Paradise Valley Community College Men’s & Women’s Soccer – Coach Christian Devries

On today’s episode, I speak with Coach Christian from the Paradise Valley Men’s and Women’s Programs in Arizona. We talk about the incredible value the school offers. He describes the team’s core values. Lastly, we discuss their top level staff. Learn more about Paradise Valley Community College Men’s and Women’s Soccer.

The Discover College Soccer podcast is sponsored by VO. VO is the number one AI camera solution, helping players capture college recruitment videos. Check out their new starter and family options by clicking on the link in the description or visit Discover College Soccer to learn more. Hi everybody, welcome to Discover College Soccer. Today, I’m lucky enough to be joined by Coach Christian from Paradise Valley out in Arizona. Welcome, Coach. Thank you, excited to be here with you. Yeah, excited to have you. The one place I think in the United States that’s hotter than Florida is Arizona right now.
Yes, it is. I don’t envy you right now, but it looks like you’re in air conditioning, so that’s all that really matters. Well, let’s talk a little bit, we’re talking here, it’s mid-August, so I’m sure, I don’t know, have your players reported yet or not quite? Yeah, we started August 1st. Junior college is the first ones that actually get to start. So we had team meetings on July 31st and actually started practicing August 1st. Awesome.
Well, I think most people know community colleges, you gotta do twice as much recruiting as everybody else with everybody leaving. So, kind of what is your timeline in terms of, it’s August, you’ve got the 23 classes practicing right now, so I’m sure you’re focused hard on 24, but when do you look to get kids to commit? When are you, are you doing a lot of recruiting even during the fall season?
What’s that look like for you? Yeah, so, I mean, it’s an interesting question in the grand scheme of things. I’ll start by saying I’ve been coaching college soccer for 27 years, or this is my 27th year of coaching college soccer. The last five of it being at junior college, so I’ve been at four-year schools most of my career. And yes, the recruiting cycle at the junior college is slightly different, but it shouldn’t be different. It is different because of the mindset of the families and the players and how they look at junior college soccer.
The reality is that I should be recruiting on the same scale I was always recruiting, but a lot of times players won’t consider a junior college as an option until they’ve exhausted other options. So, what that ends up doing is pushing my calendar back, maybe two to three months more than I would ideally like. I can go out and identify all the kids I want right now. I can get out and be inviting kids onto campus if I want and doing all those things,
but what history has told me, it’s an uphill battle in doing that because the kids are really exploring the four-year options before they’ll look at the two-year options. So, what really happens for me at the two-year school is I’ll go watch games, I’ll go to the tournaments. We’re fortunate here in Phoenix that we get a lot of the major tournaments coming here, so I don’t have to travel. I don’t have the budget to travel as it is anyways, but just because of my location, I get ECNL events, I get MLS Next events,
I get ECNL events. I get other just big college showcase events that all come into the Phoenix area already. So, I get to be able to go out and watch and identify talent that way, but I really don’t get into the meat of what I’m doing for my 2024 class. I probably won’t really jump into heavy recruiting until December, January, February, because again, I’m waiting for decisions to be made in that early signing period that happens. I’ve got to wait till that before kids will maybe take a look at it as that one considers beforehand,
because the reality is, Matthew, I’m going after the same kid I went after at a four-year school. I want the best player I can find that’s gonna fit our program. So, I don’t just wanna sit back and wait for some call the leftovers or whatever. I’m gonna go out and find the kids I want, but I am tied by mindset of families on what they think is where junior college fits into the grand scheme of the recruiting process.
And you mentioned something pretty unique also. I have to do it two ways. I also have to move my kids on. So, I’m looking at what I do with my sophomores right now and helping them move on to the four-year school. So, it’s a two-fold recruiting method at the junior college. Yeah, absolutely. And well, just more specifically on either the boys or the girls side, how many of the players who wanna continue on at a four-year school,
what kind of success are you seeing in placement after the fact? Yeah, again, I’m fortunate that I now, I’ve coached both in my entire career. I’ve coached both men and women. Currently in my position, I am the men’s and women’s soccer coach in my current position. So, I’m now doing both at the same time. And it is, I would venture to say that I would, about 75% of my kids actually do wanna go on. And of the kids that wanna go on,
we get them placed. Since I’ve been doing this so long, I do have connections across the entire country to be able to help place kids. But I will tell you, there’s still 25 to 30% of those kids, they finished the junior college and they’re ready to just go work on their college career. And we help them do that, whether it’s, I’ve had two people go into the fire academy and one of them is now working for the fire department. So, that’s something they really wanted to do. And they chose us because we had fire science and then they can transition right into that program.
And then I have a couple of players that, the two years is up and they’re just ready to move on to being a college student and what that looks like are into the workforce. Yeah, it makes sense. Now, in terms of your overall recruiting, you mentioned going to events, do you do any camps or does your staff work in any camps? And then do you look internationally at all? We don’t look, I’ll start with international first.
I don’t intentionally look internationally because we specifically, Maricopa County Community Colleges in Phoenix, Arizona, that’s the Maricopa schools. There’s eight of us. We’re not allowed to scholarship out of state players. So, yes, I have no problem talking to an international kid, but my challenge is an international player has to show they have $21,000 to get the student visa. Well, most of the international kids saying they have a budget of eight to 10 to 12.
Then the day that’s what it will cost, but they need to show that the 21,000 to get the visa. So it makes it a little bit more difficult for me to recruit international kids. So I am focusing mainly in Arizona. And then beyond Arizona, I focus on the Western United States because we can offer WoWee, which is for us, it’s $97 a credit hour for an in-state kid. So if you think about that times 12 hours or 15 hours,
it’s $1,200 to $1,500 for an in-state kid per semester. And for a WoWee kid, it’s $150 a credit hour. So I can get a WoWee kid in here for roughly $2,000 per semester for their tuition. And so they’re already picking up where an international, any out-of-state kid outside of WoWee, which is the Western Exchange Program, which is really anywhere Western United States, anybody that’s not in the WoWee, they’re looking at roughly $9,000 a year, $4,500 a semester for tuition.
Okay, well, that’s not too bad. In terms of scholarships and other costs, do you have soccer scholarships? Are there academic scholarships? What are some of the other things available? Again, we fall in the Maricopa County Community College System, which really has a really robust scholarship program for kids in the Maricopa area. So anybody that lives in the Phoenix Metro area, and if they’re listening to you or they catch this,
if they got above a 3.25, they’re full tuition to kids. And they’re automatically 15 credit hours covered if they’re above a 3.25. I go in and I go ahead and offer all of our presidential scholars, I also give them another $250 a semester help with books. So there’s that aspect of things. And top of that, I do have scholarship money. Again, in the grand scheme of things, if I say that I’m giving $500 in scholarship money to a player,
technically I’m covering almost 40 to 50% of their education. So parent will only $400, well, a four to $500 scholarship is actually a 40 to $50, or 50% scholarship. So we still will do that. I mean, I will scholarship my players. I say this, I will tell you this, Matt, I don’t give any player a full ride here. I think every kid has to have skin in the game. Now, if they earn the academic money, then they’ve had skin in the game. If they qualify for financial aid,
at some level, they’re skin in the game because of their financial situations, put them in a situation that they’re getting that financial aid. So nobody’s gonna get a soccer scholarship for me that covers 100% of their money. But I will go up to 50 to 75% on my players that don’t qualify for academic scholarships that are in Arizona. Those could be Phoenix or greater Arizona. And I can get, I usually will have anywhere between eight to 10 of my players could be getting that type of money.
Okay, well, let’s talk a little, well, besides where you recruit and the financial side of things, if you’re at an event, any of those tournaments, anything, kind of what is it that makes a player stand out to you? What are you looking for in your recruits, whether that’s on the field stuff or off the field stuff? It starts with, and I talk about this at events that I go to,
I talk about this at college seminars that I’ve been part of and college seminars I’ve given myself. I talk about this from the standpoint of, you can’t go to an event as a player assuming that you’re gonna get identified. Matt, I really honestly believe what’s inherently wrong with our recruiting system right now is too many parents and players believe that recruiting is about getting identified and recruiting is not about getting identified.
Recruiting is about doing the college planning and figuring out the process first and foremost. And if you do that, you’ll get identified. So anybody that’s, when they ask me this type of question, I have to preface it by saying, I’m not going to an event just to go identify kids. Probably 90% of the kids I’m going to go watch, I’ve already had conversation with or have been identified through the proper college planning that they’ve done.
I might find, I will find a kid at an event because I was at that event for watching somebody else that told me they were there. So I think it’s real important when we talk about going to these events and what I do, and I’m gonna tell you most college coaches are like this, we already go to the event knowing what games that we’re going to watch and who we’re going to watch. So from the standpoint of a recruit, you have to make sure you get on my radar prior to the event.
And the best way to do that is go and see what coaches are attending the events. And then let me know what your schedule is. And then I, if I get people that email me, I make an effort to number one, look at what they’ve sent me. And if I feel they’re good fit, I will make sure that I go and watch a game or a portion of a game. Yeah, absolutely. Couldn’t agree more with that. I know you and I sing the same song when it comes to that process.
So, well, let’s talk a little bit more about the school. I’m sure there’s some folks not familiar with Paradise Valley. You’ve been there a few years now, obviously covering both teams. So what are some of the things you found to be special about the school that make it a great place? Maybe some things we won’t learn just by going through the website. This is what I love about being able to do is because I can kind of jump on the soapbox about Paradise Valley Community College. I, again, I say this is year 27 for me. I didn’t land here by accident.
It was when my wife and I were moving from our, when we lived in Alabama, we moved out here. PV was one of the schools that I looked at. And when the opportunity arose to come here, I jumped at the opportunity for a couple of different reasons. When I talk about college recruiting with kids, when I talk about them, when they come and talk with us, really, and I think you would agree with this, there’s three major buckets that families are asking. They wanna know what the soccer experience is gonna be like for their kids. And the kid wants to know the soccer piece. They wanna know what the academic piece is gonna be like.
And they wanna know how much this is gonna cost me. So what I like to say is I think we can do the best of those better than anybody else in the Phoenix Valley and the Valley of the Sun, as we say. I’ll start off from the soccer standpoint. We compete in one of the toughest community college conferences in the entire country. Both on the men’s side and the women’s side, we’ve had more national champions come out of this conference and out of this region. We’ve had more teams qualify for national tournaments out of this region and where we’re at,
because the level of play we have is so high. So from a soccer standpoint, I can clearly say, if you want to move on to a four-year school, and a lot of kids that might have the dream school they wanna go to, Paradise Valley can be a great stepping stone to the dream school, because you’re gonna get the level of playing that you’re gonna see at four-year schools. I know the level of play that we have is at a higher level. And so we can go in and compete. I mean, we’ve scrimmaged the four-year schools this year,
especially on my men’s side. And we’ll just say we’ve been very successful on the scrimmages so far. Against the four-year schools are here. So I know I can go and play against the four-year school and we’re gonna compete. And my guys are gonna showcase themselves to those four-year schools, or my girls are gonna showcase themselves to those four-year schools when we go there. The second piece is really the academic piece that I like to talk about. And Paradise Valley is the only community college that’s ranked in the top 100 in the state of Arizona of all community colleges.
So the Aspen Institute, which does some of the rankings, they rank all the junior colleges and community colleges in the country. And we’re in the top 100 and we’re the only one in the state of Arizona. What does that mean for me? I know that our kids are being prepared academically to go to four-year schools because the ranking is based off the marticulation to four-year schools. The ranking is based off the number of professors you have that have their terminal degrees. The ranking is based off of the retention rate of your students.
And so when you’re measuring these factors that are all part of being a student and we’re ranked one of the top in the country, now you’re saying we play in one of the top conferences in the country, we’ve been successful in that conference. We now are one of the top academic schools. And then we’ve already heard some of our financial things in terms of what we cost. I challenge people to find a program that has all three of those at the level they do. The other thing that I think is real important,
Matt, is I’ll share them real quick. We have a set of core values. I think every kid should be asking the coach, do you have a set of core values? What are the core values you have at your program? What is it? Because the core values are gonna tell you what drives that coach. What is that coach’s why? And I think it’s important to, if we look at Simon Sinek, what is the coach’s why? What is your why? You’re doing what you’re doing. So we took our mascot as the Pumas. P is a pathway to progress. U is we’re united in what we do. M is we’re men and women of integrity.
A is we’re accountable for our actions and we’re holding our teammates accountable for what needs to happen. And S is we’re servant leaders. So those are my core values. They have nothing to do with us putting the ball in the back of the net, but at the end of the day, they have everything to do with putting the ball in the back of the net. And so I think it’s real important that when you’re looking at schools, it’s not just about how many games are they winning and all those things. You need to really dial in, what is the why for what the coach is doing?
And I know why I’m here. I’m here to help kids move on to becoming the best version of themselves and move on to their next level, whatever that next level is for them. Absolutely love it. Love it. Well, in terms of the off the field stuff, the academics, right? We’re talking about student athletes here. So sometimes it can be a challenge acclimating to college sports with going to school.
So kind of walk me through how your students best acclimate or their support services that the school offers. How does that work there? So one of my other roles here is I’m the student athlete success coordinator. And so we have a, I don’t oversee everything. I oversee some programming, but we require of all of our students, they have mandated study tables. We call it past time. All freshmen have to put in two hours a week. All sophomores have to put in at least two hours a week if they have a GPA below 3.0.
So we have that support system in that place. We have a student learning center that has tutors for anything that these student athletes would need. And so they can go and get tutors for what they want and what they’re needing, whether it’s a writing lab, whether it’s math, whether it’s struggling with an econ class, you can get the academic support system you need there. Third, a part of my programming that I do is I do grade checks. And we do grade checks on all of our student athletes three times a year.
So we have direct communication with our student athletes and what’s going on with the faculty members and letting us know and giving us an early alert system. We have something that is very unique here is that we have faculty mentors for every single team. So we have a faculty mentor, our member of the faculty that mentors every single team and they become a person that our athletes can rely on to help navigate challenging discussions with other faculty members.
So sometimes faculty don’t understand the role athletics might have in a program. Well, this faculty mentor is the one that helps buffer that conversation and will sometimes talk if you’ve got questions about something. So what it does is it removes the coach from the equation of the whole discussion. And when we remove the coach from the equation, the faculty members now are more open to discussions because now the discussion’s happening with the faculty members.
So having that faculty mentor is a really important piece to what we do. And then we have a dedicated person here for student athlete services that she is here to do anything and everything for our student athletes in terms of questions that they have and what they need. The other thing specifically that I do for soccer from an academic standpoint is I have special advising days just for soccer where we have the advisors that are coming in and working with our soccer players on their advising from semester to semester.
Okay, great. Well, let’s shift gears to the on the field stuff. I mean, we talked about recruiting earlier, but is there a roster size that you’re trying to hit for each team every year? Yeah, there is. On the men, my ideal roster size would be 25 to 28. When I first took over here, I will be honest, I was in the 35 range, but that was mainly because I had to change a culture, I had to change an environment. And part of that is you have to bring in, let’s put this way, I didn’t cut anybody when I took over here.
I was not gonna be the coach that was just gonna cut everybody. What I did is I recruited a bunch of players that I knew believed into my philosophy. And if the ones that were here prior didn’t like that, then they made the decision that they didn’t wanna be here. So the early years of my program, I had 35 to 38. I think we sit healthy between 25 and 28 on our men’s side. On the women’s side, I think the healthy side is 22 to 24. And we try to get there.
My women’s side, yo, if you’re 20, 24 right now, you wanna play college soccer at a higher level and you wanna be at a great academic school, please hit me up because COVID really affected colleges across the country. First of all, we did not compete during COVID season because we had a lot of players that decided not to continue to play because of that. So in not having the COVID season, when we came back,
we built our roster. But then what happened in college soccer is a lot of four-year schools gave another year of eligibility. And all of a sudden you had this backlog that was happening. And so we were having a hard time placing our sophomores, especially on my women’s side. We were having a hard time placing our sophomores because the rosters were backlogged at four-year schools. So we allowed them to come back for another semester. And so I exhausted eligibility on 16 players last fall and I moved 14 of them on.
But that left me with a small group returning. And then I had a few that quit on me once the season started. So my numbers are about 14 or 15 on my women’s side, which is not ideal. I wanna be up in the 22 to 24 for our women. Okay, now what about staff? Obviously you as a head coach of two programs. I’m sure you’ve got some good staff on each side. What does that look like? I have a fantastic strength and conditioning coordinator that oversees both the men and women in the strength and conditioning.
We do do full-blown strength and conditioning here at our particular junior college. In the spring it’s a class and then we actually continue it through the summer. And then Coach Whelan is also my main assistant coach on the men’s side. And then Coach Urie is my goalkeeper coach for both teams. And so he’s working extensively with both of our goalkeepers on both sides. And he’s got a reputation on one of the top goalkeepers in the Phoenix area. So I’ve been fortunate to have him as part of our program.
And then he works with our women’s coaching as well. And then I have another assistant that’s a former player on our women’s side assisting as well. And I absolutely just love that I have Vanessa right now because she has been where these kids were just not too long ago. And so number one, she’s got a fire in her belly to really make sure things are happening, but she’s passionate because this is her alma mater. She went here and she wants to see these girls compete at the high level and be successful.
So when you say you have the right coaching staff, absolutely I have a brilliant coaching staff that believes what I believe and believes how I believe the game should be coached and played. And knows how I said that. How it should be coached first and then played. Okay, well then let’s ask that then in terms of how should it be coached? What is your coaching philosophy, your style of coaching, the team’s style of play? It starts right now. You have to start treating athletes as people.
When I start treating my athletes as people and coaching the person, I’m gonna get a better athlete. So we really, I have to have, my coach have to understand we are looking at each individual person, what they bring to the table, what challenges they have, what are the strengths that they have? And we really need to focus on them coaching them as people first. And when we start coaching them as people first, then we start to understand that we end up with a better athlete and we don’t treat them just as a bunch of athletes.
So when I talk about coaching people first, one of the first things we talk about is a framework and understand a framework on how we learn and how we understand and how we digest information. So if I’m intentional about that framework, the first part of that framework that I talk about is what we call understanding each other, our understanding the what, why, we’re doing what we’re doing. If us as coaches are not explaining to our athletes the what and why we’re doing things so that they understand it,
then we’re really not treating them as people. If we treat them as people and teach them that first, I guarantee you will see a better result on the end. And so our approach is we create better people, creates better pumas here. Love it. Well, coach, we’ve covered a lot of ground, talked about a lot of different things. I wanna leave you with one last question and that is if you had one piece of advice or nugget that you wish every parent player,
person going through the college recruiting process knew, what would that be? I love that you asked this question because I alluded to it before. College recruiting does not start with identification. College recruiting starts with college planning. You as the parents have a responsibility to sit down with your son or daughter and start asking questions around college planning. What can you afford?
What types of schools do you wanna attend? What are the locations that you wanna attend? What level are you capable of playing? And you really need to spend time on the college planning process. And when you answer these questions in college planning process, then you’re actually gonna know the types of coaches you should start to communicate with. And when you start to communicate with the right coaches, then you can start talking about how do I get identified by that coach? So my word of advice is start with college planning,
not identification. Absolutely, coach, love it. Well, wish you the best of luck. Hopefully this is a good season for you guys. Hopefully the heat dies down so you don’t have anybody dropping like flies down there. But really appreciate the time and best of luck, coach. Thank you, I appreciate it. Hi everybody, it’s Matt from Discover College Soccer. I hope you’re enjoying the podcast, whether that’s on YouTube or your favorite podcast platform. Don’t forget to hit the subscribe button. I also wanted to let you know about the Discover College Soccer Study Table.
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