Thiel College Women’s Soccer – Coach Carl Dei Cas

On today’s episode, I speak with Coach Carl from the Thiel Women’s Program in Pennsylvania. We talk about how he recruits the top regional events. He describes their breadth of good academic programs. Lastly, we discuss how he likes his players to focus on fitness and winning their individual battles. Learn more about Thiel College Women’s Soccer.

Matt: [00:00:00] Hi everybody. Welcome to Discover College Soccer. Today I am lucky enough to be joined by Coach Carl up at Thiel in Pennsylvania. Welcome coach. 

Coach: Thank you, Matt. 

Matt: Yeah, Thanks for being here. Uh, division III Women’s Program in northwestern pa.

Coach: Northwestern pa. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Seven miles east of the Ohio border and about 45 miles south of Erie, pa.

Matt: Yeah. Well, you, you’re, you’re still in Lake effect snow zone right up there, 

Coach: unfortunately. Yeah. Yep. 

Matt: Well, you and I, you know, you, uh, I know obviously you’re not new to college soccer, but, but new to Thiel, um, new Thiel. So this, this fall will be your first season. So getting the job in January. Have you been able to, uh, get recruiting?

What’s kind of your recruiting calendar looking like? Uh, as we, as you go forward? 

Coach: I. Kind of, well, for 2023, I kind of got what, what had applied only because, um, and I found this out ’cause I coached men for 18 years and then I coached women for about four in college before I came here. And, and young ladies make their decision much, much earlier than guys.

So it was a pretty much a closed situation who I had as who I had. And, and so we really started concentrating on, uh, 2020 fours and 2020 fives. So that’s been our, my main thrust, um, through, you [00:01:30] know, through this recruiting season. ’cause the summer season’s just about ending up with tournaments and, and, and, and clubs and that.

So that’s where we put a lot of our emphasis on, on, on that. Recruiting was 2020 fours and 2025 because at 20, 20 threes it really made their decisions. And, and you were just, you were just chasing Probably not to get anybody. 

Matt: Gotcha. Well, you mentioned tournaments. Uh, are there events that are really kind of on your, your must hit list each year?

Or where do you like to spend your time on event-wise?

Coach: Yes, and, and I think a lot of it has to do with where I coached before. And so, um, where I was at before was, was closer to, was in Pennsylvania. It was closer to Maryland. So we, it was the same conference, it was the President’s athletic conference is what we were in.

We were the o I was at the Eastern most school, so I spent a lot of time in Maryland. I’d go to the for, for the guys that went to the Bethesda tournament over, over Memorial Day, the Columbia Tournament for Girls PA Classics, Delco, um, New Jersey, the uh, EDPs. And, and I recruited a lot in that area. Uh, kind of what I found out coming to Thiel because now, like you said, we’re in, in, you know, western North central Pennsylvania.

I had to add like two and a half hours onto the trip for those, for those, for those players. Uh, and I’m, I’m just kind of finding out, you know, kind of what Ohio has. Over the years, it, it, it appears right now that in Ohio there’s less and [00:03:00] less tournaments to go to than there used to be, say, five, 10 years ago.

Uh, so I’m, I’m trying to get a different feel because I would say half the women on this team are from Ohio because we’re, we’re only seven miles from it. So I, you know, I’m, I’m, I’m going to have to change my strategy a little bit on, on what we wanna do. Can do. I still wanna go out. Yeah, because I know a lot of club coaches, I’m familiar with everything, and it’s just like anything else, once you’re familiar with something, it, you know, it, it, it’s tough to, uh, to make changes.

But I did find it, you know, a little difficult that there aren’t a lot of tournaments left in Ohio for some reason. And, and a lot of ’em are going to the G l A leagues and, and those things, and it’s hard to get schedules to find out where they’re playing and that type of deal. So it’s making a little more difficult for me and, and I am a club coach.

You know, my philosophy has always been I recruit from the clubs because I believe the commitment is there from the players to go to the next level. And obviously they’re, I’m not saying they’re getting totally better coaching, but, but they’re more dedicated, if that makes sense to you. 

Matt: Sure, yeah. Yeah. No, that makes sense.

Sense. Well, it, I, I don’t know if you have any, uh, ID camps scheduled or plan to, or how, how do camps and clinics kind of feature into your recruiting? 

Coach: Well, we do have one planned. It’s, it’s on July 9th and, you know, obviously being the first year here, it, it, you know what, what I do is if I, if I reach out to you, [00:04:30] Matt, and you reach back to me, I.

Then I try to get the conversation going, Hey, listen, we’re having an ID camp. Come and look at the school. Come and visit me, see if it’s a right fit for you. Um, and summertime that I’ve always felt was a little, sometimes a little more difficult because kids are on vacation. But I like to get ’em up there in the summer just to, to get a better feel because, uh, you get ’em up here in a winter and, uh, you know, you could have a, a foot of snob, although we do, we’re, we’re lucky here.

We have a dome that covers our complete field, so you can play a full indoor game in there. Uh, so the, the weather isn’t as much of a, a problem to have an ID camp in a winter, but it’s just the, the idea of it. But I believe ID camps are very, very important because, um, At the end of the day on division three, and we, we all know division three, there’s no scholarship money as you’re coming to the school really because you like the school and this is where this is your fit for your next, you know, uh, step in education.

So I think ID camps are very important and I push really hard and work really hard to try to get the, uh, the young ladies, or when I was coaching guys to get the young men at an ID camp. 

Matt: Okay, well, whether it’s at an ID camp or at an event. And when you’re looking at players, kind of, what’s your hierarchy of things that, that you’re looking for, whether it’s on the field or off the, off the field attributes.

Coach: I, I think what you have to look at when you’re on the, you know, it’s very easy. You go to a tournament, you’re looking at a team and [00:06:00] everybody’s looking at that star player. That’s the one that’s real easy to pick up, right? But you gotta pick out the player. You see is very consistent. You know, I, of course we want the star.

Everybody does, and every coach that’s there wants her. But can you pick out the, the player that is, is just consistently playing, playing hard. Um, I, I look, what, what are they doing when they don’t have the ball? You know, are they getting in the right position? Uh, obviously what their touches is like, but it it’s kind of, can you, can you pick out that player that.

Maybe not everybody’s looking at, but you know, can develop into the right fit for your team is the right, you know, this girl can play division three. Okay. The, the star’s gonna obviously maybe go to two or to go to one and you’re really gonna have a hard time getting that player. Um, but there are players and there’s a lot of ’em out there that, you know, can really come in and help a program.

And that’s what it takes, takes a lot of time and experience to kind of sort that out. To, to, to get that type of player. And, and I’ve had a lot of success at it, to tell you the truth, you know. 

Matt: Well, that’s good. Well, let’s talk a little bit more about the school. You know, I’m sure there’s some folks who aren’t familiar with Thiel.

Um, you know, obviously we talked about where it is, but, uh, you’ve been there a short time now, obviously coached against him in the past, so Yes. What have you found to be some of the, the bright spots, the good points about Thiel? Maybe some stuff we wouldn’t know just by going through the website. 

Coach: I, I think what, what, what I, what really drove me here was [00:07:30] the fact that, um, they’ve got a lot of good graduate programs.

Our physician’s assistant program is a track program. If you can get in, you get in and, and you can, you can become a physician’s assistant. Exercise science, that’s another very good, um, major for, uh, women. Um, Speech pathology, major track program and, and those are the things that kind of attracted me because.

And, and, you know, being right up front with you, you know, we’re in Greenville, Pennsylvania. Uh, you know, we’re competing. There’s about 15 division three schools in western Pennsylvania that we have to compete with. So what’s gonna make us outstanding over them? And those are some of the programs. Exercise science, um, physician’s assistant speech pathology, um, master’s in, in clinical, um, psychology, uh, and mental health.

So, you know, just about every school has accounting, right? So, you know, how do you distinguish yourself? So, you know, I try to tell these young ladies, listen, this is something that a lot of other schools don’t offer, and we do, and, and you. That’s the niche you try to find, okay. 

Matt: Well, you, you mentioned academics, so obviously for incoming players, the whole college experience is new and they gotta figure out how to balance soccer [00:09:00] and their studies.

So how do your students really balance the two and what kind of support systems does a school offer? 

Coach: I. Well, we, like every school, we have all kind of support systems. If you’re getting in, you know, if you need help, we have tutors. Um, you know, you, you can, you can get, uh, if you, you want a student tutor. If you want a tutor in, in a professor tutor, you know what?

Whatever. We have it. But, you know, I, I really look at it this way. If you’re gonna come to college, Um, first of all, I wanna recruit academically, sound students. I want somebody with a, with, with at least a three, two in high school because we don’t want problems. I don’t wanna have to send kids home because they’re ineligible.

But I have a short thing, a, a, a, what I tell every recruit that I see about time management there, we all get in our lifetime, 168 hours in a week. We get no more. We get no less. That’s what we get. Okay. Out of that 168 hours, I’m gonna give you 10 hours a day to sleep. So now we’re down to 98 hours. You take an average of 15 hours of class.

Of classroom work. I’m gonna give you, uh, two hours for each classroom to study. Now we’re down. We take 45 from 98, and we’re down to 53. You got to eat. I’ll give you 10 hours to eat, you know, now we’re, now we’re down to, to 33, uh, hours. Uh, I’m gonna ask you 20 in a season, okay? So you still got over a day, uh, of time [00:10:30] left, and that’s only in the season.

So if you’ve ate, you slept. You went to class and you played soccer and you got a full days of free time left and you can’t manage it, maybe you shouldn’t be here. Yeah. And it’s that simple. 

Matt: Okay. Well in terms of a, a week in the life of a student athlete in the fall, right? I know you haven’t had a season yet, but can you walk me through what you think that week’s gonna look like?

Just in terms of when is practice time, class time, meal time, game cadence, all that kind of thing?

Coach: Absolutely. Because it doesn’t change from school to school. It’s the same. So I’m a firm believer at your practice at six o’clock in the morning. Okay? So that’s when we practice. Practice is an hour and a half long, six to seven 30.

Classes don’t start till eight. So you got a half an hour to get ready. Now, when you practice at six o’clock in the morning and you’re done at seven 30, I never have to worry about, do you have some adjunctive pro, uh, a professor or do you have a biology lab at four o’clock that you can’t make my practice?

There’s no excuse not to be at my practice. All right, so you’re, and you’re done. You’re free for the day. So you, you, you, you practice, let’s say we, we usually play games on Wednesday and Saturday. That’s pretty typical. So, you know, Monday we’ll come in, um, and, and, and we’ll, we’ll get going. We’ll have a a a a a workout.

Um, we’ll have reviewed the film already from, from Saturday, so on. Maybe Monday night I’ll [00:12:00] get. What’s nice, we have a really nice huddle system, so Matt, if I have to bring you in, I only have to bring you in and show you your highlights for 10 minutes. You know, because when you bring a whole team in, and I found out after the years, the kids that didn’t play are sleeping.

And, and or not paying attention, but when I can bring you in and show you what you did in that game and you know, your, your pass, you know, what passes you made or the shots you made, or, or, or your clips, then you’re more interested in, in how we can break that down. So on Monday we’ll break that film down for the players at night.

Tuesday we’ll come in, um, probably, you know, go over what our opponent’s gonna be like, how we’re gonna set things up, uh, won’t be maybe quite as hard a work out. ’cause on, on Wednesday we’ve got a game I. Obviously game day. Um, if it’s home, you know, we’re playing in, in any we have, we can play night games, which is fine.

So, you know, you’re gonna go all day, bring the kids in, uh, make sure they eat, and then get ready for the game. If it’s a, if it’s a far away game, like we’re playing, you know, at seven o’clock at night, we, you know, we’re not gonna get home till midnight. Normally, we won’t have practice in the morning, and because they’re just gonna get home at midnight and have to turn around, we’ll get up and have an afternoon practice, but it’ll be usually a pretty light practice for recovery Friday.

Then we’re gonna get prepared for our game on Saturday. Um, Sunday, I believe every you, well, the N C A makes you have a day off anyway, so let’s just take Sunday off and, and do what we have to do. If we have a break in air for, we’re playing, let’s say just one game a week, then, you know, [00:13:30] Tuesday, Wednesday are gonna be tough practices, they’re gonna be a little bit harder, you know, because we don’t, we don’t have a game scheduled till, let’s say Friday or whatever, but pretty much after camp goes, the practice says you can’t beat ’em up.

Because you gotta play. You know, it’s just one of those things I’m a very, um, stickler on coming into camp in shape. Okay. That’s, that’s very important. Um, because the N C A just doesn’t give us enough time to, to, to, to, to, to fool around, to do those type of things. We got a lot to do to put a team together because if, if you’re involved in, in.

Whatever, whatever division one, two, or three. It’s, it’s, you know, 20, it is 18 to 20 games in eight weeks. It’s like game after game, after game after game. So, you know, you, you, you don’t have time to waste and preseason and conditioning. You’re, you’re really working on what, what do we need to do to prepare for the season?

So it’s typically how it goes, you know, we’ll game on Wednesday, game on Saturday, Sunday off, that type of deal. Okay. Okay. Well, 

Matt: I know you mentioned obviously you’re division three, so no, uh, athletic scholarships, but, you know, parents like me we’re always concerned, okay, what’s this gonna cost me? Right? So I’m not gonna hold, hold you to any hard numbers here, but just gimme an overview of what the overall tuition financial aid situation is.

Maybe for an average player coming in. 

Coach: I would say the average player, and, and some schools are a little bit different, but after all these [00:15:00] years of doing this right now, I, you know, you can get away between 18 and 25,000 on the average Division three school, depending on your academics. What, what additional add-on scholarships each school has, whether it’s a leadership scholarship or a STEM scholarship or, you know, you can get it down to about.

If you’re lucky. 17. It depends on your FAFSA form too, and, and how the school meets needs. So you’re gonna pay between 17 and 25, somewhere around there. That’s, that’s, that’s pretty typical. And I’d say the average is about 20 for whatever we’re looking at. Yeah. 

Matt: All right. Well shift gears and, and let’s talk about the team, the soccer side things a bit.

And I, and I know you, you’re kind of stuck with the recruiting class that you got, but moving forward, is there a roster size that, that you’re looking to hit, that you find is ideal? 

Coach: I think the ideal roster size for, for, and this is my opinion for any team, is between 23 to 25, and that includes your goalies.

Okay. And I, I, I, I’ll be quite honest with you, unless you’re a, a Messiah or a, uh, university of Chicago, after you get past the 16th player, If you get 15 players that can play college soccer, division iii, you’ve done a heck of a job. I’m just, you know, that’s, that’s, that’s the honesty of it. Okay. So wh why keep somebody that’s not gonna be able to play?

You’re doing ’em in [00:16:30] injustice. I’m telling you. You gotta get up at six o’clock in the morning. I’m telling you. Gotta come into shape and then I’m gonna tell you you can’t play. That isn’t fair to them. You know what I mean? So I think, and it’s a great, uh, it’s a great size to have. You have enough if you wanna do a full field scrimmage, um, yet you don’t have people.

I hate to see somebody standing around in practice not being able to participate. I really do. And if you keep, you know, three goalies is great. I like to have three goalies because, you know, you get a goalie injured, you’re, you know, can be in trouble. So, you know, if you keep three goalies out of 24, that gives you 21 field players.

You always have somebody and then somebody’s always hurt. I been doing this too long, so you, you keep 20 that can play. Um, that’s an ideal size for me. I know colleges today are, colleges today, especially division three, are pushing for numbers. Because, because everybody’s fighting for enrollment. But I don’t, I think you’re doing a, a, a, a A player injustice when you have 36 players on a team or 40 players on a team, and it’s only 11 are playing.

You know? So that’s just my philosophy. Right? Wrong, or whatever. That’s the way I believe. All right. Well, 

Matt: let’s talk about your staff. I know, I think you just, uh, from what I saw online, you just hired an assistant. So, uh, how many staff are involved in the program? What support staff does the athletic department have that may be involved in the program as well?

Coach: Uh, well, I mean, I, we we’re, we’re lucky because a lot of my friends today, even some of’em a division two, don’t have paid assistance. We do have a paid assistant. Uh, I was lucky that I’ve known [00:18:00] this gentleman for quite a long time. He’s been very active in the Pittsburgh area, especially in futsal. And, um, he played college ball, so I, I was able to get him, um, you know, obviously we’re backed by, um, our athletic training department, which is out of the University of Pittsburgh Medical.

So, you know, we have a good, good staff there. Um, but basically it’s the two of us and that’s another reason to keep it at 24. You know, my intentions are eventually to hire a goalie coach. I think that’s really important. This year I wasn’t able to do that in the coming years. I, I, I, I plan on, on, on working to get a goalie coach.

Okay. 

Matt: Well, how about your style of coaching, the team style of play, what can people expect this fall? 

Coach: Uh, what they have, what they’ll expect this fall is that, um, we’ll be in shape. We’ll come at you. We’ll, I, I, I have what I have. Okay. If you, all you have to do is look at the Thiel record that it hasn’t been great for the last 20 years.

Okay. To change that with what we have, we have to be in better condition than you. We have to be able to press you hard. We have to be able to win our one V ones and, um, and that’s the style we have to play this year. I mean, I, I have what I have talent wise. Do I wanna be able to move the ball around and, and, and play nice soccer?

Yeah. But I, I, I don’t have, I don’t have that yet. And that’s what we have to work [00:19:30] on. So our style this year will be press you hard, be in shape, um, and, and win every 50 50 ball you can. And, and that’s what’ll be important to keep us in games. I mean, you know, the, the team needed structure and um, I think they get that with me.

Matt: Okay. I know that’s right. 

Coach: Well, coach, we’re off the, yeah, we’re off the air. I’ll, I’ll tell you a little story. Alright. 

Matt: Well, we, we have talked about a lot of different things. I like to end these with, with one question of, if you had one piece of information, one nugget, one guiding principle you’d like to give any parents, players, anybody going through this recruitment process, what would you like them to know?

Coach: I think the most important thing is make sure your son or your daughter chooses their school. Not on the division, not on the size, but on the fact that if you couldn’t play soccer, this is where I’d want to get my education. And if you look at it, there are not too many people going pro do it because you love the school and.

I think that’s the most important part. You’re getting an education for the rest of your life. That’s your foundation. And choose it because that’s where I want to go to school. And then soccer’s great. It’s, it’s, it’s the icing on the cake. [00:21:00] Absolutely. 

Matt: Couldn’t agree more, coach. Well, I. I wish you the best of luck in your first season there in the fall, coach, and, uh, if you ever get down into the Florida Bradenton area for any recruiting, gimme a shout.

We’ll get together. All right. 

Coach: I will do. We’ll be down, we’ll be down in Florida this winter recruiting. 

Matt: Fantastic. Well, we, we, we will see you there. All right.

Coach: Okay. Thank you, man. Thank you. Take care. Bye-bye.