Vassar College Women’s Soccer – Coach Keith Simons
On today’s episode, I speak with Coach Keith Simons from the Vassar College Women’s Program in New York. We talk about how he has players from all over the country. He describes the school’s distinct community and its diversity. Lastly, we discuss how he hopes players enjoy their recruitment and college selection process. Learn more about Vassar College Women’s Soccer.
[00:00:00] Matt: Hi, everybody. Welcome to discover college soccer today. I’m lucky enough to be joined by coach Keith Simons. Welcome coach.
[00:00:07] Coach: Thank you. Thanks for having
[00:00:08] Matt: me. Yeah, thanks for being here. So, you know, you got a, a good program up there at Vassar in New York, and, uh, we just wanna kind of hear more about what you guys are doing.
[00:00:17] So let’s start talking first about the recruiting side of things. Um, it’s probably, you know, you’re a little bit. Different, I would say, just in the fact that you guys are such a high academic school, uh, and had been being at the D three level. So when do you really start looking at players, um, and start making those lists, you know, what year in high school are kids?
[00:00:40] Coach: Yeah, it’s a great question. And certainly the academic piece plays into it. Um, we will start watching younger players and I think more importantly for us it’s we need to make sure that. On the right track academically from the start. So when we get that good information early on, we can continue to track those players.
[00:01:01] Um, I always joke admissions is always our first hurdle here because we are very selective and, um, we do fit into that high academic category. So that’s always my first question to players. You know, please send your academic information so we know you’d be a good fit now in saying that. Your freshman year, academics will not make or break you, but it we’ve been doing this long enough at, at this level that we can tell if a student is going to be a good fit or if we can even help guide them moving forward to, you know, here’s what we’re going to need academically for admissions, because, um, we are not admissions and we only help guide the player through the process.
[00:01:42] We don’t make the decisions of who gets accepted or not. Really, um, we’ll watch freshmen just to get them on our radar. Um, sophomores is a little more. Um, integrated into the learning piece of us and, and we start to send some more information to them. And then I’d say junior year is really the big year where we do what I call the tangible recruiting steps, the visits, um, we connect our, um, current players with recruit so they can get that kind of perspective, those types of things.
[00:02:13] And then we typically wind up closing our process right around this time of year, uh, into early fall of their senior. Okay,
[00:02:22] Matt: that makes sense. Um, what, you know, you mentioned just I identifying and watching ’em play. So what are some of those, uh, tournaments showcases, et cetera that are kind of always on your, your must attend list?
[00:02:37] Coach: Yeah. Uh, it’s a good question. Um, So for a little bit of context, this will be my second year as a head coach at Vassar. So don’t have a must attend list yet because I’m still trying to figure out which events do we yield best from. Um, but we try and diversify the types of events we go to meaning the different leagues, the different areas geographically.
[00:03:03] And the different teams that attend. So we try and, and get a couple ECNL events, a couple GA events, a couple, um, what I would just call kind of club events, you know, your surf cups and your, um, player showcase in Las Vegas. Those are ones that typically stand out. Jefferson cup in, um, Virginia has been a great one.
[00:03:23] Um, So we try and make sure that we don’t get stuck into any one particular area or demographic or league, uh, because that, isn’t what makes the player interesting to us. Um, the one thing that we do really, like when we look at those types of things is trying to find out what they do every day, because we only get to see them.
[00:03:50] Once every few months, um, at best. So we try and learn a lot about kind of their environment at home, the club, what their training is like and what their coaches are like. So we know that we can trust, you know, their development process, um, while they are where they are. So. I’m really fortunate enough here to have great resources and great support from the institution to go and travel.
[00:04:12] Because if you look at our roster, we are very diverse, very geographically diverse. We have players from all over the country. Um, and the challenge with that is to get players from all over the country who have to go all over the country. Uh, so we make trips out to the west coast. Um, we go south, we go to the Mid-Atlantic.
[00:04:31] We will go where the, the tournaments and the players are. Uh, and, and I’ve been at other places, and I know other maybe schools aren’t as fortunate or lucky to have those types of resources to be able to do those things. So, um, we are in a very good recruiting situation here at Vassar, the resources, the academics that the, the students want, um, and the quality of the league we’re in all make for a really good formula.
[00:04:56] Yeah, I was, uh,
[00:04:57] Matt: you, you kind of hit on the question. I was gonna ask next about the geography cuz, cuz that’s one, one thing you notice when you look at your roster is, is the diversity. And a lot of times you don’t see that as much at the D three level mm-hmm , but definitely there for you guys. So with that being said, how would camps then fit in to, to the process?
[00:05:13] Do you guys do your own ID camps? Are you and your staff at, at other. You know, other camps and, and how does
[00:05:19] Coach: that work? Yeah, definitely for me, camps is important and I always tell our players our recruit to student athletes, uh, exactly why I believe camps are important because I think to a degree they’re starting to kind of get a bad rap, um, just another money grab kind of environment.
[00:05:38] But for me, the camp setting is a great kind of two way interview environ. The player gets to work with the coach and vice versa. And that’s something we lack. When we go to a tournament, we only get to watch, we get to watch the player, play with their team, interact with their coaches, but. We don’t get to do any interacting with them from a coaching perspective.
[00:06:05] Um, just kind of even the relationship building piece, you know, you can say you’re hellos and those types of things, but, um, very typically either their tournament days are very busy for the coaches or the players are focused on what they’re doing, which they should be. Um, so camps are very, very important for us.
[00:06:22] The one thing I love. How elongated the women’s soccer recruiting timeline has become is that it gives us time to create that relationship with them. I know for the players, it might not be the same feelings. The, the elongated timeline can be a little bit overwhelming and stressful. And I certainly understand that, but for us on our side, we love the, the time we get to get to know them, get to know their families.
[00:06:47] Um, and certainly the camp setting is a great place for us to fulfill that. Um, the other thing I always say about camps for us, we do run our own camps. Um, but we will travel to other camps and make sure we see players where they are. Um, it’s not just about coming to us, but the, the benefit of coming to our camp is you get to see our environment.
[00:07:08] You get to play at our facilities. You get to work with our coaches and our players. Maybe more importantly, we have them kind of hang around camp and interact with the, the recruiter, student athletes. And. That’s maybe the most important connection they need to make, because those are the people they’re going to be spending the majority of their time with when they’re with us.
[00:07:27] So I really like that part of it. Um, but I also always kind of say because of the, the diversity of our roster flying in from. California or Texas or Florida to just come to campus for an hour and then meet with a coach for 30 minutes. But you’ve traveled basically all day to get there may not be the best kind of feeling for your trip.
[00:07:55] So I like to use camp days to really give them kind of a fulfilling experience. You get a lot when you’re on campus. When you do that, we do the campus tours. We do the, the, um, Players Q and a, they get everything when they come, because for, for some, that’s gonna maybe be the only time they can come to campus.
[00:08:15] You know, you’ve invested a lot of time and money into a big trip. We wanna make sure we can give you all those things while you’re on campus. So for me, camps are really important. Just the interaction we get with the player. No,
[00:08:26] Matt: I makes, makes perfect sense. What, whether it’s at a showcase or a tournament or at a camp, kind of gimme your hierarchy of what you’re looking for, whether that’s off the field attributes or on the field attributes, what is it that, that really is sticking out to you?
[00:08:42] That you’re, you’re checking boxes on?
[00:08:44] Coach: Yeah, first and foremost, for me, I kind of look at the players, what I would call impact on the game. And for me, you can do that in a lot of different ways. And that’s why I kind of generalize it that way, because. We’re looking for versatile players and we’re looking at player qualities to fit into the way we play.
[00:09:06] I’m very big proponent on allowing, uh, the players to play how they’re playing tactically. I’m not at training. I don’t know what their coaches are asking them to do. We can see if they’re repetitively achieving some sort of tactical objective. You can, you can see those. But I’m not gonna tell a player, you know, I need you to do this tactically because that’s how we play.
[00:09:29] We’ll get to that stuff when they get to us. Um, so for me, it’s impact on the game. Are you really taking the game and, and making it yours and fulfilling the objectives of the game, whether you’re a defender, a midfield or forward goalkeeper, um, you can tell those players kind of stand out in that way. We need to have, uh, really good technical.
[00:09:53] Face it for our players, because for me, I don’t really like to train in a overly structured technical way. I like our players to deal with variables, play games. Um, in training, I feel like that’s kind of our piece of the development process through this whole thing from youth travel to college, we are.
[00:10:20] Fitting into the game environment and that’s how we practice. So we need our players to have that technical base because we don’t do a lot of the cone passing and the predesigned patterns and those types of things. So we really want our players to have a good, solid technical foundation, um, off the field, you know, I don’t really like to.
[00:10:42] Use those things at tournaments because you’re seeing somebody in a one off setting the off the, off the field variables for the player, you know, personality, um, how they interact with people or speak to people. I wanna see that over time. What kind of consistent, um, behaviors do they have? Because I mean, I’ve been caught, I’m sure we all have on a great day and a bad day.
[00:11:05] Um, but if you only see a player one time, Which day are you getting them on? So the, the off the field stuff, I really like to dig into that with our interactions, phone calls, visits, those types of things. Um, and I, and we’re not so much recruiting to the positions. So, um, we play in a lot of different ways.
[00:11:24] We switch our, our formations a lot. I think I’m blessed with the. The gift of the very intelligent player at an academic institution like ours. And I wanna make sure that we can fit that into, um, the way we play. So we change a lot. Um, and I don’t want any one player to be only stuck in one role or have one quality because, um, if that’s the case and we change, they may not be able to change with us.
[00:11:51] So I really like to see. In a game environment, players pick up different spaces. You know, it may not be as easy for them to say, or to have a, a situation where the coach is moving them positionally a lot, because I understand the club, the team is looking to do something and they play in a certain way and, and that player may fit the role in a position for them.
[00:12:13] But, you know, a good example would be like, um, if a defensive midfielder holding midfielder can really track defenders into the box and, and. Get deep into their defensive zones to head a ball, clear those types of things. Now we can see that, you know, they have good defensive principles. They’re good on the ball, all these different types of things, making them versatile players.
[00:12:34] Those are, those are really important things for us. Okay.
[00:12:38] Matt: And this is just a question we’ve been getting a lot lately. And, and so I’ve decided to, to throw it in here, but do you guys do official visits, uh, you know, help helping a player come and, and see the institution. And, and how does, how do those kind of fit into your overall recruiting?
[00:12:57] Coach: Yeah. So at the D three level, the quote unquote official visit is a little different, um, right. And I’ve actually run into this with a few players. You know, we are lucky enough to be competing with some division one schools for players. Um, the official visit at a D three level is very rarely paying expenses and, um, flying people out.
[00:13:23] Um, we do have some of. Capabilities, but we don’t necessarily utilize them a ton. Um, I just find that we have the students in the right areas, in the right demographics, where either they’re very focused on the high academic division three and they understand that landscape and, and they don’t maybe ask for something, um, like that official visit, uh, or the division one player who.
[00:13:54] In that scenario also has been very well coached in the differences between division one and division three and what these things mean and the timelines and the communication, um, availability, those types of things. So our official visits at our level are more about get to campus. Interact with our players.
[00:14:14] Um, one of the more common official visit categories at our level is have a meal on campus. You know, that’s an area where we can support that kind of financial, um, investment to come to campus. You know, you can eat on campus, we can support it, those types of things. So we do those. That is, um, something that we like to do later on in the process.
[00:14:37] And make sure that the player is really interested in us and we’re high on their list. And, um, I think it is a special feeling when you get to, into that phase with the school, you feel the excitement, you feel the mutual interest so much that a school is gonna kind sponsor that official visit, so to speak.
[00:14:56] So we do it. Um, we enjoy it and I kind of joke on our official visit. It’s less about spending time with me. And it’s more about spending time on campus with the players, meeting faculty and professors, those types of things. We are gonna interact far more, uh, than they’re gonna have the opportunity to interact with the people they can on campus.
[00:15:19] No
[00:15:19] Matt: makes perfect sense. I, I, that’s what I figured the answer was and I was like to have it, have somebody else say it in that way. It’s not me just, uh, speculating here. Well, but, but let’s talk more about the school. Um, you know, obviously well known for, for high academics up there in Poughkeepsie, but you know, I can go to the website, click around and, and learn a lot, but give me the, the inside scoop.
[00:15:41] What are some of the awesome things about Vassar that I might not find on
[00:15:44] Coach: the website? Yeah. You know, I get this question a lot from parents and recruited players. And for me, there’s a very obvious sense of community at our institution and because of the diversity of the students, the diversity of their academic interest, because we are high academic liberal arts, um, and the diversity in our faculty and staff.
[00:16:11] It’s really the people and the interaction of, of the people that make us so great. We have this kind of unique outlook on academics and the academic environment where we are very, very encouraging of our students to problem, solve, to ask questions. Um, In kind of a strange way, like to not just accept everything the way it is.
[00:16:39] And I think what that’s really done for our environment and the students that graduate from our institution is it really opens them up for when they leave. They’ve got new thoughts, they’ve seen new perspectives and they’ve really solidified like what they believe in. I tell our players and I don’t know if this is a great message for parents and everybody college is so much more than the textbook.
[00:17:04] It’s your experience on campus? It’s your you’re learning socially through four years and we just have such a welcoming, inclusive environment to do that in, uh, that’s not something you’re gonna be able to just kind of Google search at our place. Um, and every time I get this question, um, I Don. Usually give them an answer.
[00:17:29] I give them a person to interact with so we can prove that to them because I think a lot of, a lot of coaches, a lot of, um, you know, people that represent schools are going to say similar things in that regard. And I like to provide tangible evidence of those types of things. So for example, we have, we have a recruiter player right now.
[00:17:47] Who’s really interested in a certain program. I reached out to our faculty liaison, you know, our, our faculty member that supports women’s soccer at Vassar. And I asked her, I said, look, here’s the situation. I have a player looking at this. How can we connect with somebody five minutes later, I have an email with somebody CC’d on it.
[00:18:07] We’ve got a conversation going. They’re just so excited to get involved and help. We all kind of see the. Students in the same way and how we can help them and help get people here. And that interaction from my level has, was just really impressive in that moment, but also the fact that the perspective student athletes and the current student athletes get to experience that as well for their own benefit too.
[00:18:34] And that’s something that I really, um, am excited about at our place. So with the academic
[00:18:40] Matt: standards, being what they are, you know, how do your players kind of balance that commitment between athletics and academics?
[00:18:48] Coach: Yeah, I’m a little different in the sense. Um, admissions is very, very helpful in the sense that because we are so selective, I believe our admissions process allows us to bring in the people who are prepared for our level of academics.
[00:19:08] For me, I look at a Vassar education in, in a little bit of a different way. I don’t ask them to do anything specifically, academic, for example, you know, player one’s 3.5 might be the best they’re ever going to do. And if they’re happy with that, then I’m happy with that. Some players are gonna get 4.0s in their sleep.
[00:19:30] Some are gonna work really, really hard for their 3.6. So we don’t do. Blanket academic policies for our team. Uh, we don’t do blanket study halls. For example, that’s usually a question I get. Um, I wanna make sure that in our environment, the individual is taken care of academically. If I said we’re gonna have a two hour study hall in the library from eight, eight to 10:00 PM.
[00:19:57] That might be the worst environment for one of our players, but because I’m asking them to do it now, that’s how they’re gonna go study. And they’re either going to not do it and have to go put in extra hours in an environment that’s more suitable to them, or they’re gonna struggle because they’re not achieving what they need to in that environment.
[00:20:13] So I’m fortunate that our players are extremely high achieving students and that while we don’t have to monitor them necessarily. We certainly care about how they do as long as they’re happy with their performance. I mean, our team last year, we had a 3.72 cumulative team GPA. So they know what they’re doing.
[00:20:38] They come to us with questions. I need a little support in this. Can you guide me in the right direction? Those types of things. Um, but honestly, the balance piece is something that we come in more like from the angle of. let’s not try and take on too much. We have students that wanna do everything all the time, and I love the ambition, but I also want them to do as much as they can be successful at.
[00:21:07] And I think, yeah, it’s a little bit of a, uh, environment for our students, but I think more and more, we’re seeing this with our younger students. And I don’t know where it comes from. I don’t know where the pressures seem to lie, but it’s always do more, do more. Can I do more? Um, so we have some programming in kind of how to make sure we’re doing the right things to the levels that we can be successful at.
[00:21:32] We have all of the academic resources, uh, on campus, you know, I’ve already mentioned our faculty, uh, liaison. We have our writing centers, um, and the tutors and TAs, we have a number of actual students on our team that are TAs. Uh, so that’s really nice for our current players that they don’t have to go far to find somebody they know can help them academically.
[00:21:54] Um, but like I said, I, I do take a little bit of a different approach. On the academic piece, they are so well qualified. Um, so well prepared that I wanna almost get out of their way in that sense and let them do what they know how to do, because they’ve been admitted to Vassar and they’ve done well. And I wanna make sure that they continue to do that.
[00:22:15] Um, and we provide kind of the supplemental support when we can. Great. Well,
[00:22:20] Matt: let’s talk a little bit more on the soccer side of things. Um, you know, is there a roster size that you try to hit every.
[00:22:28] Coach: There is, I like to be anywhere between 28 and 30. Now, if somebody’s gonna go on our website, they’re gonna see that we’re not there.
[00:22:34] We’re at 33 right now. Um, Coming in. This is like I said, this is my second season. Um, and this is the first job I’ve ever taken actually, where I didn’t get to either work with the team in the spring before the season started, or maybe grab one or two last minute recruits, the roster was built. Um, it’s a great roster.
[00:22:57] We had a, a nice season, but we were a little bit kind of unbalanced in terms of the numbers in each class. And we didn’t graduate a lot of seniors last year. So that’s why our roster has ballooned a little bit into the 33 area. Um, but I like to be around 28 to 30. And for us that’s been our biggest goal through the recruiting.
[00:23:24] Can we start to balance our class years? Somewhere between six and eight players in each class year. And can we kind of start to now balance out the positions we recruit each year? So we’re really, you know, if we’re looking six to eight, I really like to be two defenders, two central midfielders. And two, I say attacking players, because the way we play changes a lot so forwards and wingers that leaves you with a spot or two to fill, you know, with a special player that plays in a position that maybe we don’t even need.
[00:23:54] Their quality is so high that we wanna bring them in. Anyway, uh, so 28 to 30, we’re usually between three and four goalkeepers as well. Okay.
[00:24:03] Matt: Um, Well, as I, I know you have an amazing, uh, assistant coach, um, just because it, you know, small soccer world or a friend of mine, but, um, tell me a little bit about the, the staff in general.
[00:24:17] What, what are people’s roles? What other support staff are there, I guess, within the athletic department to kind of help with soccer?
[00:24:23] Coach: Yeah. So, um, I have my full-time assistant coach Shaela. Um, I also have a part-time assistant coach. His name is Ryan again, small world. Uh, as you reference, he played for me, uh, few years back.
[00:24:38] I was coaching men’s soccer before this, um, and he’s local to our area. So he’s helping out on our staff, uh, and then for support roles, the way our. Administrative structure is set up at Vassar. We have our athletic director and we have our team of athletic directors and each of them is what we call sport supervisor.
[00:25:00] So I have a direct link to administration. Her name is Caitlin leach. She’s been amazing support for our team from kind of the bigger picture logistical standpoint of. Hey, we’re trying to do this. How do we accomplish that? Or, um, just a, another really nice layer of support for the team. You know, we wanna play here.
[00:25:23] We wanna travel there or bring this group in, or we want to go and do that or buy this technology for the program. Um, and we have all those support layers. So for the roles, um, Shayla has been working with our goalkeepers. Uh, she has a great background in the goal keeping stuff. And it’s awesome for me, for our full-time assistant to be the goalkeeper coach, because I think more times than not, you look at staffs, even different levels.
[00:25:54] The part-time assistant is typically the goalkeeper coach. Um, so whatever that means for availability of a part-time staff member, that also means availability for the goalkeepers. For when that staff member’s available. So that was really important for me when I hired her. Um, and she brings a ton of other great things to the table.
[00:26:13] She just has a very unique perspective on a lot of things. She does a lot of our wellness, mindfulness kind of internal healing processes with our players who have absolutely loved that stuff. Um, Just a, uh, something more, we can provide our players to make sure that they’re prepared, ready to go. And it’s not just athletically, you know?
[00:26:36] It’s how do you settle yourself down right before a test? Or how do you focus yourself in right before you submit that last paper, uh, of the semester? Things like that. So she’s been awesome in that sense. Um, And then we kind of divvy up roles on game day throughout our staff as well. Um, we have kind of a little bit of a script, I guess I would call it.
[00:26:58] Um, you know, so through the first X amount of minutes of the match, we need to have these things figured out. And I usually divvy up, which. Staff member is looking at which aspect of the game, so that we come together. It’s, it’s been very collaborative, um, between us, which I’ve really enjoyed because I think most head coaches will tell you the worst thing you can do is hire somebody.
[00:27:19] That’s gonna agree with you on everything. Um, because that’s not what benefits the team or the, the success of the group. Um, and we’ve had a very nice relationship, all three of us, um, Just, we see the game differently. We are strong enough to present our opinions and we are levelheaded enough to communicate with each other about, you know, kind of the differences and how they, how they mesh and what works for our group and the players we have.
[00:27:44] Um, so I’m very fortunate. We have a great staff and, and a great support system here. Oh, that’s great.
[00:27:49] Matt: Well, coach we’ve, we’ve covered a lot of ground and, uh, really appreciate the time I like to end these all the same way. And that’s what didn’t we talk about? What, what else do you want folks to know whether it’s about the team, the school, the recruiting process, or anything else about, about it?
[00:28:03] Uh,
[00:28:04] Coach: the floors Georges. Yeah. Yeah. It’s it’s, it’s a great question to, to finish with. I would just love to. Help our student athletes get through the process in the easiest, most clear, efficient way they can. So for me, I’m very transparent with our players as we go through the process. Not only am I transparent, I remind them that I’m transparent.
[00:28:32] And I think my best advice for our young players is to do the same. We know players are looking at a ton of schools. Players, uh, players know that we are looking at a ton of players. It’s no secret. We don’t need to act like it’s a secret. And once we realize that we can open up the, the real communication to what’s going on in their process, what’s going in, in ours.
[00:28:57] I tell our players the thing that is the biggest hurdle in the process is a surprise both ways, right? If we know what something’s coming, we can prepare for it. Um, And the communication piece I understand can be a little challenging at times, but I just urge our players going through it to be open, communicate, ask difficult questions.
[00:29:18] Um, and then as one of my good friends and colleagues always says, um, make sure you own what you’re doing. You take control, you ask the, the tough questions, because at the end of the day, you wanna figure out what the best fit is. Certain coaches are gonna tell you what you want to hear. And I highly suggest that you as players go and see those things for yourself, not just take our word.
[00:29:48] Um, you know, and we, we do some things and try to do some things to make sure we can help that. You know, we have, um, we have a YouTube page. So a lot of times we get the questions, like what’s your style of play? Um, what’s your coaching style? And I say, go to our YouTube page, watch our highlights, watch our videos.
[00:30:04] It’s one thing for me to tell you something, it’s another thing, are we actually doing it? Um, and then I would say the final thing and I, and I’m trying with our players to do this as well. Try to figure out for yourself how you can differentiate between. The stress emotion and the excitement emotion, because as I tell our players, they’re very, very similar.
[00:30:25] They feel similar and I just want our players to enjoy the recruiting process. And sometimes I find that maybe they’re not, it’s a little bit of work and, um, it should be exciting. You’re looking at where you’re gonna be for four years. Where can you play? What kind of experience you’re gonna have. That should be exciting.
[00:30:42] Um, and I believe we can offer a, a good product for you. And there are a lot of great places to go. So you’re gonna have good op opportunities and you shift on.
[00:30:51] Matt: Great advice. Well, coach, I appreciate the time, wish you the, the best of luck this season and you, you know, get a full, a full year under your belt to yeah.
[00:30:59] To go show him what you got and, uh, we’ll check back in and see how you’re doing. And if you ever get down here to Bradenton for any of the events, uh, gimme a shout.
[00:31:07] Coach: Cool. Awesome, Matt, thank you so much for having me. Thank
[00:31:09] Matt: you.
