Taylor University Women’s Soccer – Coach Scott Stan
On today’s episode, I speak with Coach Scott from the Taylor Women’s Program. We talk about their early recruiting calendar. He describes their high academic environment mixed with strong faith. Lastly, we discuss how they use the InStat game reports. Learn more about Taylor University Women’s Soccer.
Matt: [00:00:00] Hi everybody. Welcome to Discover College Soccer. Today I am lucky enough to be joined by Coach Stan from Taylor University in Indiana.
Coach: Welcome coach. Thank you so much. Good to be on.
Matt: Yeah. I’d love to have you here. Uh, get a nice women’s program in the NAIA, just, uh, northeast of Indianapolis up there.
Um, that’s correct. So we’re, we’re in March. It’s, uh, the, the showcase season. Uh, everything happening around here, at least I know last weekend in Bradenton we had ECNL and IMG cups. So, uh, I’m sure you’re, you’re staying busy. Are you wrapping up the, the 20 threes right now or is that already done? Kind of What’s your calendar when it comes to recruiting?
Coach: Um, for us. We’ve actually wrapped up the 23. So we have an incoming class of 12, which is really, really good. Uh, we have most of the 20 fours either committed or signed. At this point we’re still looking for a couple, couple players, but we found, uh, maybe it’s just our location, but if, if we’re not getting the commitments by spring of their junior year, um, it’s actually getting a little bit late for us at that point.
So, That was about six or seven years ago, we started moving things up just because the players and a lot of these really smart young ladies didn’t wanna think about it their senior year, and they just wanted to cruise through school and enjoy it. And so we met their timeline and gives us a little reassurance too.
Matt: Yeah, well can, can’t blame ’em for that. Um, well you’re, you’re lucky enough to be, uh, you know, so close to Grant Park and, and the soccer facilities there, but what are some of like the major tournaments and places you go or, or things you’d like [00:01:30] to see players at?
Coach: We tend to stay local and then take one long recruiting trip a year.
So GRA Grand Park usually has a, well, seems like it was a couple, but now it’s many events. So we’re usually there once in the fall and we usually hit April, their Crossroads tournament. And in the winter they do a decent amount of things indoors with their three full length soccer fields, which is really, really nice.
So it gives us a chance to get out in the winter and see some kids that normally we would just be hibernating around here. Mm-hmm. Um, then we. Oh, we went to something down at Warren County two weekends ago, and then a lot of times also go down to the blue chip in Cincinnati. And then for us, it’s been really, really good about every other year to go out to Las Vegas to either the Mayors Cup or the Player Showcase.
So we’re going out to the Player’s Showcase next. Weekend and we actually have a signing out there, a young girl from California, but her grandparents live in Las Vegas. Uh, and she’ll be the third girl that we’ve signed in Las Vegas. So that’s been really, really good for us. Wow. Okay.
Matt: What about camps? Do you guys do any ID camps or does your staff work any external camps?
Coach: Um, our staff, which just me and my assistant coach Morgan Arm, we, we usually do not work external camps, but we do two ID camps ourselves. We always have a fall in the spring, so for us, the fall one is usually right before playoffs start. And for a lot of the high school girls, it’s winding down their fall season.
They’re usually done with state playoffs then, and then the spring, it’s, it’s actually coming [00:03:00] up this Saturday for us, and we only do two. And for us, um, it. It’s honestly not a fundraiser. It’s about finding the players that will be on our team, and I think statistically about 70 to 80% of any class have been to an ID camp.
Matt: Wow. That’s, that’s a large number. All right. Yeah. Very large. Whether it’s at a camp or a showcase or, or any of those things. Kind of what makes up your hierarchy of things that you’re looking for in a player, whether that’s on the field stuff or, or off the field stuff.
Coach: Sure. Well, first they have to fit what Taylor is also looking for, so, We’re what they call a discipleship based Christian school.
So we’re asking pretty much the kids need to have a relationship with Jesus and want to grow on their faith. Or Taylor soccer isn’t the best fit. So there’s other Christian schools that. We’ll take anyone and try to convert them as they come in. And that’s not what we’re doing. We’re just trying to disciple and grow.
Uh, academically we’ve been number one ranked in US news and report, I believe, I might be wrong by a year, but 21 of the last 25 years have been ranked the number one academic school in the Midwest. So a lot of our incoming players are in that three seven to 4.0 range. And then they have to be able to play soccer at a high level.
Cause I, I think you spoke with Spring Arbor, didn’t you speak with Jason? Or not,
Matt: I can’t remember, to be honest.
Coach: Well, anyway, for our n I conference, we, we went to nationals last year and Grace went to nationals and Marion was the national runner up, and [00:04:30] Spring Arbor was the national champion. So our, our conference is really tough, so we’re looking for really high level players.
Um, we’ve actually had three go on and play after college from here. Um, Christian kids who are also very smart, and for us, the pre-med niche is also really, really, Okay.
Matt: Well one of the things, uh, US parents are always concerned about is, okay, how much much is this gonna cost me? So, yep. Um, you know, not holding you to hard numbers here, but just give me Sure.
A rough overview of what an average player’s gonna come in looking at from a soccer scholarship perspective. A poten potential academic money tuition room.
Coach: Yeah. So, We stack academic and sports scholarships, but our average player is actually paying a lot of money still, at least in my book, it’s a lot of money.
So if we’re getting those students that are, say a 4.0, they’re probably gonna get somewhere between 16 and 20,000 academic money a year. And I believe room board and tuition is slightly over $49,000. And our average soccer player is going to get four to. In that range. So I think on average, most of our players are probably paying 18 to $25,000 a year somewhere, somewhere in that ballpark, which is real money.
And so for them it’s, it’s a true commitment to being here and wanting what Taylor has to offer. Yeah, absolutely.
Matt: [00:06:00] For sure. Yeah. Well, one thing, uh, that, that is maybe, uh, slightly odd about your roster as an NAI school is I didn’t see a whole lot of foreign countries there. Uh, no. So, no. So are you guys doing, uh, any international recruiting?
Are you looking at the transfer portal at all? Does that fit into your recruiting process in any way?
Coach: Transfer portal actually does not fit into our recruiting profile at all. We’ve had three, maybe four transfers in my 15 years. So sometimes we have a couple, we’ll have a D one transfer. Um, we had one from Xavier and, oh, I can’t remember, one from Marshall I believe.
And, and those girls did well, but they went to a school, just didn’t fit what they were looking for, like personality wise, more than soccer wise and internationally. Um, we’ve had girls. We had one Rachel German, and it listed Thailand as her, as her home, but she was actually a missionary kid, so she wasn’t Thai.
The only international foreign student we’ve had was Linley two, and she was the, the captain of the Chinese under 21 national team, and she’s, she’s playing professionally in Iceland now. My wife and I flew over and watched her play last year, but for the most part, we just find that either the internationals that we’ve talked to are not looking for the Christian school experience or.
They just, they don’t really have the budget to come to come here and play. So we don’t have tons of scholarship money and a lot of times that profile just doesn’t fit. So for us to have ’em for four years in development [00:07:30] seems to make a lot more sense.
Matt: Oh, that, that does make sense. Well, let’s talk about the school itself.
Uh, we, you’ve talked said a few things that you’ve got 15 years there, so you’re get a nice, uh, background for us. Yeah. So, so what are some of the great things about Taylor that maybe we’re not gonna learn just by going through
Coach: Um, I think sometimes people look at, at Christian schools and think, well, they’re, they’re all pretty similar.
Um, and, and maybe from a faith background that’s true. But I think Taylor, the extremely high academic profile is unusual sometimes for Christian school and also unusual for the N A I. Um, a lot of times you would be thinking like the elite D three kind of academic profile, but that’s also what Taylor is like.
So a student that would. Williams or um, Wheaton is the kind of student that would also be looking at Taylor academically. Also, sometimes we find that Christian schools do not always put as much emphasis on the sciences as Taylor does. So my wife is chair of the chemistry department. She’s been here. 22 years.
And I believe for women chemistry pre-meds, they’re a hundred percent in admissions going to medical school. So it’s a very strong program. Um, we’re also nationally known for film and media and they’re building a brand new building cuz the program is exploding with students in that. Obviously you can get great degrees in business.
Um, but that doesn’t really set Taylor apart. I believe it’s truly the sciences, the, the faith-based studies. Um, and even things like exercise science leading to PA school [00:09:00] and, um, PT school where we’re pretty much a hundred percent on a lot of those fields as well, getting students in. Um, they’re just extremely well prepared.
So I would encourage people to look at it academically as well. That’s just faith-based. Okay.
Matt: As you mentioned, those high academic standards, how do your players really balance those commitments between their sport and between the high academic standards and and what kind of support systems does the university have to help?
Coach: That’s a actually really, really good question. So our players have. Strong GPAs as high schoolers and they seem to continue that. So we have a thing called student athlete, um, academic services where they take a seminar coming in their, their first semester, they kind of gets ’em on track and they’re introduced to things that they don’t always understand that they’ve paid for as part of their tuition.
Like there’s counseling services available to them and that’s part of it. They just make an appointment. They don’t pay extra for that. We have a writing center that works with students on papers. So one of the things is if you gotta see on your first paper and you come work with us in the next one, we guarantee a letter grade hire.
We have an academic enrichment center that does a very similar thing with testing. And then the one that I think is, is really cool is that any student at any time can get tutoring at any class. And that’s actually, um, done through the library, but they make an appointment and it sends an email to the student.
As a reminder, it sends an email to the tutor. And the perception at Taylor is, There’s so many students going into the medical [00:10:30] field and they’re all getting tutoring, but if you’re getting tutoring, you’re smart. And so there’s no, there’s no stigma on it or nobody’s looking down on you. It’s like, oh, dumb jock getting tutoring.
It’s like everybody’s getting tutoring and I believe it was two years ago, I don’t know if the numbers have come out yet for this year, but like Taylor Women Soccer had the highest GPA of any I any N A I A program in the nation, and we didn’t do any team study table. So they’re just doing that on their own.
And I think it also helps that our coach buses have wifi and they do papers and stuff after games on the way back and all those modern things that didn’t exist when we were playing. But yeah, lot, lots of support. And also being mentored by teammates that are in similar fields of study.
Matt: You mean your, your players aren’t, uh, driving the 15 passenger vans themselves like we had to do?
No, thank goodness. Well, you, you know, you mentioned doing papers on the, on the bus and, and managing time. So can you take me back to the fall, kind of walk me through what a, a standard week schedule might look like in terms of when classes and meals and practice and the game cadence and all that kind of stuff looks like, yeah.
Coach: It really does seem like a lot when I compare it to high school, but when I think that they do high school and club, it actually seems much more balanced and manageable. So typically, um, a non-science student would be in class Monday, Wednesday, Friday for three or four hours, or three or four classes, and probably one class on a Tuesday, Thursday, it’s a little bit longer.
Um, in that time, if they. [00:12:00] Injured or eating treatments, they would probably go see the athletic training staff about an hour before practice. And then we have kind of a, a dead time at Taylor between four and six where students can be doing sports practice or play practice or music lessons, which is really nice.
It’s a carved out time for extracurriculars, so they’re, for the most part, not missing things. There’s occasionally night class conflicts. There might be an adjunct teaching that can only come at a certain time, but a lot of the schedules built around that. So our team would. Going to class like normal students, they’d probably have an hour or two gap in their day for some study or downtime.
They would come out to practice getting ready around 3, 3 30. We start at four, go till about six o’clock. They always go to dinner together as a team in the fall. Um, that’s a required thing and they just enjoy doing that anyway. And then evening would be study time, and that would just be like on a normal kind of practice day, on a game day.
I think we’re lucky. Our furthest game in our conference away is Mount Vernon, which is about four hours on the bus. So that day would be the longest day of the year if it was away, and we would probably be getting ready to go. 10 in the morning, um, for seven o’clock kickoff and getting back to Taylor around two the next morning.
And then, yes, they are truly getting up for their eight o’clock classes. Um, they can sleep on the bus, but they can’t miss class. That’s kind of one of the, the expectations for ’em. But typically, a, a lot of our games are only two hours away, so [00:13:30] even on a game day, it’s not too much to expect them to get their homework done on the bus.
We’ll be back. 10 and midnight, which is when they’re going to bed anyway normally. But being organized is a key and I think that for the most part, at pretty much any school athletes manage their time very well. And probably even better in their fall season when they’re the busiest, cuz they, they don’t have the time to ignore, delay, take extra naps.
They just kinda structure their schedule and get it.
Matt: Yeah, no, I think, uh, I think you, you’re probably the, the, the fifth interview in a row I’ve had where the coaches said, you know, they always do better during season. And, and I’ve always found that to be my case as well. Oh, my mine too. So. Hundred percent.
Yeah. Yep. Well, yeah. Um, well, let’s talk a little bit more about the, the, the soccer side of things. Sure. Um, is, I guess it is more recruiting related. You said you wrapped up your class. Is there a roster size that you find as ideal that you try to get around every.
Coach: Um, we’re typically asked to bring in seven to eight players per year.
That’s kind of a goal number for our program. Um, and this year is 12, which is, is crazy, but an ideal roster size would be somewhere between 28 and 32. So if you just average that out, so it’s around 30. I think we’re going to have 32 this year, which would be the biggest we’ve ever had, but we. We’re not even encouraged to grow that roster.
From there, they’re still saying 28 to 32 is is your roster size and you’re at the absolute max. [00:15:00] So just just keep that in mind as you recruit for the next year. Um, yeah, it’s kind of where we’re at and I like that We used to have a JV program. We, we actually dropped that just because it was hard to find games.
Um, and, and it was recruiting two teams and it’s myself and an assistant coach, so 32 is more manageable, say than was 46 at one point, which seems like a lot, but I do see the rosters out there that have 70 plus and I just don’t know how that’s a manageable thing. Maybe they’ve got a great system, but for us that wouldn’t work.
Matt: Yeah, I’ve seen pretty much what I’ve seen is a few conferences in the Midwest where. I get more, more west than you guys, but, uh, that tend to have that full
Coach: JV development
Matt: roster and they get into big, uh, big, big numbers. But, but not every conference. If the conference kind of hasn’t come to an agreement that, Hey, we’re all gonna do this, then it get mm-hmm.
Definitely gets tough. But,
Coach: um,
Matt: excuse me. Um, well you mentioned you have one, one assistant. Can you just give me an overview of, of your guys’ style of coaching and the team style
Coach: of. Sure we’re, we’re both like organized detail kind of people that are also not screamers. So I dunno if that helps with a, with a philosophy.
We’re just high expectations. Um, all the players know that they’re respected and loved and cared for as people. So when we’re pushing them really hard and practice, it’s because we want to grow them as, as players. And we, we always tell ’em, part [00:16:30] of our job is to make you. Uncomfortable with the amount of work that you’re having to do so that you’re very, very tired and when you get really tired, you make mistakes and making those mistakes and practices better than in games and it gives us a chance to correct.
Uh, we also have a pretty extensive playbook. We typically play 4 33, so I’m actually not giving anything away. Probably anybody has ever played against us, knows that, but every player. What they’re supposed to do in each third of the field, whether it’s on offense or defense, and hopefully they also learn what all the players around them are supposed to be doing so that we have more flow for our team.
And then with that, in the spring, we do a lot of individual training to make them better players, whereas the fall is much more directed at making a better team kind of thing. Cuz in the fall you’re always preparing for the next game. In the spring it’s like, well, how do I make. Two center backs a better partnership for the next season.
So that’s kinda what we do. Um, we also like to photograph the practice and send it to the captains so that they can manage expectations for what’s gonna be happening on any, any given day. And we just believe in sharing as much information with the team as possible, making it an educational experience and not just an athletic experience form.
Yeah.
Matt: So are, are you guys. Videotaping practices and games. Are you using any other kind of technology or anything else like that to, to help the players?
Coach: We occasionally videotape practices. Um, that depends on how [00:18:00] available my manager is in, in the spring, in the fall where they’re around all the time.
It’s just an expectation that. We’ll videotape something, whether it’s part of practice or, um, videotape what the bench is doing at any given point. Just different things to, to show different looks to them. Uh, we do use INS stat for video analysis and we’ve, we found that to be pretty helpful. What we like about is that the players can receive their clips and then each player gets a game report.
Usually it’s, if they’ve played like seven to 10 minutes, they get a report. And if it’s less than that, usually you get a not enough time or not enough touches kind of thing for them. But we found that helpful. Um, the weird thing about using any video analysis is that players start to think about their stats and sometimes they play like, oh, I was only.
I was only 75% effective passing last game. I’m gonna be a hundred percent cause I’m gonna pass everything backwards. And then they get a really good percentage and then they don’t understand like why we’re upset that it was very ineffective play. So yeah, if it’s another one of those things you have to manage their expectations about, this is a tool to help you grow, not a tool to make your numbers look better.
But yeah, for sure.
Matt: Well, you, you, you mentioned spring and, and obviously mm-hmm. We’re talking in spring. What does your off season typically look like? Uh, just in, in terms of what all the players are doing and how much of it?
Coach: Yeah. Spring is very different. It’s, it’s also lighter. We’re, we’re allowed 24 [00:19:30] weeks in a, in a school year.
And so typically in the fall we. Somewhere between 12 and 14 weeks. So right now we decided that with the weather here and with lacrosse using one of the fields in the spring, we were going to be outdoors in March and April and wrap the season up at first day or 2nd of May. So we’re looking at about seven full weeks cuz there’s the spring break week in there.
And in that time we go Monday through Thursday. Give them Fridays off in the spring because we can’t miss any class time for things. So any games that we would do would always be on a Saturday in the spring. And typically we cut the practices to an hour and a half, but they still want to lift. So a couple days a week we’re doing an hour of practice and an hour lifting on the same day and they’re pretty much back to back, like go to practice, hit the gym or go lift and we’ll scrimmage a little bit afterwards.
But it’s, it’s much. It’s, it’s also very individual directed, as we mentioned earlier. So there may be, there may be a practice like at 10 o’clock in the morning because all my forwards are free, but they won’t come to the afternoon session. So we’ll do a shooting session in the morning and we might only have 10 people in the afternoon and we’ll work on possession or rondos or something like that.
So they like it, they get a lot of touches and because of that, we can be much more efficient with time. You can do a lot with 10 people in 45 minutes, and sometimes it feels you can get more done there than in two hours with 30 people in the fall where it’s, it’s still two coaches and so [00:21:00] we’re trying to organize and use space efficiently.
Matt: Yeah, no, absolutely. Well, we’ve talked about a lot of different facets of this thing, but, uh, the, the last question I wanna leave you with and. You know, I’m trying to give as much insights to folks as possible, so if you can give me what is the, the one piece of information, the one nugget that you want to make sure every parent of a high school, aged player, every player, understands about the college recruiting process.
Something that, that you wanna hit home for them so that they make sure they understand it.
Coach: Oh, wow. That’s, That’s tough to put into a sentence or two. Um, are you talking like Taylor recruiting or just like the whole process for parents out there?
Matt: Just, just the whole process. I know there’s a lot of misconceptions, you know, about, uh, on so many levels in terms of the right.
Division’s, how someone gets recruited, scholars A, anything in general. I know you, you run into a lot of recruits. I’ll talk to a lot of folks. So what is it that if you could communicate one piece of information, uh, to somebody, if they’re listening, what would that be?
Coach: Well, for us, besides all the, like the, the filters with, with academics and, and spiritual fit in a relationship with Jesus.
Take that outta the equation. Just say general college. Coaches are also human beings and want to recruit people that want to be there and play for them. So when we’re recruiting someone, I tell them, and in the AI, you can [00:22:30] text and I can respond back to you, and things like that. So I think that’s actually different than division one, where you have that once a week kind of contact rule.
But if you want me to stay interested in you, it’s okay to say, Hey coach, we played this weekend. We won one to nothing. I just know that you’re putting yourself back in front of me and have some interest in saying in communication. Whereas if in a typical year of if our numbers start with like possibly three to 500 people that have made some contact with us that we’re going to reply to in contact and, and try to make it manageable really quick.
If someone hasn’t responded to something in a year and then just starts contacting us, say follow their senior year, we’re probably done already and have missed them. And I know players don’t wanna be missed and we don’t wanna miss them either. So for us just staying in touch and being friendly and polite because that’s what we’d expect you to be when you’re here and we want to be friendly and polite with you.
Just that that cordial relationship for us is, is really important. And I think if parents aren’t finding that with a coach that’s recruiting them, I don’t know if that person is really recruiting. Or if it’s also the kind of environment that they might wanna send their kid to, if it’s always rude and terse and stuff, I, to me, it’s just very unappealing.
So stay in contact, be out there and, and, and be friendly and we’d love to recruit people like that.
Matt: I love it. Well, coach, really [00:24:00] appreciate your time. Wish you the best of luck. Uh, if you, if, if any of those long distance recruiting trips end up in Bradenton, uh, for any of the events down here, gimme a shout and we’ll definitely hang out.
Alright.
Coach: Thanks, Matthew. We actually have a, a girl coming from the Orlando area next year, so her name is Sydney Reddy, but one of those that her mom played at Taylor too. So who knows, we may break into that Florida market yet. That’d be great. Love to see you.
Matt: All right, sounds good. Take care, coach.
Coach: Yeah, thank you.
Bye-bye. Bye.
