:04:26] I,
[00:04:26] Coach: I was just at one, um, Down to Lockport, uh, Chicago winter tournament about a month and a half ago, really well run, uh, considering it was like one of my first tournaments I attended blew it out. The water I ton of great players. Uh, I was talking to UW green bay. I was talking to, I, I would, my first run to college was E IU.
[00:04:48] So I was talking to a couple of the coaches from the IU. Uh, so yeah, everyone from division one Caltech was there. Um, but all the way down to. Some of the other local jucos were in attendance. So they had a, a nice variety there. Good 30, 40 coaches there, but conversely, I’ve been to somewhere. I’m the only one, uh, this weekend I’ve got, uh, eclipse yeah.
[00:05:10] Challenge. Yeah. Of Waukegan. I’m going up to, uh, I’ve got another one. Uh, PNE Celtic is next month and then I’ve got another one in November, but I, I try to stay local. So it’s the kids kind of know us or if they don’t. They’re gonna hear about us.
[00:05:28] Matt: Yeah. So what is, you know, a lot of times, most people think on the junior college route that it’s predominantly local kids, but do you, do you look for anything outta state?
[00:05:38] Do you have any sort of, uh, interest from outta state players or international players or
[00:05:43] Coach: anything like that? I I’ve had interest from them. Um, I studied abroad for a year, uh, in Germany. So I had two students that were German just randomly reached out. So I called ’em up, talked to ’em. Um, we weren’t gonna be a good fit for them, but, uh, I, with our school, um, we don’t go out of our way to recruit the international and we don’t go out our way to recruit probably more than a hundred miles from here.
[00:06:10] Uh, a lot of our students, the population is, is driving the school or they’ve got Royals in the. So they move in with them. They stay with ’em so they can, you know, play a little bit longer and maybe refine the skills a little bit more before they make that jump to NAI or, you know, D three D two D one, you know, keep the budget a little low.
[00:06:30] Uh, the introduction I had with my, my current roster this year, uh, last week was nearly to a T cost. They just, they can’t afford it. I mean, you’re looking at 40, 50,000. I’m sure you can financial aid it, but. We’re for a local student, about 10,000 for a year. That’s, that’s tough to beat and we’ve got a pretty decent scholarship budget.
[00:06:55] I was actually kind of surprised when they hired me and they said here, you’ve got this to work with. Um, we can offset quite a bit for students, um, that are local to us outside of that, then you start pushing the outside of our district. You start pushing the, the costs of your four years that are in the area.
[00:07:12] Matt: So you mentioned the, the costs and, and gave us some good insight there. What, what about kind of, uh, I, is there academic money available? Is there, you know, what is the, I, if you were looking at an average, you know, average package, whether it’s athletic, academic, how does it all work together? What what’s somebody coming to you and, and gonna end up, you know, footing the bill out of pocket.
[00:07:37] Coach: So what we’ve seen so far is, um, With the athletic scholarship and our roster. We’ve got about, probably about a thousand to 1500 per student. That’s, that’s playing with a student athlete. So it decent to start with and keep in mind the sooner you apply to any school. I mean, even if you consider us or consider any school apply immediately, tell you that right now, because the academic scholarships, they usually go pretty quick.
[00:08:06] Um, so if a student’s rolling in with good enough to get, we got close to a million dollars in. Whether you’re a DACA, um, first generation student in college, um, everything, I mean, just ridiculous, weird nooks and crannies, where they can find, uh, a package to put together for you that can help offset a lot of it.
[00:08:28] Um, even our athletic, department’s got their own academic advisor, so they can help out with students. They sit ’em down and say, okay, Here’s what we’ve got. Here’s where we can go. What can you do? What can we do? Um, what’s your plan for that? Next step is it’s, you know, Hey, you want to go and, and go off to your, your D one or D two or D three school.
[00:08:48] How can we make that available to you? Maybe we can find some way to transition it for you. Can keep those costs
[00:08:52] Matt: low. Oh, that’s awesome. Well, let, let’s talk a little bit more about the school. Um, you know, O obviously I can go to the website and learn a whole bunch of things, but, but gimme the, the, what I’m not gonna learn on the website that, that makes Oakden unique and is, is a good opportunity for someone to, to check out.
[00:09:09] Coach: Um, what kind of surprised me was, it’s a dual camp, so we’ve got one in Skokie, so we’re really close to Northwestern campus. We’re at a bike five, 10 minutes. You’re on Northwestern campus. Um, the other campus, the main campus where we’re playing and where most majority of school classes are, uh, is in Plains.
[00:09:27] So we’re just north of O’Hare airport. Um, beautiful campus. We’ve got, uh, you’re driving up and it’s I grew up in the mountains in Virginia. So it was, it was nice to see. I mean, we don’t have the mountains. You don’t have the Hills. The other day I had a turtle cut, uh, cut right in front of me on the, the road, uh, and the path went up to school.
[00:09:49] Um, so it it’s nice. And you don’t realize Fri being in Chicago, being that close, you can wander through state parks right there. There’s an off the leash dog park right around the corner. Um, but go like, not even five minute drive past that you’ve got malls, you’ve got airports, you’ve got, um, you know, tons of apartments, a couple small downtowns for, uh, some of the suburb.
[00:10:12] Other teams we’ve got, I mean like our, our baseball team, I think this is their fourth year, this last year that they just made the world series. So we’ve got a lot of dual sport athletes that are coming in and saying, you, Hey, I wanna play soccer and I wanna do something else. So, um, one of the things I’m, I’m hoping to change is the women’s soccer team is one of the only ones that doesn’t have a nice little banner with the conference title.
[00:10:35] I, so we’re, we’re open to change that. Awesome. Well,
[00:10:41] Matt: Speaking of, of the team. I mean, in terms of, of a player coming to school, you know, during the season, can you give me, can you just gimme what an average, I know there’s no such thing, but an average week, what that looks like for a player in terms of winter classes, when’s practice winter games, what what’s kind of their normal routine gonna be once a season, uh, or preseason.
[00:11:03] I mean, maybe you start in preseason now starts.
[00:11:06] Coach: Yeah. So school doesn’t start until the 22nd of August for us. So we got a little bit of time. Um, that said we started August 1st. I, uh, was on vacation managed to get COVID. So the first three practices I had to had to cancel, so they’re, they were kind of happy, but you know, they wanted to, they got a little antsy.
[00:11:25] They wanted to be on the room. Um, practices for us, preseason are, uh, 10 to. Um, just it’s nice and simple. You you’ve got time to come in. You’ve got time to, you know, hit the gym. If you need to. You’ve got time to see friends to get stuff done and have a whole afternoon to still hang out with friends. I mean, cuz let’s be honest, fresh and sophomore year of college.
[00:11:50] That’s what pretty much all of ’em want to do. I mean, they’ve been running around nonstop. This is their way to make a slightly easier, uh, transition into the game. Um, One school rolls around though. Practices are we’re alternating with the guys for, for field time. So for the women, it’s three to five on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, uh, Tuesday to Thursday, it’s one to three.
[00:12:14] Uh, we’ve got steady tables every Friday. So we’re gonna try to make sure our GPA is up. One of the, the things I’m trying to stress to him, I’m certified teacher in Wisconsin in. Um, it’s academics first. Let’s be honest. It’s they’re not gonna get, if they wanna play at that next level, they still need to have good grades.
[00:12:32] I don’t care how good of a player they are. They’re just, they’re not gonna get a look if they aren’t, uh, good in the classroom. So we’re working on focusing on that. Um, meantime classes, most of ’em are done about noon, so they got a little bit of time to, to catch a meal in the cafeteria. Um, maybe, you know, run home, grab.
[00:12:50] So. Some of ’em are doing a hybrid where they’re in class or at home. Um, so they just, they get time to get to practice one o’clock hits. They’re ready to go. Okay.
[00:13:03] Matt: Well, you know, you talk about the academics, right? And you mentioned study tables. What, what other support systems are there in place to really help that student transition from high school to the college environment and balance their, their athletics with their academics.
[00:13:20] Coach: So one of the things, and I didn’t get a chance to do it this year, but, uh, my plan is for next year and going forward is I want to be able to bring in all our assignees individually, give the tour on the campus, um, get the classes scheduled, um, explain the expectations of em. So a lot of ’em just don’t realize the scope of, Hey, I’ve gotta do this.
[00:13:43] I had, I had one girl that said, Hey, wow, cool soccer sounds great. But she was homeschooled and thought also gonna do two or three extra correct activities, um, was gonna carry a job, was gonna go full time, plus extra classes, uh, plus swing soccer at the same time. And I’m thinking, yeah, somebody needs to sit you down and, and explain what’s gonna happen.
[00:14:07] How’s this gonna work? Um, cause a lot of them don’t, uh, You got some high school coaches that I’ll explain it, some programs that I’ll explain it. Um, but us having an academic advisor specifically just for the athletes. They can schedule time to come in. They can give ’em the whole run through. Here’s how we’re gonna plan for your first year, your second year.
[00:14:28] What’s your plans for the following year? Are we gonna start looking at other schools? Are we gonna look at, um, program changes, things of that nature? My assistant coach and I are gonna be sitting down with, for example, our team, um, twice a month during the season and once a month outta the. 10 15 minutes here.
[00:14:46] Like how’s how’s life going for you? Are you, are you okay outside of class? Are you okay inside of class? Are you finding something that’s gonna struggle? You’ve got free tutoring, uh, available for all students at the school, got a wellness center. So if they’re feeling stressed about life, school, sport, whatever, they can just drop it.
[00:15:05] Uh, and they, they can find that they can get that support and they just, most of ’em don’t even know it’s there. They just need to be told and reminded, um, And just whenever they’ve gotta, I’ve gotta get ’em in early and say, look, you’ve got a problem. Let me know. Cause we can’t let anything else drag on.
[00:15:25] And, and the nice thing with being Juco, you’ve got that the small class sizes and the small teams, you don’t have to worry about. You’re being one of 50 players or, you know, let’s, let’s be honest. Some of those D two schools I’ve seen on the east coast where there’re 70, 80 student. You can have as many coaches as you want on that.
[00:15:43] That’s, that’s a football team, an American football team, and you’re not gonna keep track of everybody, nor are they gonna pay attention to the, to the little things that that you’re gonna need. And I honestly, I wish I had that. I, I thought it was, that was little ones. The D one or bust blew out my knee.
[00:15:59] So I was busted, got back into coaching and now it’s, you know, how can you help him get to that next?
[00:16:06] Matt: Yeah, for sure. Well, that’s, that’s a good way to look at it. I, you know, in terms of the soccer side of things, uh, what, is there a roster size that you’re looking to to be at each year?
[00:16:18] Coach: Yeah, so we’ve got, this kind of reminded me of mys in high school.
[00:16:21] I’ve got, I’ve got 11 on roster right now. So I hadn’t explained the concept to him this year, you know, coming in so late that, uh, we just couldn’t get the recruiting done in time that, uh, if you’re injured, you’re tired. Come on out. We’ll we’ll, we’ll make it work. Um, we’ll find something some way to make it work and, and you still enjoy the, the sport.
[00:16:43] Um, but for next year, honestly, by the end of this month, I want to have three signings, uh, for 20, 23, by the end of the year, I wanna have 10, uh, talking to her, uh, our women’s basketball coach. She said double up on, on anything you, if you think you’re gonna need 10 recruit. Because, you know, they, they can drop out something can happen, situation change.
[00:17:07] And the cool thing about the, the Juco lineup is say, you wanna apply to, you know, a division three school down the street. Cool. You can apply to us too, and you can get a dual. Acceptance. So it, we don’t affect the NCAA and, and a lot of the students don’t realize that they’re like, Nope, I’m I’m, I’m only gonna go this well.
[00:17:29] Cool. What happens when that doesn’t work? We want, I’m happy to be everybody’s safety pick .
[00:17:36] Matt: Yeah. It’s uh, it it’s it’s, it’s tough. I, I mean, I know, I know it is when I was, when I was coaching, I recruited several junior college players that, you know, I think there’s a lot of coaches out there who. Who who look for?
[00:17:50] I was D two, but I look for, uh, junior college players to help round out classes to help add that maturity level. Uh, and, and I think, you know, folks forget that it really is an excellent option. Um, so you know, you I’m, I’m sure you’re. We’ll we’ll tweet this out. Uh, and, and hopefully, maybe we can try to get you at least one or two more before the season starts.
[00:18:13] But, um, in terms of, uh, staff, besides you, what, what does the, the soccer staff specifically look like and what does the kind of athletic support staff look like at Oakton? So we
[00:18:26] Coach: got an amazing athletic director. Um, I’ve coached high school soccer, mostly other women said for about 15 years. Um, I haven’t had as supportive of an athletic director as I’ve been.
[00:18:38] Our front desk and they are on top of everything. We’ve got two athletic trainers, um, that are able to help out. We’ve got an academic advisor. We just brought in who also conveniently enough is he’s got his D license. So he’s chomping at the bed. He’s like, Hey, you know, if you need somebody to, to come out and help, um, we’ve got money to hire three coaches, including myself.
[00:19:01] Uh, right now we’re only doing two, just cuz of the size I didn’t. Have three on staff if we didn’t need it. Um, but as we ramp up towards I’m, I’m looking at possibly, I want to keep a healthy roster around about 20, not too many, but at least, uh, something happens. The injuries, the transfers, the graduations that were we’ve established, the culture established, uh, set here where.
[00:19:26] The old guard as sophomores, um, with, even with all their playing time. Cause you’re gonna get a lot of playing time with these two years that you aren’t gonna get at the, uh, NCAA schools. They can kind of integrate ’em. They can say here, here’s how we run things. Here’s how it’s gonna happen. Here’s how we can help you.
[00:19:45] Um, and then they can set up kind of a mentorship with the players. So the softwares are helping the, the freshmen out, um, helping explain it. Here’s I’m gonna help you out in school. I’m gonna help you out with everything. Um, and, and just make that transition easier for them. Oh,
[00:19:59] Matt: that’s great. Well, in terms of the actual game play on the field, uh, how, how would you describe your style of coaching and, and what you hope the team style of play to be like.
[00:20:11] Coach: I, I like a possession game, but that said, um, we’ve got a girl that just is a firecracker at Ford. Um, she presses high. She is just in everybody’s face and just a constant nuisance as a goal keeper. I would’ve hated to face it. Um, we have the greatest depth in midfield, so it’s gonna be a lot of. How can we with having only 11 players, how can we get the ball to move the defenders for us?
[00:20:44] How can we get them tired without wasting our energy and our time, um, and still control the, the aspects of the game that we need to, um, that’s gonna be the general focus of it. Um, I’d love to say we’re gonna score lots of goals. I’d love to say that, you know, Hey, we’re gonna bunker and just shut everybody down.
[00:21:06] Nobody likes being on that team. Uh, nobody likes being on that team and having fun. And, and I want the girls to have the freedom of expression to be able to give that input and say, Hey, look, we’re seeing this over here. Let’s, let’s make an adjustment at halftime and maybe we’re getting more offensive.
[00:21:23] Maybe we’re going more direct, um, at them because we see something that they’re, you know, they’re weak on, on a side or something to that effect. Um, but the possession allows us. To wait it out to see with them, um, and allows us to, to, to be natural, to, to be the team we wanna be. If we want to change from there, we can, we can bunker.
[00:21:47] We can attack. We can transition. We can do a lot of stuff with that possession.
[00:21:52] Matt: No, that’s it’s I like it. Well, We, we, we covered a lot of different things. I always like to end these the same way. And that’s what didn’t we cover? What is it that you would like folks to know about Oakton, about the team, about, uh, the recruiting process, anything in general that, that you wanna, you wanna talk about?
[00:22:10] Now’s the time
[00:22:12] Coach: probably and something I I’ve seen on soccer, Twitter bunch lately, don’t overlook the local schools, the local fits. I didn’t know what I wanted to do even after my first degree. Jucos can be a great chance for you to continue develop as a player, continue to develop as a as person, um, to get a good education while you’re, while you’re doing all the stuff that happens in life.
[00:22:39] And you’re not thrust into a new world with expectations, and it’s either you make it or you don’t we’re, we’re here for that support. We’re here to help you. And we want you to get better and to be successful, whether it’s on the field, the classroom, or somewhere down the road, you know, keep playing.
[00:22:58] Matt: Absolutely love it. Well, coach, I really do appreciate the time. Um, and, uh, I, I was able to quick quickly scan your bio online and realize we’re, we’re both, uh, Bobcats. So, uh, love that, you know? Um, but, uh, but I figured what the green, it was somewhere in there. Yeah. Yeah. It was close enough. I, I grabbed me on my green day, but, um, Wish you the best of luck.
[00:23:23] I know it’s gonna be, uh, you know, a, a learning process and, and, and a lot to get through this first year, but I’m sure you’ll do great things and we’ll keep an eye on you and check back in and, and hopefully, uh, visit you when you’re lifting that banner up to the rafters.
[00:23:38] Coach: We’re hoping the guys did it in 2002, 2003 national title winners.
[00:23:42] So it’s the women we’re gonna get. There is the, the girls that are here now, and the girls are gonna be here. Just gimme the start of something. Great. Awesome.
[00:23:52] Matt: Well, we, we, we hope that’s the case and, uh, wish you the best of luck coach. Thank you, coach. Thank you.
