St. Edward’s University Women’s Soccer – Coach Nick Cowell
On today’s episode, I speak with Coach Nick Cowell from the St. Edwards University Women’s Program in Texas. We talk about the impact of ID camps for their program. He talks about the importance of grades and academic scholarships. Lastly, we discuss the amazing things their team does off the field. Learn more about St. Edward’s University.
[00:00:00] Matt: Hi, everybody. Welcome to Discover College Soccer, uh, and excited today to be joined by coach Nick from St. Edward’s University in Texas. Welcome coach.
[00:00:10] Coach: Hi, good morning. How are you doing?
[00:00:11] Matt: Doing all right. Thank you. Let’s jump in. And, uh, let’s talk about your recruiting process, uh, first off the bat. So when do you start usually hearing from players and going out and watching players?
[00:00:22] What, what year of high school are they generally? Starting to record
[00:00:26] Coach: that process, you know, before COVID hit, we were getting commitments from junior class. That was our normal, um, kind of timeline that we were on with. COVID hitting, obviously everybody’s timelines went back a little bit and there was some.
[00:00:44] Things that a lot of teams had to sort out with the COVID year, seniors coming back. We didn’t actually have that situation. So we kind of stayed on the same timeline, but, um, in general, we’ll get most of our commitments in the junior year. And then we’ll always leave a couple of spots open for a transfer student or for maybe a, you know, a late student that hasn’t made up her mind yet.
[00:01:07] Um, we’ll, we’ll never close the door. I mean, we still get good players coming in and their senior year, but it seems to be. Uh, fewer and fewer and far between. Yeah. Well, how
[00:01:19] Matt: many inbound contacts would you say you get in, in a day or a week?
[00:01:26] Coach: Um, Hm, probably. I would say depending on the time of year and what’s going on with this, tournament’s going on at least 50 a week.
[00:01:40] Um, you know, if there’s a big tournament close by, I could easily get up to a hundred. Um, but those are either local kids out of state kids, or mostly getting a lot of international players these days.
[00:01:55] Matt: Um, so what are some of the things you’d like to see in that first communication from a recruit?
[00:02:02] Coach: Well, if we haven’t seen the play, you know, a highlight tape is kind of essential.
[00:02:07] I mean, if it’s not in the first email, then we have to request one because we’ve got absolutely no idea about that kid. So unless we were familiar with the team with the coach, then we’ll need some type of video. I think that, um, that’s just becoming standard now. And, um, we have a pretty kind of fast and quick way to evaluate videos in terms of the level of play.
[00:02:30] What that kid shows on that video. I mean, it’s just a quick and easy evaluation and we try to evaluate at least, uh, every plan once on that video. And based on that evaluation, they’ll go into a pile of, you know, No, they’re not going to be able to have a play here to there possible, and that we need to go see them more on a three.
[00:02:52] It’d be like, wow, this kid’s really good. We need to see this kid right now. Alright.
[00:02:57] Matt: That makes sense. So when, where do you spend a majority of your time? Uh, recruiting? You mentioned Atlanta, local tournaments and stuff. What tournaments do you like to go to? What leaves do you like to look at you watching high school games?
[00:03:11] Coach: Yeah. I mean, honestly, I don’t know if I’ve been to a high school game. Maybe one or two in the last 10 or 15 years? Um, mostly we go to a high school game is to a kid that’s already committed to us and it’s just a really, um, show support for that person. But we don’t tend to recruit a lot from high school.
[00:03:29] Um, a lot of the DA or GA tournament’s, uh, ECNL tournaments. Um, we’ll go out to a lot of teams in Texas have. Club program. So we’ll go out to their practices, just go out and watch a practice or talk to the kids out of practice. So that’s been a really good source of, um, connection from.
[00:03:50] Matt: How do, how to camps fit into your, your recruitment cycle?
[00:03:54] Coach: Good. I mean, we have an ID camp probably every two to three months. And, um, most of the kids that end up coming here have come to an ID camp. I think that’s the best way for them to actually get, to see whether, you know, our coaching style is something that. Um, really enjoy and they also get to meet some of the kids.
[00:04:15] It’s kind of like an in-between step from, you know, actually being here and I, but they can kind of feel what it would be like to be an athlete here. So we try to give them the full rundown of what it would be like to be a student athlete at the university, in terms of, you know, taking a look at the dorms.
[00:04:35] Dining facilities and all that stuff I think is important because they come in with a lot of questions and they could also leave with a lot of questions. If we didn’t show them that information and have some cases, they go up, we don’t want to go to a school of 4,000 people. We want to go to a school of 40,000 people, which is, you know, if they crossing schools off their list, that’s totally fine too.
[00:04:56] But I think that I’d say. 5% of our incoming kids actually came to an ID camp. Wow.
[00:05:03] Matt: Okay. What do you, do you have a set number of players you’re trying to bring in every year or does it just kind of vary with who you’re graduating?
[00:05:11] Coach: It varies by me normally I’d say between eight and 12. I mean, it just depends on how many seniors were graduating.
[00:05:18] Um, you know, some, some classes seem to stay together and then. You know, those 12 kids that came in as freshmen stay together and end up graduating altogether. And then some, maybe you brought in 12 and only six of them remain for whatever reason, you know, either through injury or just decide not to play soccer anymore.
[00:05:38] Um, so it just depends. Um, but yeah, I’d say between eight and 12 is a normal. Class
[00:05:44] Matt: size. Now you guys are NCAA division two. So you do have some, some athletic money you can give out what what’s, what does a typical, uh, distribution of athletic money and academic money look like between a recruiting class?
[00:05:59] Coach: I would say, I mean, depending on when a kid commits. I would say most of our kids, we try to recruit only good academic kids for starters, because they are going to be eligible for a lot more academic money, which means eventually they’re more likely to come if the packages a little bit bigger. So we try to recruit only good academic kids.
[00:06:20] And most of them they’re. Package is more than what their athletic package is going to be. So, um, we’re not fully funded, so we don’t have the maximum number of division two scholarships. Um, so we try to, you know, maybe it’s a quarter of a scholarship is athletic scholarship, or maybe a third of it or half is, um, academic scholarships.
[00:06:43] So we try to make those combinations. And then depending on the family situation, they can also qualify for some, some grants and some other financial needs.
[00:06:52] Matt: Okay. So when you’re looking at a player, uh, you know, about, uh, as a recruit, um, what are your, what what’s kind of your, your tier one hierarchy of things you’re looking at, both on the field and off the field, you know, is it athleticism, soccer, IQ, you know, those kinds of things.
[00:07:10] And then what are you also looking for often?
[00:07:12] Coach: Sure. I mean, I guess the first thing is looking off the field and looking at what their grades are, because if their grades aren’t good and they’re not going to qualify for academic aid, we’re probably not going to be able to give them enough athletic aid to make it financially viable.
[00:07:26] I mean, we’re a private school and you know, we’re definitely not never the cheapest option on the table. So we try to, um, use that filter first and make sure that they’ve got good grades. And then after that, we’ll look at the general, uh, You know, To compete in top 25 division two, you need a certain amount of athleticism.
[00:07:48] I mean that, it doesn’t matter if you’re the best passer in the world. If you can’t get around the field, you’re not going to survive. So that needs to be a level of athleticism, um, that you need. And then we’ll look at the technical. Um, just the basic technical stuff. Can she withstand pressure? Can she defend?
[00:08:06] Well, won’t be one and we concentrate a lot of our training on the tactical side. So we feel like that’s something that we can always teach the kids the tactical side, but if they have a good physical base and a good technical base, then the rest we can. We can really teach them that. And that’s what we concentrate on.
[00:08:23] Once they get here, it’s really hard to increase their technical ability once they’re in college. I mean, you can, to a certain extent, but you can’t see that a major amount of growth. So for sure,
[00:08:35] Matt: for sure. So how, how do you, you mentioned this earlier about transfers, you know, saving a spot. So how, how do transfers and, and, or walk-ons kind of fit into your, your team plans?
[00:08:46] So
[00:08:47] Coach: probably at least. Hmm, probably about half of our incoming class. So say we’ve got 12 recruits, probably five or six of them will, will be. Considered walk-ons, we’ll be non-scholarship players as freshmen. So just depending on, usually they’ve decided to come real late and we don’t have any money left.
[00:09:04] So they’ll come in as a freshmen without any athletic aid. And, you know, if they do well, then we’ll give them athletic aid. In years, two, three, and four transfers is a little bit harder just because you can’t really rely on them. And, you know, with the transfer portal going crazy lately, it’s, um, you know, we’ve getting more and more people wanting to transfer.
[00:09:24] I never want to rely on that. Cause it’s just, uh, it’s just so unreliable. You just don’t know what the, you know, random people contact you out of the transparent portal and it’s just, it’s hard to predict, uh, what’s going to be coming out of there. Yeah.
[00:09:39] Matt: And earlier you mentioned getting a lot of. Uh, contacts from international students.
[00:09:45] Uh, are you recruiting heavily, internationally, or is it a lot of inbound? How many international students you tend to get here?
[00:09:51] Coach: We usually have about two or three international players on that roster at any one time. So we’ve had kids from Germany, the UK, Canada, Sweden, um, Iceland. And so. Two or three, I think really adds to your program.
[00:10:09] They tend to be very good tactically and they understand the game really well. So they bring a different, um, understanding to your team. I think, uh, the American kids in general are probably more athletic and, uh, maybe a little faster. Yeah, technically strong, but we feel like having a couple of kids just kind of adds to the tactical, um, ability of our team.
[00:10:33] And so we’re committed to having one or two, but, you know, again, that’s another thing is, you know, uh, an international plan typically costs a lot more money than it does for a local kid. So.
[00:10:46] Matt: For sure. All right, well, let’s switch gears a little bit. Talk about St. Edward’s the school. Um, you know, I can get online and click around the website and everything, but, uh, give me a few, a few nuggets that are about that you want to share about St.
[00:11:00] Edwards and I’m not going to find on the website.
[00:11:04] Coach: Um, that you not going to find on the website. So it’s a, we’re a small to medium-sized school, 4,500 undergraduates. Um, we’re located on a hill that looks over downtown Austin, Texas. So, um, in terms of location, it’s a beautiful. Campus, um, what you’re not going to find online probably is just that the things that our athletes like most about being here, they, they really enjoy the small class size.
[00:11:32] Like if we’re just to run into somebody on canvas and say, Hey, what do you like most about this place? They’re probably going to say small class size is really important to them. They really enjoy the, the location in terms of. Being able to get out and about, and in the city, I mean, we’re about two and a half miles from downtown, but there’s a lot of hiking stuff to do on the lake real close by.
[00:11:55] So whenever there’s time off to see a lot of our kids go down to the parks downtown and just, uh, you know, really kick back and enjoy just being in a, in a warmer climate and, uh, getting out and about and mixing with the local community. We do a lot of community service with our team. So that’s something that.
[00:12:14] Uh, we’ll do anywhere between two and 3000 hours of community service every year, which is an important part of our program. And we do, you know, a random amount of things, you know, we do special Olympics. We do help out at the Austin marathon. We’ll go to elementary schools, we’ll clean up parks. We’ll, we’ll just do a lot of different stuff.
[00:12:35] I think that’s a really important part of our, our team and how our team bonds out. What we actually do within the team within the field? No, that’s
[00:12:45] Matt: fantastic. Well, in terms of, of their schooling, how, how do your students balance their studies and their athletic pursuits?
[00:12:56] Coach: I mean, the division two philosophy is a balance between athletics and academics.
[00:12:59] So we that’s, that balance is kind of in every staff meeting we have and everything that we do that balance is always talked about. So making sure that, um, the kids have enough time to do everything that they need to do, whether that’s, um, you know, we can’t miss class because of practice. You know, we miss some class because of games, but that’s limited.
[00:13:22] You know, at the start of the season, we’ll have an advisor that will go through everybody’s schedule and make sure that we’re missing the minimum amount of class because of games. So, um, that’s really important. I think at division two is to make sure that the kids have. Um, ability to succeed in the classroom as well as succeed on the field.
[00:13:41] If they, and I’ve coached division one, division two and division three. And I think the balance in division two is the healthiest that I’ve seen. I mean, division three is real healthy on the academic side too, but they’re limited on the athletic side, especially in their non traditional season. And I’ve coached division one where, you know, Athletics is the number one factor.
[00:14:01] And, you know, if you don’t win, you lose jobs. So, so I feel real comfortable with this situation here. I’ve been here 15 years and I think, um, just being able to help these kids get a really good degree, but also have a competitive soccer program is the balance. Yeah. None of these kids are going to be professional soccer players.
[00:14:18] So, uh, it’s important that they get that balanced and they’re able to succeed in both areas.
[00:14:24] Matt: Yeah, for sure. Well, you mentioned. You know, th that there’s an advisor that, that kind of helps out with checking on schedules and that sort of thing. What, what are the support mechanisms that your school provides, uh, from an academic and an athletic, uh, perspective?
[00:14:41] Coach: Sure. So they’ll, they’ll initially be set up with, uh, somebody that just deals with freshmen athletes and they’ll help them with their initial schedule in their freshman year. And then after that, we have, um, we have tutors that are available for any student athlete. A success coach, excuse me. A success coach will be assigned to them that will talk them through that graduation plan and make sure that they get in the right order of classes, you know, throughout their, their years.
[00:15:09] And, um, Because it’s a smaller school. I mean, the lot of the professors are here because they enjoy teaching and they enjoy the one-on-one conversation. So most professors here will have open office hours where you can just go in and sit down with them and go through any problems. So it’s not like they’re using TAs or anything like that.
[00:15:27] Like the professors are doing the teaching, they’re doing the one-on-one, uh, collaboration with the kids. So. Oh, that’s
[00:15:35] Matt: great. Um, so what, what would a typical non-game day look like for a player during
[00:15:41] Coach: the season? So we train in the mornings here. Um, we do that, so we don’t clash with any classes we train at 7:00 AM around eight 30.
[00:15:50] Um, Usually the team will, you know, I have to practice that a little run to the coffee shop and sit down there and get their, their breakfast and a cup of coffee. And they’ve got a nine o’clock class they’ll run to that. If they don’t, they’ll probably go back to their apartment or their dorm. Um, and then it just like a regular student.
[00:16:07] We don’t have anything else during the day that they have to go to we’ll set up one-on-one meetings with them. Um, but those would just be, you know, one or two a day with different kids. We try to meet with every kid at least once a week. So we have a system here that, you know, whatever your uniform number is, your number 10 you’re meeting with me on the 10th of every month.
[00:16:27] So it’s a simple system and that way I’m meeting at least one or two kids every day. And if it’s a weekend, we’ll just put it forward to the next next week. And, um, that’s a way of me keeping tabs on everybody. Yeah. Also being able to talk to me about things outside of soccer, you know, we’ll sit down and do video, whatever it is to talk about academics, whatever they need to talk about.
[00:16:47] That’s a good time for us to kind of just get together and talk us to human beings and not just coach player relationship.
[00:16:55] Matt: No, that’s good. What about a game day? Um, how far do you guys usually travel? Kind of what’s your radius?
[00:17:02] Coach: So we travel out out of our conference. We’ll travel. I mean, anywhere I really usually have two or three weekends before a conference starts.
[00:17:11] So. Most recently we’ve been to LA, we’ve been to Washington, Seattle, Washington. We’ve been to Miami, Florida. So we’ll, we’ll go and play as good at competition as we can find in division two. Um, and then we played teams within our region, color others in our region. So we’ll usually go to. Colorado at least once a year too.
[00:17:31] So those two trips and then our conferences in Texas, Oklahoma and New Mexico. So once we get into conference we’ll, um, you know, we’ll be in a bus for all of those conference trips, but the other trips obviously won’t fly and, um, we’ll get there and, and usually rent vans when we get there. Okay.
[00:17:53] Matt: Well, let’s, let’s talk a little bit more about, about playing in the, in the team.
[00:17:56] So, uh, How many, how many players do you generally carry on your roster? And do you have a reserve side at all or
[00:18:06] Coach: no, we don’t have a reserve side. We normally carries you 30 and 32 players. I think that’s, uh, a pretty normal number for division two. I think the average is like 29.5 or something in division two.
[00:18:17] So we usually have a couple of walk-ons that we can kind of boost our roster. We had a situation. Two years ago where five of our incoming freshmen class had serious injuries in the spring of their high school, senior year. So knowing that those kids weren’t going to be able to play in their freshman year, kind of.
[00:18:38] Put a bit of a dent in our plans that year. So we actually invited some kids that were on campus that we had seen play that were decent club players, and we added them to our roster. So our roster was a little bit bigger than normal two years ago, but it was more because, you know, five of those kids, weren’t going to be able to play those kids are back now, but also those kids that will still want to be on the program.
[00:19:00] So we’re probably up to 35, 36, but those kids that walked on. There, they’re not at the level where they’re ever going to start in play much. So, but they just love being on the team. So we don’t want to cut them or anything. And yet they, they deserve to be on the team and they enjoy it. And they’re, they’re good friends with everybody.
[00:19:17] So our roster is probably a little bit bigger than we would like, but I think once those kids kind of graduate through, we’ll be back to our normal
[00:19:24] Matt: size. Good. Well, if you’re an incoming freshmen, um, you know, how are you fighting for a spot right away? Are you waiting to play, uh, how does that work?
[00:19:34] Coach: Yeah academy.
[00:19:35] We play the best players regardless of age. So the class that’s just graduating the seniors right now, five of them started as freshmen. So, um, this past year, uh, we had three freshmen start, um, a goalkeeper set a back and a center forward. So it just depends. Um, you know, if you’re good enough, you can play right.
[00:19:59] Matt: No. That’s great. Well, how, how big is your, your soccer staff and, and what role do each of those coaches?
[00:20:07] Coach: So we have two full-time coaches, myself, my assistant coach, Kelsey Baird. She played for me here for three years, and then she went off and did some high school coaching came back as a volunteer. And she’s been my full-time assistant for six years now.
[00:20:22] So there’s the two of us that are full-time. And then we have, we always have volunteer coaches. So right now we have volunteer coaches, a goalkeeper coach, and normally these are coaches that live in the area. They may coach clubs. That they may want to get into college coaching eventually. So it’s a good experience for them.
[00:20:40] A lot of, a lot of my form of volunteer coaches have gone in to get full-time jobs as college coaches who feel like it’s a, you know, I’ve been coaching a while. I’ve got a lot of contacts, so I can usually get them. You know, if they give us a year or two here as a volunteer, I can usually get them hooked up as a full-time job.
[00:20:56] So. That’s great. Yeah. Then we’ll have, we’ll usually have like two or three managers also, like just from the student body that want to come out and help. Alright.
[00:21:06] Matt: That’s great. Um, well w how would you describe your style of coaching and, and your team style
[00:21:12] Coach: play? Um, I think that my. Uh, I’m not the type of coach is going to scream and yell on the sideline.
[00:21:20] That’s not never been my style. I think I’m more of the type of coach who will sit down with a play of one-on-one and kind of feel. What she wants to get out of the game is how can I facilitate that for her? So, um, we’re really big on feedback, whether that’s data from GPS systems, whether it’s video information, we’d like to give a lot of feedback.
[00:21:42] And I think the players that want to get better, really eat that stuff up. They want to get better and they, they’re not afraid of getting. Coach feedback, whether that’s positive or negative. So we try to be as upfront as we can with players in terms of telling them where they fit in, what they need to do to get better.
[00:22:01] Um, so I think that that one-on-one type of honest conversation is the thing that I’m probably known for most. And then I think my second best strength is probably just developing players, just being a coach on the field. And that’s the thing that I really enjoy is the coaching and the. Developing players on the field, making sure that, you know, without style of play, that they’re going to get better from year one to year four.
[00:22:26] So I feel like really strongly that some coaches can take shortcuts with their style and play really direct and it, it can be successful, but I also don’t know if the players are developing when you play like that. I think it’s a way to get results in the. So, uh, in the short term, but I think over the long term, you need to figure out how to play good soccer.
[00:22:49] You know, that’s always been, our goal here is to build out of the back is to play quickly. I don’t think, uh, in women’s soccer, we could have them play quickly enough and, um, just play as quickly as we can with the ball on the ground and, um, encourage people to be creative and aggressive on the offense.
[00:23:08] Matt: That’s great. Um, well, you know, we’re, it’s February w while we’re sitting here chatting, so it’s the off season. What, what does a typical off season program look like for you?
[00:23:18] Coach: So we train five days a week where mandated take two days off a week during the spring, um, we’ll have five or six scrimmages later on in the spring where we’ll play either D one teams we’ll have teams come up from Mexico.
[00:23:32] There’s a couple of semi-pro teams here in Texas that we’ll play. So we try to challenge ourselves in the spring. We play teams that we don’t normally play on the. Um, and yeah, we’re really just developing play as well. We spend a lot more time. With individuals in the spring, it doesn’t matter so much whether we win or lose, whereas in the fall everything’s, team-oriented in the spring, I feel like it’s a little bit more individual oriented.
[00:23:58] We can take more time after practice, stand behind with four or five players need to work on a certain aspect of the game. Um, so I think it’s, I enjoy the spring. It’s a, it’s a good time to kinda. I guess break down and play his game and kind of build it back up. So just kind of get them to maybe some of the habits that they brought in from high school, that on good habits, they need to kind of break them down and kind of restart them again.
[00:24:24] You don’t really have a lot of time to do that when they come in and for.
[00:24:30] Matt: Yeah, for sure. That’s a tight timeline in the fall. Once, uh, once you get going, you got to rock and roll. Well, coach, I, I appreciated that. We’re going to one last question. This is kinda my, my catchall. Uh, what else is there about your school, about your team, uh, that, that you want any kind of prospects, recruits families out there to know that maybe we didn’t cover.
[00:24:55] Coach: Well, we actually had a recruited here this morning and I was asking you, what, what are your impressions? You know, cause everybody has different impressions when they come on that. One of the things that she said is like the, the close camaraderie of the girls on the team was the thing that stood out to her most.
[00:25:09] She said she’d been on recruiting trips where. Uh, she felt like the kids really didn’t have any interest in her as a person. Like it was kind of a, a chore for them to look after Gruden said she really appreciated, um, the attitude of our girls just hosting her for a few hours and taking her around the dorms and stuff.
[00:25:26] So I think that’s, that’s an important thing is, uh, when kids are looking at different schools, you can look at the buildings, you can look at the academics, you can look at, you know, the level of the team. I think the quality of the people is probably the most important thing that. People need to look at, and there’s a lot of choices out there, but to be, you know, in a, in a group of girls that look out for each other, that a friendly, I think is really important.
[00:25:49] Matt: Yeah, for sure. That’s awesome. Well, coach, I appreciate the time. Uh, I really do, and, and I wish you guys the best of luck. I I’ll, I, uh, I think I’m going to be in Austin in April. I’m going to see if I’ll have to carve out some time to see if I can swing by and see that campus. It’s not somewhere.
[00:26:07] Coach: I’ll take you out for a cup of coffee.
[00:26:09] Matt: There we go. Sounds like a plan. Well, Hey, I appreciate the time and we’ll keep track. See how you guys do this season. All right. Thank you.
[00:26:16] Coach: Bye-bye.
