Rockhurst University Men’s Soccer – Coach Tony Tocco

On today’s episode, I speak with Coach Tony Tocco from the Rockhurst Men’s Program in Kansas City. We talk about how’s happy to wait and see how players develop over time. He describes the phenomenal academic programs at the school. Lastly, we discuss their large roster and corresponding large staff. Learn more about Rockhurst 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 Tocco from Rockhurst. Welcome coach.

Coach: It’s a pleasure to be here. 

Matt: Well, I appreciate you being here. We were just saying, uh, but, but beforehand, I, I was lucky enough to interview Coach j Martin, uh, earlier, and, and he’s the number one.

Men’s soccer coach in, in college soccer, and, and you’re number two. So I’m, I’m, I’m, I’m working my way down the ranks. This is good stuff.  

Coach: Yeah. Uh, you know, uh, I guess Jay and I have been in, uh, probably the longest of most coaches, so, uh, hopefully that the longevity goes with the record, so, 

Matt: Yeah, that’s right.

Well, that longevity is, Is definitely something you got there at Rockhurst. So you’re the perfect person to give us some insights about the school. But, uh, let’s start off talking about the recruiting side of things. You know, as a division two school, you know, when, when are you really starting to talk to players and build out recruiting classes?

What year in high school or the kids? What, what’s your process look like there? [00:01:00] 

Coach: You know, Jay, I, Excuse me. Uh, Matt, you know, it, it’s really funny about recruit. And, you know, we go out and watch teams play and, and we, we, we watch some of the better teams in the Kansas City, St. Louis, Omaha, Des Moines, you know, in, in different areas we try to recruit from.

And we’ll sit there and we’ll watch a, a a a, a young man play. Club ball say, and then club ball or even high school ball, you’ll, you’ll watch a couple kids who are sophomores or maybe juniors and you’ll look at ’em and go, How do these kids even make this team? They’re not that good. And then by the time they move up to their senior year, you’re all over ’em.

You’re trying to recruit ’em. You know, you, you’ve got this, I, i, I, I don’t know what to call it, but you, you’ve, you’ve got, Transition this metamorphosis that takes place with a player. All of a sudden they get this, this experience, they get [00:02:00] this maturity, and all of a sudden they go from this average player to a very good player in a very short time, especially during that time of 15 to 18.

and so we tar we start really looking at kids probably after their junior year in club ball into their senior year when we really start and, and, and, and because of high school ball, you know that that’s the way it works most of the time. You know, when you deal and, and that’s where we recruit from. What, what I’ve found, Matt, is that in the recruiting era, and I, I, I can’t speak for everybody.

It’s almost impossible for me to recruit an academy kid. Academy kids are ingrained in, in several areas. Number one, they really are locked into trying to go pro or two, it’s division one or nothing else. And I don’t have any problem with that, that that’s life, you know? Okay. You know, and, you know, we’ll offer some kids in in, in Academy of really phenomenal scholarships, I mean, phenomenal scholarships, and they’ll refuse it and several of them [00:03:00] will refuse it just to walk on some.

And r they won’t play college. Well, it, what we are finding is that I would call some of the lower level academy players, the subs and everything. They’ll give up soccer rather than go to anything but D one. And, and that’s a shame because they really de deep two and I, and. And, and D three, there are really good programs out there that kids can still develop and do well in, but it it, it’s this, it’s this thing that they have this mental thing about D one, it’s D one or nothing at all.

So we, we still mainly, we, we recruit from two areas and, and I’ll let you here at my, my philosophy on it now. We’re primarily a regional recruiter of high school and club balls in the. Now what we do is that when we recruit a kid, we think they’re a kid who’s gonna be a good player for us, a [00:04:00] very good player for us, But he has to develop over four years.

They, they’re, they’re gonna be best in their junior and senior year. That’s when they’re gonna be their best player. So we have to maintain them there academically, develop ’em, soccer wise, and so on and so forth. So we give a kid, when we recruit a young. We don’t put any time limit as to when they make a decision.

We don’t give ’em four weeks or six weeks, like we’re, we’re talking to a young man tomorrow and we’ll make him an offer and basically after the offer we’ll say, Hey, look, you know, get back to us. When you’re ready to make the decision and usually they’re, you’re ready to make the decision sometime in late February, early March.

Cause right now they’re playing high school ball. The reason, the only reason he is coming to see us. Cause he is a local player and he can do it. But when they go visit other schools, they take a weekend or something like that. So they, they can’t do it. So we give ’em a long time. If they come back and they tell us no in March, there aren’t any [00:05:00] players around that, we can still.

that’s when we tend to move to an international player. Cause there’s still loads of international players to recruit. So that, that, that’s our philosophy. We recruit high school kids, club kids, but if they say no and it’s March, then we, if we can’t find a player equal to them, as good as them, then we’ll go to the international route.

That’s what we do.

Ja, I’m Matt. I can’t hear you. It sounds all my fault. Yep. Sorry. 

Matt: Okay. , I’m muted cuz the dog was going crazy. Anyway, uh, , when it comes to the regional recruiting, you talked about, um, what, what are some of the tournaments that, that you like to go to that are kind of, must, must hit events in your area?

Coach: The must hit the very I and, and let me explain why we do this.

The must hit tournament we have to go to are the different state tournaments, the Missouri State Tournament, the Kansas State Tournament. Uh, we have trouble [00:06:00] getting into the Omaha State to, uh, the Nebraska State Tournament is a little bit difficult for us cause it takes place in the fall right during the part of our, our soc but they play, they play high school ball in the spring.

So we, we have some trouble there, but we try and make as much, uh, Of the state championships and, and let me explain why. If you got time, Matt, there are many times we’ll go out to, uh, uh, club games and during the regular season of club, you know, during, from December all the way through March or April. And the kids don’t take club ball overly serious,

And what I mean by that, if they got something to do on a weekend, if they got a problem weekend, if they got, we’ve gone out to many games where there’s supposed to be really good games and only 10 players show up for that. So they don’t have enough players. So, so you get into this thing of they don’t get really serious until state championship.

Now State championships is a battle. We love watching that cause everybody’s serious about it. So, so we’re [00:07:00] very, very careful about to as to which tournaments we, we go to. And there are a number of showcases that we go to in, in the different areas. In the different areas with video, it makes a lot easier for us cause we can get the video of all those games and watch ’em, you know, So Yeah.

And what we tend to do is, if we’re. If we’re watching players, my, myself, my co-head coach, Georgio, and one of our, our, our assistant coaches, what we’ll do is, we’ll, we’ll, we’ll send out that video and then we’ll evaluate it. Not tell anybody who we’re looking at or something like that. And then we’ll come back and, and to say, Who are the best players on this team and why?

So that’s how we tend to evaluate, uh, uh, the, uh, the different players. 

Matt: Okay. What about camps? Do you guys run your own camps or does you or your staff work other camps? Do those fit in at all? 

Coach: My, my, um, my co-head coach Georgio runs two camps a year by invitation, and we’re inviting players we’re, we only take 20 to 25 players at.

And we’re all doing it [00:08:00] by invitation for players who we really wanna see and recruit. That’s, that’s our, that’s our invitation process. That that’s the way we run the camp. We’re not, we’re not trying to get a hundred kids or 200 kids. We’re doing it only by invitation. 

Matt: Okay. And whether it’s at, at games, club games, high school games, camps, anything, You know what, what is your kind of hierarchy or what, what checks the boxes for you for a kid that you wanna bring in?

Whether that’s on the field stuff or off the field stuff.

Coach: You know, and, and I, I know this sounds cliche, but first thing we look at is academics. Rockers has high academics and. So we, we, we wanna make sure, again, as I, I, I mentioned earlier, Matt, if I can’t keep this kid for four years, I’ve lost, he’s lost everybody’s loss.

So we, we gotta make sure that they have really good academics. Uh, here’s, here’s the situation. I’ll tell you basically our, our grade point average for the last, since we joined the ncaa, which is in 2002, we’ve, we’ve, [00:09:00] uh, we’ve ranked in the top 25 of all schools as far as soccer, Division one, Division two, as far as grade point average, as.

So that, that we have approximately a 3.4 grade point average as a team. Uh, I would say 40 to 45% of our players major in pre-med, pre-dent, physical therapy, engineering, accounting. So they major in really, really good subject matters. So they’re, they’re, they’re, they’re doing very, very well in these areas.

So, so we look first and foremost at academics. Second thing each, each particular position has its own set of criteria. Let me give you an example. Number one, if I’m looking for a defender, first and foremost, if he’s not a shutdown defender, I don’t want him, You know, when I get kids coming into me, Matt, all the time, I’ll say, What makes you good at your position?

And I’m talking about a defender, a centerback, or a wide, uh, wing fullback. I’m gonna say, coach, I can take the ball. I can dribble the ball. I can take the ball. I can shoot the ball. I make great passes. You know, I can overlap, I [00:10:00] can do this, I can do that. And my reply to them is, What’s your. I go win fullback of Senate.

I said, What’s the my primary purpose of your position on the fucking say defense. I said, You haven’t told me what you can do defensively. If you can’t be a shut down defender, I don’t want you. Anything you add to me offensively is a plus. But first and foremost, if you can’t shut down people, that’s it.

Midfield, what do we look for? First and foremost, we look cre creativity. That, that’s where you have to really, really do and, and, and, and creativity. Being able to co couple things that come with, uh, creativity, intelligence, soccer intelligence, being able to be proactive rather than reactive. Beating people to create space for everybody else, and then distribution.

Then you got your wide players and your striker. Striker. The only thing I don’t care about a striker is he scores goal. I want them to be the most selfish, egotistical person in the world. I want them to be [00:11:00] able to get the ball, go to goal and score, and every time, you know, he gets the, he gets the ball. I want him to go to goal and I’ll, I’ll.

I’ll be mad at him sometimes when he won’t pass the ball off cause the guy’s wide open. But that’s the way I want him to be and so, but that they’ve gotta score. I don’t want them to be an assist leader. The only way they should get an assist is somebody puts on a rebound off their shot. That’s it. By wide players.

We want to be box to box, but they’ve gotta be creative too. They gotta be very good offensively defensive, but they gotta be able to beat the wing fullback. If they can’t beat and create space for everybody else, then we, we’ll look for somebody else. They gotta be creative. So in, in general, that’s what we look for right now.

The other thing we look for in a goal, now, the game has progressed. Matt, as you well know, into being very direct, basically long. Lot of corner kicks, lot of free kicks, lot of foul kicks, long throw ins, things of that nature, and everything goes into the box. So minimally, if our goal isn’t [00:12:00] six foot six one, we, we tend not to look because they gotta be able to come out and get the ball they got to.

So that’s, that’s, that’s a little short synopsis of what we look for in certain players in positions, man. Okay. 

Matt: Well, let’s talk a little bit. About the school. Um, Okay. You know, a lot of folks maybe aren’t familiar, uh, with Rockhurst and, and you’ve been there one or two years. Uh, I think, yeah. Um, so besides what I’m gonna learn by clicking around the website, give me some of the, the awesome behind the scenes stuff.

Something I may not know just, just for reading on the web. 

Coach: Uh, when I came to Rockhurst in 1969, that was a first year at went co-ed. Prior to that time was an all bar school. So basically we. Um, I, I would say probably 30, 40 girls in the first year. Now we’re about 60, 40, 60% women, 40% men. Uh, the other thing, uh, about rockers academically, it’s very, very, High ranked as far as regional rankings and a couple national rankings [00:13:00] and, uh, and, and, uh, the school of Business, which I, I, I am chair of the accounting finance Department.

Our accounting department is one of the highest ranked great, phenomenal accounting and finance department. Our BIA department is ranked very high nationally, uh, uh, business intelligence and analytics and, and things of that nature. It’s really funny because, you know, Every time I hear, I was watching a football game the other day and they were, they were up in the press box, man, and they.

The offensive line coach, who was this big burley guy, this defensive line coach, a big burley guy. And then they showed this person, he’s in charge of analytic. And it was, I hate to say it this way, it was almost a dork, you know, this small little guy with glasses, you know, and he’s making all the calls for everybody,

So you got this business intelligent to analytics that is, Permeated every industry of our, of our working world. And, and so we’re very good at that. And, and we’ve integrated that with all [00:14:00] our, our curriculum such as the county, uh, and, and finance. The other areas that were really great on that is, uh, we have a tremendous nursing school.

We have, uh, our, our, our pre-med is phenomenal. It really is. We have a great pre-med program. Uh, and, and so we we’re, we’re, what we call ourselves is a comprehensive. University, meaning we have enough majors and we have different schools and, and, and we’re, we’re, we’re really looked at as a more regional, We’re not a national, we’re not a research university, but we’re more regional in, in, in certain areas.

And I would tell you our business, our science are both phenomenal as far as academic. Our physical therapy was one of the first schools to, to create a PhD in physical therapy. We’re one of the first schools, so we, we’ve done some first a as to, uh, as, as to a, a smaller school. So, uh, and, and, and that’s the way we wanna be.

I, I, I don’t think we ever wanna be a school of five or 6,000. We’d like to get to about thousand [00:15:00] 3,500, and that’s what we’d like. Okay. 

Matt: That’s, well, that’s, that’s a, that’s a good overview. So, I mean, you, you mentioned the academic rigors kind, what support systems are in place at the school or in the athletic department even that really help, uh, you know, especially new student athletes, make that transition and, and make sure you keep those great GPAs you were talking about.

Coach: Every athlete is one of watch. Academically, so they’re monitored as to from, and, and, and part of this is, is really good because since we are a smaller school, Matt, every athlete and every faculty member has a list of the athletes by season and. First of all, by season and then out of season. In season.

Out of season. The primary one for us is how we control and monitor the in-season athletes. That’s first and foremost. And then we look at the out of season athletes, but everybody who’s who is an athlete at rockers is monitored academically. And, and what [00:16:00] I, what I mean by academic, it’s only not ac, are they going to school?

Are they handed in work? And our faculty are phenomenal with it. Every one of our faculty have a list of the athletes that are in their class, if they have any particular problem that’s sent to our associate ad, our associate ad, then contact the coaching question, and then we solve the problem. I. We solve the problem immediately.

If they’re not doing very well, how do we get ’em back on track if they’re not attending classes, make sure they’re attending classes, so on and so forth. But as I said, but if we do a good job, Matt, at the very beginning. At the very beginning, we don’t like, one of the things that parents always ask us about, do we have a sort of a study group for our athletes, Matt, my athletes come.

I would say 95 to 97% of my athletes come in with a three, three to 3, 8, 3, 3, and higher grade point average. That’s number one. Number two, they [00:17:00] come in with an average a C T score of minimum 24 25. They, they are in rigorous particular program. . And so they, they, I don’t have to worry about them. They know how to study.

They want to be successful both on the field and off the field. So we don’t have very much a problem like that. Like I tell you, if you solve the problem on the front end, you won’t have the problem on the back end. And, and, and that’s what we look for first and foremost, right? So, but we do have other things.

We, we have a, uh, a, a. Sort of a, it’s a counseling center for academics that students go over to. Let’s assume that you have a particular subject matter in science, physics, physics two, that you need help on. Well, you go to the, you go to our learning center. Our learning center then finds a student who’s at rockers, who’s taken that course, done very well, and then they’ll tutor that person one on one to help them through.

So th those are all the things that we, we have available for our students in any particular, [00:18:00] Yeah. 

Matt: Oh, that’s great. Well, let’s, let’s shift gears and talk a little bit more about the soccer side of things. Um, is there a roster size that you like to try to hit every year? Kind of an average size of the team.

Coach: Um, athletics at our schools, at our recruiting tools. If you took a look at our roster right now, we got about 70, 70 plus players on our team there, there, and there’s a couple reasons behind that. And I learned very early on, no matter how much you try and recruit, no matter how many people you know, there’ll always be players who will slip through the cracks.

Like many times my, my co-head coach and I will be sitting there prior to a game and will look at the other teams line up and so on and so forth. And we’ll notice a kid who’s from Kansas City and he plays for an imposing team. And we’ll look, and I say, I’ll look at him. I said, [00:19:00] Do you know him? He goes, No.

I said, I don’t know me. Who is He don’t know him. All of a sudden, we look at this kid and he’s a phenomenal player. How do you get how I said, How did he get out of Kansas City without us knowing about him? How did, how did that happen? But, so here’s what we do. Any kid who wants to try out for our team is welcome to come and try out.

We get a lot of kids who, you know, some kids didn’t make their high school team and they still wanna try and play soccer. So we, we, we make a vehicle for ’em. So let’s say like right now what we’re doing, we will have a roster size. Our varsity soccer, uh, will have, uh, probably 30 to 33 players who will practice every day.

Our developmental squad will take the rest of them. Our varsity plays 15. Our developmental squad plays 17 games from our, our developmental coaches then will take, uh, they’ll, they’ll look at a kid and they’ll say in the last two games, he’s really played well. He deserves to go up to the varsity. We bring him up and see how he does.

Then against the varsity, whether he can. At [00:20:00] that level. So we’re con, if injuries occur, we’ll take players from our developmental squad and move them up. So we’re constantly shifting from developmental squad to varsity based on performance. So, and, and, and so it seems to work out for us very, very well, and, Again, man, I, I keep on telling there’s late Gloomers.

Oh yeah. I can tell you, I can tell you so many stories, Matt, and I really mean this of kids who’ve come to rockers didn’t play for me. They’re freshman didn’t play for me. The soccer junior year, they all of a sudden, they played a little bit in senior years. They were, they were first team all American.

All of a sudden, you know, what happens to those kids? You know, I, I don’t know. They’re, they’re light bloomers, but I don’t give up on them. They don’t give up on the. And all of a sudden I have a great player, which has a great team and, you know, helps the, the school have a national reputation in soccer. 

Matt: No, and I, and I love that cuz I was one of those late bloomers, I think I, I played one year of varsity high school soccer, but I started four years of college soccer division three.

So you just never know. Right. You, you do 

Coach: [00:21:00] you, It’s like this kid who’s been in this cocoon for ev for three years, , and all of a sudden he becomes this butterfly, this beautiful butterfly. All of a sudden he’s doing everything. Where did he come? And, and you have this great player. All of a sudden, like I said, I could just tell you story after story after story.

Kids who will walk on and say, Coach, I wasn’t recruited, but I really wanna play soccer. Sure. Come on out. And, and all of a sudden, boom, that kid is, is, is a starter. I’ll give you one that, that is, that is astounding. I had a young man come to me in 2004. Coach, I really wanna play at Rockcrest. I love the school.

I wanna be part of it. I wanna tell you my story there. What’s your. I, I went to this high school in St. Louis. Didn’t, didn’t make, uh, didn’t make varsity. I was captain of the JV team my senior year. Okay. He said, That’s all I once a chance coach. I said, You’ll get it. I promise you, you’ll get your chance.

Came out, uh, for year, uh, played phenomena. Just really played great First game of the year. [00:22:00] I didn’t start him, I started a, a senior over him. After 15 minutes, I took out the senior, put him in four years, started two time all American. He’s now the. He’s now the national team coach of under 15. Tommy Heideman.

Yeah, I mean, just, just phenomenal, phenomenal player. Just great player. Played, uh, I think 11 years of pro ball. Played on two or three, uh, championships. Just, just a great player. So you never know when this, this cocoon is gonna burst open. And, and, and great things happen. 

Matt:. Great Love it. Love it.

Well, you know, yeah, if you click on your website, you, you do see a big roster. You also see a large, uh, So can you talk about your staff? How many do you have? What does everybody do and how, how does that work? 

Coach: We, we try and keep a ratio of, of, of a couple things, but as far as players, we try and keep a ratio of a 10 to 11 to one, uh, somewhere close to that.

So if we have, if we have. 70 players. Then we’re gonna keep a, a staff of around six to seven, uh, coaches. And, and that is [00:23:00] for development per mainly for two reasons. Development of whether it’s d varsity or whether it’s the developmental squad. We’re gonna develop our players. We don’t have finished players and I don’t wanna finish players.

I don’t wanna player in high school who says That’s as good as you’re gonna get. I want a player who’s gonna develop over the next four years. I want an upside to that player. So we’re gonna constantly develop that. That that’s the idea. But we also have a couple coaches who are high school coaches in the.

And we use those guys, not so much for development, but for telling us who to recruit. They’re, they’re at all the high school games. They see the high school kids and they’ll come back and say, Tony, are Georgia Oak. We need this kid’s really good. You need to go out and watch ’em. This kid’s really phenomenal.

You need to go out and watch ’em. So they give us an access because it’s so hard. Right now, and I really mean it’s so hard, Matt, when, when you’re, when you’re out, like last week we’re out town on Thursday through Sunday, didn’t get back until three o’clock, four o’clock on Monday morning, then to go out and watch high school games and everything.

So it, it’s really, really hard. So the developments, [00:24:00] the, uh, the, the coaching staff has several purposes. One is, To, and the primary person is development overall, but then it’s just coaching the players, make sure they do good performance and giving everybody an equal shot as far as the development squad to show their, to show how good they are.

Matt: Yeah. Okay. Well, how would you describe, you know, your team style of play, your style of coaching and, and how 

Coach: hell that works? Um, Matt, my, my style of coaching. Has has really gotten different over the years. Matt, how old are you? I’m 45. Okay. When I first started coaching in 1969, that was my first year, I was an assistant coach to our ad.

Jean Heart and I took over In 1970, there was no such thing as AstroTurf. There was no such thing as turf, so everybody had a grass. Can I tell you, everybody’s grass field was horrible . By the time, by the time, [00:25:00] uh, late September early Sept, there was, there was no grass on the field. There was only weeds.

And if you had played in the rain, guess what? There were divots and everything all over the place. It’s very difficult, if you will, to play on a field like that and put the ball on the. And make it a beautiful game. Cause if you notice the ball, the ball was hopping all over the place, , because, so we became more of a direct team.

As fields got better, we, we put the ball on the ground. Now, today, we do a combination. I, I think every, we, we try and do a combination, uh, based on, on the players we have, but we like to keep the ball on the ground. But we’re, we’ve got, we’ve got really got some players who will have great. So we’re gonna try and loosen up the defense.

We’re gonna put the ball on the ground, but put the ball over the top. And if, if we can set a pattern with balls over the top that forced the. That our players get a chance or two based off that it forces the [00:26:00] defense to move back a little bit, therefore creates more space for the ground game. So it it, we man, it, it is, we we’re not what I call direct team, but we will use the long ball to to, to make force defenses just not squeeze us so much for the ground game.

So we, we, so we create space with the long ball. And I, I think everybody differs, but a couple games we had this week and, and one of the games we played this weekend, I mean, it was so direct. Everything was so direct. Over the top, over the top, over the. And, and, and that’s their style of play. And, and sometimes it’s successful, sometimes it’s not.

So, but we were fortunate this past weekend, it wasn’t as successful as everything else. So, but we, we were, we, we try and keep the ball a combination of two things, you know, we really do. The other thing we do, we change systems. We’ll move from a 3, 5, 2 to a 4, 3, 3 to, to different systems and different patterns that we try and deal with.

So it, it, it, it’s, again, people, kids always ask me, they’ll say, [00:27:00] What system do you play? And I’ll, I’ll always tell ’em, I said, Who are we playing? Are we winning? Are we losing? And how much time’s left in the game? And I’ll tell you the system we play and that’s. 

Matt: Nope. It’s, uh, I, I, I, I agree completely.

Especially, you know, having watched my daughter’s game over the weekend, it, we got to a point, it was like, okay, well now it’s time to change that system cuz you’re, you’re down one nil, you got less time on the clock. It’s time to, to make something happen. Right. 

Coach: And you know, Matt, if I lose two, nothing, what’s the difference?

Yeah, exactly. But I’ve gotta, I’ve gotta give my chance a team a chance to even. And, and if I’m win winning nothing, I’m gonna play a little bit more defense. Mm-hmm. , you know, I watch it primarily, you know, and I know Sure you do. You know, in, in big games, you know, with, if they’re up, I one go with 50 minutes, they’re not putting in forwards, they’re taking off forward, they putting in public defender, you know, and they’ll switch instead of maybe having two forwards up, they have one and play four midfielders.

You know, something like that. Yeah. So [00:28:00] they’re constantly adapting and changing to the situ. I don’t think college coaches or high school coach would do anything different. Right. 

Matt: Yeah, for sure. Well, coach, we’ve, we’ve covered a lot of ground and I appreciate your time and I always like to end these with the, the same last question and that’s what didn’t we talk about.

What else would you like folks to know, uh, whether it’s about the team, the school, the, the college recruiting process or anything else in general? I, I, I give you the floor.

Coach: Uh, I, I think we’ve covered it all. Matt. You know, the one thing that, and, and I really mean this, I think the one thing that I, I don’t harp on and, and it’s okay, but I, I’m worried about the future of our game is the number of international players that are coming over.

They’re both a boom and the hindrance. And, and if you notice, more and more teams are becoming more and more international and what I. Is a lot of kids now not playing college soccer because there’s no room for ’em, for other teams. [00:29:00] Uh, what I see is kids now and with the grapevine, a lot of the kids are saying, Don’t play soccer because there’s no college available for you.

There’s just not a number of schools available for you. I see kids not playing. I think less kids are playing, uh, soccer than they did before, especially at the young ages. Lacrosse is going like crazy. More and more kids are going into lacrosse. I worry about the future of, of, of that and what it means, and, and, and I, but like I said, it, it is a boon because international players come over, they come over.

They’re, they’re, they’ve been in a pro academy. They come over. They’re, they have really, they’re not. I always tell people international athletes are no better athletes than the United States athlete. United States athlete is good as any international in many cases. They don’t have high school ball and club ball currently, although club ball is trying to improve a little bit, they, they can’t match [00:30:00] the International Academy kids.

If you put our United States kids into the academies over in Europe or even to our own academy, more and more of our kids go into our own academy. They get such a higher level experience, higher level of competition, so on and so forth, maybe just become better soccer players and that that’s what happens.

So, yeah, I, I, I, I, I really worry about that aspect of the game. I really, really do. I, I, I hope we’d st you know, there’s, right now, and I think for the past 10 years, we’ve be, we’ve been getting so much better athletes playing soccer over the last 15, 20 years. I hope that doesn’t. I, I, I, I, I hope we keep on getting the better athletes and they keep on playing soccer, but if they don’t, I think the American game is gonna go down and, and I think the collegiate game will go down a little bit too.

So that, that, those are things that have concerned me overall for long term. They really are. If you, if you look at the growth that I get, at least a hundred to [00:31:00] 110 emails a day from recruiting international recruiting agencies, I want you to think about that. That’s a lot . That’s a lot. all over the world, you know that that’s how big the, the sport has has become in that area.

It really is. So those, that, that’s one of the big things that concern me about the sport itself. Period. Yeah. 

Matt: Okay, well, Coach Wish the best of the luck with the rest of the season. Uh, hopefully, uh, you can contend for that, uh, Great Lakes Conference Championship. And, uh, if you, if you do get down to Florida to Bradenton for, you know, any of the, any of the terms down here, gimme a shout and we’ll we’ll get, we’ll get a cup of coffee or something.

Coach: I promise you. I’ll do that, Matt. All right. Thank you very much for taking the time to interview me. I appreciate it.

Matt: Thank you, coach. Take care. Bye bye.