University of Valley Forge Men’s Soccer – Coach Stephen Bower

On today’s episode, I speak with Coach Bower from the Valley Forge Men’s Program in Pennsylvania. We talk about how they are recruiting academics, faith and soccer. He describes their faith-based community that is full of amazing people. Lastly, we discuss their focus on winning the middle of the field. Learn more about University of Valley Forge Men’s Soccer.

Matt: [00:00:00] Hi everybody. Welcome to discover college soccer today. I’m lucky enough to be joined by coach Bower from the University of Valley Forge welcome coach. 

Coach: How we doing? Thanks for having me. Appreciate it. 

Matt: Yeah. Thanks for being here. You are the head men’s coach over there. Division three school outside of Philly, uh, near the historical landmark of the Valley Forge National Park.

But the other historical landmark, the King of Prussia Mall, which, uh, you know, everybody has to swing by when they’re in that area, I’m sure. 

Coach: Oh yeah, definitely. Big attraction. Big attraction. Yeah. 

Matt: Well, uh, I’m sure, you know, I’m sure that’s one of your recruiting tent poles is, Hey, come, come be close to the mall.

But, uh, in all seriousness, we’re, we’re talking end of July, you know, getting ready for preseason, I’m sure you’re. 23s are, are, are done and dusted. Everybody’s getting excited to come in, but what does your recruiting calendar look like? Are you just focused on 24s right now? When will you’re going to, when you want to wrap those up?

Do you look at, talk to 25s at this point, or is it a little too early? What’s that kind of look like for you? 

Coach: Yeah. I mean, I think for us, I would say probably 80 to 90 percent of our time is dedicated to 24s. Uh, we have a handful of 25s that. Uh, we’re connected with some, some local ties or, or even, you know, we have, we have a younger brother and a younger cousin who have kind of been in the fold throughout, uh, you know, their sibling or cousins recruiting process as well.

Uh, but I think for the most part, we kind of [00:01:30] keep those guys, you know, just involved in, in our schedule more than we are involved in their schedule for the 25s. Um, just because for us, it’s, it’s so much more advantageous for us to lock in on 24s. And that percentage of time will probably be committed through the end of the calendar year.

So, and then we kind of open that up a little bit more, you know, once we get into January, once we get into the spring semester. 

Matt: Okay, makes sense. Well, in terms of that recruiting, are there events that are kind of the must see TV, the places you’re going each year to help build out that recruiting list?

Coach: Yeah, absolutely. I think, you know, this is such a rich area for soccer. Uh, not only, you know, our competition, right, that the number of division three college programs in this area, especially that compete at a very high level. It is awesome, but it also means right that that we have to really get after it.

So, you know, I think it’s probably the top three even even nationally recognized clubs in this area outside of the Philadelphia Union’s Academy. Uh, we probably be FC Delco, Penn Fusion and Ukrainian Nationals. All of them have really high quality events, both in the fall and in the spring that that we find ourselves at, whether it be, you know, my entire staff, including myself or just my assistants or just myself, we, we find ourself at those, uh, those tournaments.

And again, you know, just kind of right around the King of Prussian Mall area, which is, which is nice for us right in our backyard. Um, and then, and [00:03:00] then we have, you know, EDP, you know, a lot of our roster comes from that league. Um, you know, guys that played in Philly area, guys that played in Jersey, North and South.

Uh, uh, so, so we get ourselves in those capacities a lot. And that’s kind of like the club wheelhouse that we kind of live in. Um, outside of that, um, outside of our own events, we, we would probably have the next most important event for us. Uh, Messiah University puts on a Christian college ID camp every summer.

We’ve been fortunate enough to be invited to that over the last few years, and it’s been really advantageous for our recruiting, just because there’s an assumed baseline of guys who are interested in attending a faith based Christian university, and you know, because that’s our identity, you know, it kind of allows us an assumed context to kind of recruit out of, which is, which is really nice and beneficial for us.

So those would probably be The, the top things outside of the things that we run on campus that, uh, we pull most of our guys from. All right. Sounds good. 

Matt: Well, whether you’re at an ID camp with, uh, or at a tournament or something kind of, what is, what’s the hierarchy of things that you’re looking for in a player that’s going to make you want to say, Hey, we want you at, uh, at Valley Forge.

Coach: Yeah, that’s a great question. You know, for us, it’s really three areas that we recruit out of. Um, obviously the soccer side of it is, is really important. You know, we, we, we want to be competitive and we want to, uh, kind of continue to raise the [00:04:30] level of our program year after year. Um, but probably just from a strictly soccer speaking standpoint, we’re just looking for really hard workers because we’re not yet at the level where we feel, you know, that we can just kind of get the cream of the crop.

The guys that are playing at the highest level, very high technical level players, while we do have that in our roster and we do land those guys that are going to grind on the ball and off the ball. We need guys that are going to work really, really hard. Um, so that’s really the top, the top thing that we look at.

Um, obviously everything else is important, right? Soccer IQ positional need that we have within our roster. Um, as well as, you know, the style of play that we’d like to go, but from a soccer standpoint, that’s really important, but arguably more important than that is, you know, the culture that we’re building here, which is a high value in academia, as well as the fit of the institution, right, as a University Valley Forge is a private Christian university, um, and there are a lot of faith based schools that run their programs, you know, aligned with that.

And, you know, It’s different from school to school, you know, but for us, that’s something that we really, really value. We want guys that want to operate in a Christian setting. They, they value discipleship at the university and within the program, you know, so that’s, that’s the number one filter that we push all of our recruiting through.

We want guys that want that. If you don’t want that. Even if you’re the great fit for us on the field, it’s probably not going to be the best [00:06:00] fit, you know, from start to finish for four years and then ultimately as a division three university, right? The high achieving academia is huge for us. Um, we’ve set a goal within our program to be the highest achieving men’s program on campus.

Um, and and we’ve been successful in that since I’ve been here the majority of the semesters, right? The team GPA is awesome. Like, I can tell that, but really, it’s about the character and quality of the individuals on our team that are putting in the work. Uh, in the classroom and study hall and have set themselves up to be successful.

Those are the three things. Um, I’m sure we could, I mean, talk for hours and hours on each of those individual prongs, but I think that’s a pretty good overview of what we’re looking for in recruiting. 

Matt: Yeah, no, that makes a lot of sense. Well, in terms of just the, the overall recruiting, you know, are you. I noticed on your roster, you have a couple of internationals, which, you know, D three, that’s not always the case.

Right. Um, and, and, you know, I know you mentioned kind of that. We’ll call it regional focused recruiting, but, but you got players from, from kind of all over the country, you know, so, so are you, how are you picking those up? Are you, are you looking at the transfer portal at all? Does the school have special international programs kind of how’s that roster being built like that?

Coach: Sure. I mean, I think. You know, right now, moving into this upcoming year, we have guys from, I think, 10 states. Uh, and we have guys also that are either, uh, refugees, [00:07:30] um, or maybe they’re first generation, uh, Americans, or even, you know, they were born here and spent the majority of their life in a different country.

Um, you know, so it kind of goes in a different way for, for kind of everybody. But yeah, we have guys from Arizona and California. I’m, I’m born and raised from the Phoenix area. I coached there for almost 10 years at the high school and college level before I took this. So I have a lot of connections out there.

And we go out to President’s Day tournament and Mayor’s Cup in Phoenix and Las Vegas, respectively, every February. Um, so that’s, that’s where kind of that niche comes from, uh, from that area. And then really we just try to localize it the best that we can. Uh, the school in general, um, is an extremely diverse place in our, in our roster actually represents that really well.

Uh, again, we have, we have a pair of brothers, um, that are Rwandan refugees, you know, but they would say that they’re from PA, uh, because they’ve lived the majority of their life there. Uh, we, we have a young man from Haiti who, again, spent most of his life in the States, you know, but obviously, again, uh, coming from Haiti, being a first generation, uh, American in that sense too, uh, is really cool.

So, so we don’t necessarily reach out specifically to internationals. Um, you know, we had two internationals on the team last year, one of whom spent all of his high school career in the States, uh, at a small Christian high school, uh, the other one was probably the most traditional [00:09:00] international player, I guess you could say living in Ecuador, um, his whole life and then coming to the States for college soccer.

And, and that’s, that’s kind of what that looks like. So we don’t outright seek that stuff. We don’t outright, you know, have legitimate connections with. You know, recruiting agencies from different countries and so forth, but as they come kind of organically, we kind of move from that in terms of the transfer portal.

Um, we also don’t really roll into that as well. I think I think at our level at division 3 level, it’s not necessarily something that’s super advantageous. Um, you know, we have a handful of transfers this year that are going to be, uh, junior college transfers. Uh, again, my experience, uh, before I was at the University of Valley Forge was at the NAI level, which is, that’s a major focus, both of those things, international recruiting as well as junior college transfers.

So, I still kind of have a little hint of that in my, in my wheelhouse, but, you know, for the most part, we want guys that are from generally this area, um, and that reflects what our school looks like. Which, again, is. It’s pretty much what it looks like on our, on our roster, which is cool. Cause it wasn’t that way.

You know, when I first got here, we had guys, you know, from all over the place and that’s great and that’s awesome. Um, but I think starting to more centralize and localize our, our rosters can only be, uh, better for the growth of our program. 

Matt: No, it sounds great. Well, I’ll give you the, the, the easiest question here about your recruiting is there, is there a [00:10:30] target roster size that you’re trying to hit each year?

Coach: Yeah, so, um, you know, for us, this was, this has been a three year project to get our roster to where, in my opinion, what it needs to be to be competitive at the division three level. Um, when I was hired just a few years ago, we just weren’t at a healthy roster size. It makes it hard to compete. You know, the college soccer season is a grind.

Um, and it’s, it’s a real challenge. So for us, the last three years have been larger recruiting classes in order to build to that roster size number. So we want to be, we want to live between 25 and 29. Um, for us, that’s, that’s the wheelhouse. We don’t, we don’t have visions of a JV program or a reserve team or what have you.

You know, I was a coach of one of those teams at the NAI level before I did this. And, you know, there are ways to do that well and that, and that’s awesome, but it’s just not our vision here. At the university, nor is it our athletic department vision. None of our programs have JV teams or reserve teams. So we want to live between 24 and 29.

Um, you know, so for us, ultimately that’s a six to eight person recruiting class every year. Now we haven’t done that the last three years. You know, we’ve been much larger than that to kind of establish what we want in our base, but moving forward, our 24 or 25 or 26 classes will, will hopefully be within that six to eight wheelhouse.

Matt: Well, let’s talk a little bit more about the school. I’m sure there’s folks not familiar. Um, you’ve now been there a few years. Um, you know, what are [00:12:00] some of the awesome things that you found about Valley Forge? Maybe some things we wouldn’t know just by going through the website. 

Coach: Yeah. I mean, I think, you know, very, very similar.

I’m sure a lot of other coaches would, would echo this, but you know, for us. You know, the most important thing about our school is the people. Um, I think for me that that’s been something, somebody who came from the other side of the country, uh, to, to to be a part of a community, not just the faculty and staff, right.

But the, but the student body as well, uh, is just really committed to you, who the school wants to be. And, you know, we alluded to that earlier in terms of like what we want to recruit. Right. You know, we’re intentional about, uh, our faith here at the university. Again, I, I’ve been in, uh, public and other private Christian universities, and, and, and I’ve seen it run differently at different places.

And, you know, for here at Valley Forge, I think that’s been the top thing for me, is just how committed, you know, kind of from top to bottom, right? From, you know, whether you want to start at the, the cabinet and the board of trustees and the president of the college. Our university, you know, down to, you know, the incoming first year students, you know, the, the buy in to, to who we are at the university is all, is very strong, which is really cool.

And you, again, not to say it’s unique. For say, because, you know, I have colleagues who would probably echo the same sentiment at their location. But for me, that’s been probably the top tier thing that we have on campus is the guys. And then for me specifically, [00:13:30] right, would be the guys in my locker room, right?

I love those guys. You know, my kids love those guys. They love being able to, you know, have the soccer boys over, you know, to play soccer. Yeah. To get the fire pit going and s’mores going in the backyard. You know, I think that that for me is kind of how I think that paints a really good picture of what I love most about where I am.

Matt: Awesome. Well, you mentioned earlier about the, you know, the academics and obviously it is a student athlete, uh, that you have on your roster. So how do your players really balance the demands of playing college soccer as well as the classroom demands? You know, what kind of support systems does a school offer also to help them with that?

Coach: Sure. So I’ll start specifically with our program. Um, and this is pseudo departmentally, but not every program is required to do this, but this is something we found that works for us. So we do this. So for all of our first year student athletes, uh, re we require internally two things. We require a minimum of four hours of study hall a week.

And we require a biweekly grade check, um, ultimately for us, and in my experience, it’s, it’s very rarely the intellect that’s the challenge for the first year student athlete. It’s the time management, right? So being able to scaffold that and, and monitor that internally is huge for us. You know, we have an athletics department, uh, in our staff, we have a couple of TAs, That specifically monitor our, our study hall as long as, as well as my assistant coach.[00:15:00] 

So that’s kind of like our first line of defense that we use kind of internally, you know, but it does start in the recruiting process. Right? Like, we have a couple of guys coming in that they are concerned about how they’re going to be in college. Right? So we’ve already set them up with, you know, what we have institutionally and institutionally.

I think we do a great job. Uh, we have, you know, our director of student success is a former college student athlete, so she fully understands and gets the balance and the delicate, sometimes how it can get out of balance. Um, you know, and she oversees kind of all of our student success on campus. We’re talking about career services, we’re talking about, uh, tutoring and peer mentors, and so we can align our students with that department really well, and they’ve been an extreme help for us in our department.

Um. And I think that ultimately allows us to see that success in the classroom. And then again, like from the division three side of things, like our guys aren’t missing loads of class, right? Uh, we structure our practice and game schedule the best we can to maximize the time our student athletes are in the classroom.

Um, and ultimately we try to balance that from fall to spring, you know, the spring, maybe it’s a little bit heavier academically on the guys, just because we have a little bit more time on our hands just with what we’re allowed to do. But I think those are probably the top things that we do. Not just in our program, but kind of in our department and in our institution that kind of [00:16:30] supports that student athlete.

Matt: Well, it was a perfect lead into my next question was what, can you tell me about what that normal week looks like during the season, you know, fast forward to October, you know, what, what’s kind of the normal week in terms of practice schedule, game schedule, when’s classes, meals, all, all the things. 

Coach: Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, all the things that’s, that’s a great way to put it. Right. Um, you know, we get into October, right? That’s our conference season. Right. So it’s, it’s the most challenging time, I think, for the college student athlete, probably why you’re asking that question. Right. But we’re on six days a week in some capacity, right?

Probably in October we’re, we’re in conference, so we have two games a week. Um, our conference schedule kind of alternates the weekday game again to kind of balance that, that academia, you know, so we’re a Tuesday, Saturday, Wednesday, Saturday situation. Um, so every time we have a Tuesday, Saturday, uh, week or Wednesday, there’s, there’s no contacts in training the next day, right?

So a lot of it’s, it’s film study, it’s recovery, it’s some technical work, it’s, you know, an opportunity to kind of let the bodies kind of relax a little bit. Yeah. Again, that’s, that comes from our history as well, you know, with, with a very limited roster over the last couple of years, you know, it’s, it’s exponential, the amount of minutes and the amount of injuries that take place when your roster is a lot smaller.

Right. So we should have a little bit more freedom as we build from now, but so what we do is we typically train, you know, [00:18:00] the, the four days that we’re not playing with one of them, probably being some sort of recovery day. Maybe we’re in the classroom. You know, for 80 percent of the practice period, looking at film, kind of maybe getting into the weight room and doing some recovery, uh, in addition to that twice a week, we have our strength and conditioning coach on campus.

She’s a former division one soccer player. So she gets us to, um, so obviously in season, it’s a lot of injury prevention stuff. So these are, these are going to be mornings twice, twice a week where. We’re in there doing injury prevention, a lot of recovery and stretching, especially in October. You know, we’re not, we’re not maxing out on bench or squad or anything like that in October by any means, a lot of that stuff, right.

It’s coming in the spring, but yeah, we’re on four days a week of training, two days of playing where again, one of those trainings is a lot lighter. Um, we typically train in the afternoon, you know, we share our practice facility with our women’s team. And so we might, especially in October, You know, find opportunities to go in the morning, uh, and kind of balance it with them and our guys schedules.

But, you know, I, I think that hopefully answers that question. It’s a little vague, but I, but ultimately that’s what our October looks like. 

Matt: Well, let’s talk more about, about the team and the soccer side of things. I know you mentioned your ideal roster size from a player perspective, but let’s talk about the rest of the team, your staff, you mentioned it before.

So, so how big is your staff? What role does everybody play there? And what other kind of support staff [00:19:30] you mentioned the strength and conditioning coach, but what other kind of support staff does the athletic department offer as well for the team?

Coach: Yeah, so we’ll start with my staff. So it’s, it’s a, it’s a real honor for me because my two assistants are both alum of the school.

So, um, my, my assistant coach, um, he, his career kind of ended with COVID. So it was kind of a strange dichotomy. for him. You know, I knew that he had more left to give the program and kind of put the ball in his court to decide what he wanted to do. Uh, you know, do his fifth year in play or he has aspirations of coaching at this level.

So he chose to be my assistant coach. So he’s going into year three is my assistant coach. This is exciting. Um, he kind of does it all. But his main focus is goalkeepers. Um, you know, that’s been a task that he’s been a kind of I don’t know, put on his plate as the number one priority last couple of years.

Uh, and then this year, again, with our roster, you know, actually looking healthy, we’re bringing in a GA, uh, again, who’s a former UVF men’s soccer alum. Uh, and so he’s gonna help us out as well. Um, so he’s This will be his first year on staff, and this will be our first time having three guys, uh, you know, with the coach’s title, um, that are gonna be running stuff, and so all of us will kind of be an all hands on deck staff for the most part.

Uh, we have a student manager as well who does a lot of stuff, uh, for us, you know, a lot of, a lot of the really things that, you know, sometimes can get overlooked and overshadowed. I mean, he’s not just a ball [00:21:00] boy, you know, but he loves to serve the group, you know, he, whatever the team needs. He wants to do it and that’s awesome.

We’re so thankful for him and what he does. So that’s kind of like what we have in our in house, uh, zoom out a little bit to the athletics department. Again, we have, um, we have an FAR, so we have a faculty academic representative. So, you know, Dr. Robertson’s awesome, huge advocate for sports. athletes. He’s a big fans games for all of our spor soccer.

Um, which he’s ex us. We have, as I mention a couple of T. A. S. Inter Um, I think, you know, ki of my head. I think that I think the other side of The ratio of professors to students, you know, it’s 1 to 11 or 11 to 1 if you want to go the other way. And so I think sometimes they can kind of seem like an extension of our staff just because of, of the relationships that get built between professors and student athletes and students in general.

And then, in terms of, you know, the non academic side, I mentioned coach Maeda, our strength and conditioning coach. Uh, you know, she, she runs all of our strength and conditioning for us as well as the rest of the department. But as, you know, selfishly, you know, I, I know as a former division one player, I’m like soccer player.

I’m like, well, she’s ours, right? She knows what we want the most and, and she’s great. And it’s been a huge asset for our program. Um, obviously athletic training as well. Athletic training staff is, you know, imperative, especially [00:22:30] like you said in October, you know, they, they’re your best friends. Um, you know, so that’s been a huge, a huge asset for us too.

Matt: Yeah, absolutely. Well, now, now I got to turn the tables, focus on you. So how would you describe, you know, your style of coaching and the team style of play and what you’re trying to do on the field?

Coach: Yeah, I mean, this is, this is still, I think, a work in progress, which is great, which I love, uh, I think, you know, for me, you know, the most important thing is that, you know, I’m building relationships with the, with the young man in my program that starts, uh, with the recruiting, you know, we, we have core values that we build everything out of, um, and that starts in the recruiting process that starts in the summer workout that starts in preseason, you know, all of that stuff to lay, to lays that foundation so that there’s, that there is a level of love, love and trust Uh, not, not just, you know, between myself and the players, but between the players and, you know, the guy next to them or the guy behind them on the bench or the assistant coaches.

So I think the relationship side of it, um, is extremely, extremely important for what we do. Um, you know, and that’s that’s the huge side of it. Now. Now for us, you know, obviously, you know, without getting too terribly into the nitty gritty, right? Like we like, we like to play in the middle of the field, the middle block of the field, the middle third of the field, uh, both both defensively and and with the ball on her feet.

Uh, we’re not, you know, we’re not gonna, you know, counter press crazy high up the field. You know, we’re not gonna Uh, You know, have that level of high press. And, uh, [00:24:00] you know, you look at some of the, obviously the top teams, even our conference, um, you know, are really, really good at that stuff. And then, you know, you look at the national tournament last year, you have guys that are really, really comfortable defending very deep and absorbing a lot, you know, for us that that’s not what we want to do.

We want to have a little bit higher line of confrontation and. And defend higher up the field, uh, in a mid block where we feel comfortable that when we win the ball, we can counter if we’d like. Um, we, we like to, again, play in the middle of the field. Um, you know, when, not that, not that we have, you know, all of the, the fancy gadgets and gizmos, but when we, when we analyze the film, you know, we can see the majority of the game is played.

You know, within within the 18s, uh, and then if you, you know, do the opposite perpendicularly, we’re playing in that space the most that we can, um, you know, we think that that suits are our roster, but we think that suits are are the formation that we typically play out of. You know, but we’re excited to this this upcoming year.

I mentioned earlier already, right, that the roster is the healthiest it’s ever been. I think it’s going to give us a lot more flexibility, um, that we can, you know, maybe alter some of the formations that we go out as opposed to kind of just sticking with one for the whole year. Um, but the nice thing about having that game model out of that mid block allows us, you know, a little bit more freedom to change the shape without really changing who we are.

Um, you know, on the ball or even off the ball defensively, [00:25:30] you know, the shape of would just be in an opportunity to get different styles of players on the field as opposed to different team style, uh, throughout the, throughout the game. 

Matt: Okay. Makes sense. Well, coach, we’ve covered a lot of ground and I appreciate your time and I always like to end these the same way and that’s.

You know, if you had one piece of advice, one nugget that you would want every parent player, anybody going through this college recruiting process to know or think about what would that be? 

Coach: Yeah. I mean, one, one nugget’s really hard to narrow down. Uh, right. You know, I, I love, I love this. Like I mentioned that, you know, I coached, uh, at the high school level for almost 10 years before making this transition and so getting guys to play in college is a passion of mine.

At Valley Forge or anywhere else, to be fair. Um, I think the biggest, though, is it all comes down to, you know, go to where you’re wanted, um, and go to where you want to go. Obviously, if you’re only wanted at a place that you don’t want to step foot on, right, like that campus, then maybe, maybe your journey’s done, right?

But I found a lot of times that, you know, whether you’re talking transfer portal, whether you’re talking, you know, junior college, but you’re talking Division 1, 2, 3, NAI, like, There’s a lot of really, really good programs out there with coaches that really, really want a very specific type of player, type of young man, type of family.

And you just got to find that, in my opinion, is if you find, you [00:27:00] know, where you’re wanted, you know, from the guys in the locker room, from the coaching staff, from the, from the school, you know, you’re going to enjoy that experience a whole lot more. You know, maybe you might not play there as much as you would have thought, or maybe you’re going to play at that team, you know, more than you would have at the school that you wanted to be at or something like that.

But I found that when you, when you find that fit where you’re wanted, genuinely wanted, uh, it It provides so much more freedom, right? You’re walking into preseason, not as anxious, right? Cause you know, that the coaching staff wants you there. You know, that the guys that are returning, you’ve already built some relationships with you’ve connected with those guys.

They want you, you know, to share the same Jersey with them. Right. I think that’s. Ultimately, right. That’s, that’s huge. And, and I think that’s the most important thing. You know, there’s a lot of other things as well that goes into it, but I think ultimately for me, that’s what I tell guys when I was, when I was a high school level coach, and I tell that to guys here, like, if you feel that you’re not wanted here, You know, then maybe this isn’t the best fit for you, like, but if, if you feel like this is where you’re wanted the most, I think you should follow that for sure.

Matt: Awesome. Well, coach, wish you the best of luck, uh, in the fall. Uh, hopefully, uh, you continue the, the path of, of what you’re doing there. It sounds like you’re making great strides and, uh, hopefully you’ll see that on the field with this, this new conference, uh, alignment you got going on there and, uh, And we’ll definitely check in with you later.

But if you get [00:28:30] down to Florida for any recruiting events, let me know. Somehow you have a kid from, from our town down here in Florida, uh, up there. But, uh, there we go. We thank you for the time.

Coach: Yeah, absolutely, man. I appreciate it. Thanks for having me on.