West Virginia Wesleyan College Women’s Soccer – Coach Adam Christensen
On today’s episode, I speak with Coach Adam from the West Virginia Wesleyan Women’s Program. We talk about how in recruiting, he looks deeper than soccer. He describes their special, small-town location. Lastly, we discuss how he likes their team to possess and create counterattacks. Learn more about West Virginia Wesleyan 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 Adam from West Virginia Wesleyan. Welcome coach.
Coach: Thanks for having me.
Matt: Thanks for being here. Yeah. You, uh, recently took over there at, uh, West Virginia Wesleyan, uh, on the women’s side, and, uh, we’ll, we’ll talk a little bit about that in terms of as a new coach and, and what you got going on.
But, you know, it’s, you and I are talking in July, so you’re, you’re geared up getting ready for the season, so you’re kind of, uh, Playing with the hand you’ve been dealt. I don’t know if you were able to do any recruiting here at all when you, when you got hired, but in terms of, you know, June 15th, having just passed and getting calls in are, I’m assuming your focus is mostly on 20 fours.
Are you looking at 20 fives at all, or how does
Coach: it work for you right now? Well, yeah, so I’ve been here about two months. Um, and, you know, when I was first brought in, um, it was kind of to it basically to rebuild the program. Uh, so Wesleyan had its first losing season in 20 years last year. Um, and so that’s one of the reasons, you know, that I’m now here.
Um, and so a lot of it is, you know, obviously rebuilding, but then also being able to completely, I think, revitalize and, and, and fix and change and, um, you know, put the culture back where it needs to be. And so in terms of recruiting for this next year for 23, I haven’t had a huge, um, you know, timeframe to be able to do that.
We had an assistant coach who was an alumni at the school, um, who stayed on this [00:01:30] last spring and was able to do a lot of that and really be able to kind of keep the program going, make sure that there really wasn’t like a, a gap, uh, between the coaches and stuff. And so she did a fantastic job. Her name was Lauren.
Um, she’s gonna med school at Marshall this next year. So she’s actually kind of moving on and, and, and going actually into her career. Okay. Well,
Matt: let’s talk about what you’re looking for for, for 20 fours and, and kind of your methodology here. I mean, I know you, you come from a, uh, background coaching other schools as well, so you’ve got some, some other college experience.
So as your calendar looks for this year, what, you know, what, what events are you looking at hitting? Are you implementing any ID camps? What’s, what’s this? 12 months of recruiting cycle gonna look like for you moving forward?
Coach: Yeah, so I kind of have a, I would say unique perspective, um, on not just college sports in general, but then also specifically on the recruiting side of things.
Um, I played, I was three sport athlete in college at three different division levels. I transferred three times. I had seven head coaches in six semesters of college. Like, that was my college experience. It was not great. It was actually, it was, I don’t know if I’m allowed to swear or not, but like, It was terrible and it’s like I, I saw a whole lot of things.
Um, you know, I saw the really good sides of college soccer coaching wise, and I saw, saw the absolute crap pile of college soccer. Recruiting, coaching wise. Um, so for me it’s uh, the recruiting and the way that I kind of think about the [00:03:00] way that we go about it is very different. And then it also has to go with my background.
’cause I actually was in politics, um, in Florida for a few years. I ran some campaigns as a campaign manager. I also ran for Congress and was a nominee for Congress in, uh, Florida’s third district. And so a lot of the things that we did with that, and I also started a couple companies go into the recruiting process.
Um, so one. The vetting side of things. Um, we do a lot of research into the people that we’re looking at, um, because obviously we want to know that they’re good at playing the game, right? But we also want to know who they are as people. Um, we want to know kind of what their hobbies are, what things get them through the day, um, like what they want, what they care about, that kind of stuff.
And so, For us, we have an entire process that we’ve implemented that allows us to kind of get to that point. And then the other part of this is I wanna make sure that if we have a player coming here, this is where they wanna be. Um, and this is the place it’s gonna be able to give them what they need. Um, and so I tell players all the time, you know, if you’re going to a program, and I don’t care what program it is, I don’t care what school it is.
If you go to a program and they’re not actually giving you what you need in terms of academics or development on the field or whatever, get the hell out. Like it’s one of those things where you only got four years and you need to be able to use it to the best of your ability. And so I think that’s one huge thing that recently, like the transfer portal, Supreme Court decisions, everything else that the N C A has had forced on them.
I think it’s a great thing. And so for me, that’s probably a very unique [00:04:30] view from coaches. ’cause most coaches, they like the transfer portal ’cause they can get players, but they don’t like it because they lose players. And so, For me, I think the fact that players have more control over their lives, have more control over their careers is a fantastic thing.
And so I take a very different approach because like I said, I transferred three times. So for us, um, you know, the process for us is first we identify a player or they reach out to us. Second, we do the necessary research on them to make sure that this is somebody who’s gonna fit in with one our culture, two skill level, uh, three strengths, everything like that.
Then we schedule a meeting with them that we talk similar to how you and I are talking kind of virtually. Um, it’s usually about 30 minutes to an hour, somewhere in that range. Um, and for the first half of it, I don’t let them talk about soccer because I want them to see, I want us to know if they can talk about anything else.
Um, because I want, well, first I wanna know their life story. I wanna see what they’re passionate about. I wanna see what they do outside of soccer. ’cause if you don’t do other things outside of soccer, same thing like with business or college or whatever. If you don’t do have other things that kind of get you through the day that you can relax and take a break from, you’re not gonna be as good at soccer as you otherwise would’ve.
Because there’s times when, especially as a player, you go through a bad patch and if you don’t have anything outside of that kind of holding you together, you lose it all. So I’ve kind of seen that happen. So once we get through that process, then I like to connect, uh, recruits with current players. Um, because the most important thing for me [00:06:00] is one, anybody we’re bringing in, the players on the team need to want them there and like them.
’cause if people don’t have trust and they don’t like each other, they’re only going to be able to achieve so much. From that point, then we get them to schedule. Um, basically say, Hey, you know, what’s a time that we can get you on campus for either a game in the fall? See it. Um, ’cause again, we want the comfortability, we want them to see the atmosphere, that kind of a thing.
Um, once we get through that point, then we kind of sit down and we say, okay, are you still interested? What are your concerns? Where are we at? And then when we get through that and we both agree that, you know, this is where I want to be and also we want you, um, then we’ll have them go through the application process.
When they get through the application process, I get all the information in terms of, um, you know, grants, aid, financials, everything like that. I sit down, we work on a package that includes athletic, which then goes on top of it, send back an offer. They go through the offer, we come back, we sit down, we talk it through.
Um, and then if they say yes, fantastic. If they say no, or we need something else, then we’ll say, you know, that’s perfectly fine. Um, renegotiate. Or, um, you know, we say, look, there’s nothing that we can do on our end. We’d love to have you here, but if this is not the place that you’re gonna be this year in the future, if it, if this is the place for you, you’ll find your way here.
So I take more of a long-term approach than kind of the short, I’m gonna fix it right now and I’m just gonna sign somebody, you know, for a lot of money very quickly for a year. Um, for [00:07:30] me it’s more about a long-term investment because that’s just business wise, and then also soccer wise and development wise, it’s, it, it, it matters to build a strong foundation and base and have that instead of just quick fixes.
Matt: Sure. Well, I know you’re coming from, from close to my neck of the woods down in Florida. Yeah. Um, so where do you see your recruiting? Being, I mean, I, I’m guessing West Virginia Wesleyan, it doesn’t really have the, a national footprint. Uh, historically, maybe that’s gonna change under you, I don’t know. But where do you see yourself going?
What tournaments do you plan on hitting? Are you gonna host ID camps or you have you and your staff work other ID camps? Where do you, where do you see yourself finding players predominantly? Well,
Coach: you know, obviously having lived in Florida for the last seven years, and then also having lived grown up in the Midwest, Indiana, You know, it’s one of those things where I know that there’s a lot of players that they just get overlooked and it’s not because of anything that they did or didn’t do.
It’s, they get overlooked. Um, and then a lot of this I also have seen is, you know, coaches, especially at the college level, is, I would even say they get greedy. They see a good player and then they see a better player, and then they see an even better player and then they start chasing players that they’re never gonna be able to get their school instead of getting the good ones, the ones that would matter and build their program.
And so for me, especially Florida right now is just a hotbed of talent, um, especially around the Tampa, the Orlando area, and a lot of those areas in [00:09:00] Jacksonville as well. A lot of those areas, one. The schools in Florida don’t recruit from. Um, they just don’t. And most of that is because, you know, everybody in the world wants to go to Florida, right?
In terms of college, well, a lot of those Florida players have one, never been outside of Florida, and two, they didn’t even know there were other options. And so I’ve had a lot of success, especially lately, and then also the previous schools I was at in terms of being able to find really good talent out of Florida and be able to actually convince them that look, You can go someplace and instead of being a small, like a small fish in a giant pond, you can actually be the top person at this school.
You can be a player who actually makes a difference, who wins a conference championship. And so Florida’s a huge one. But then there’s also places, especially in Indiana, especially Ohio and some other ones where there are just hotbeds of talent. Never get, they never get opportunities. And so for me that’s a huge thing is being able to find those and be able to actually build those.
Um, and so the relationships one that I’ve had with a lot of the coaches, especially in Florida, um, is one where, you know, I trust, I, I trust high school coaches more than I trust club coaches. I just, I do. Um, and the reason for that is club coaches especially, you know, they aren’t around the kids that often.
Maybe once, twice a week if that, maybe on a weekend. The high school coaches see them every single day. They actually know what they’re like at this school. They know what they’re like in person in their daily life. And so for me, I can get a much better read on who a player is and what kind of person they’re going to be if I [00:10:30] talk to somebody who’s around them way more often.
Um, and so soccer’s one part of it, but at the same time, you need to know who a person is. Before you decide to make an investment in them. And so a lot of this comes down to organization and not taking, um, you know, not being. Desperate in the people that you recruit. ’cause a lot of coaches get that way where they get close to the end of a cycle and they’re like, oh, I don’t have enough players.
And so they just start throwing darts against the wall. Um, and so for me, a lot of this is very deliberate with 2020 fours. Um, we’ve gotten already pretty into the weeds with it. Um, we’ve had some people on campus already. Uh, we’re gonna make some offers fairly shortly. Um, and so a lot of this is obviously being proactive.
Then a lot of it also is, you know, being able to find players that nobody else is looking at who are phenomenal players, but they just haven’t gotten the, those kind of looks. ’cause they didn’t play on a certain club team. Like they didn’t play E C N L or they didn’t play on the O D P team or something like that.
Um, and so for me, it’s not worth it for me to go to a tournament where 500 other coaches are going to, when I can go to a smaller tournament. I can be the only coach there and everybody wants to talk to me. So I can actually build connections far more that way than going to these top level ones where I’m competing with less money against bigger schools, bigger names, and nobody knows who West Virginia Wesleyan is.
And so I think that’s gonna be very successful for us moving forward if it’s done the correct way.
Matt: Okay. Well, Let’s talk a little bit more, uh, about the school itself. Um, [00:12:00] you know, obviously it had enough appeal to draw you away from Florida to, to go up to West Virginia. So in your short time there, what have you found to be really the highlights, the amazing things about
Coach: the school?
I love it. Like, like I didn’t, I, so when I came for my interview, it was spring break in Florida and we got up here and it was snowing and it like had just had a blizzard or something, like some, some big snow storm. And so we’re here and it’s freezing and we’re sitting there going, okay, we just came from 95 degrees and now it’s like, you know, 20.
And so we’re like, what are we doing? And then, you know, it thought out. I got the job we got up here and the thing I think that really drew us to it was the town itself. Um, when you think, you know, West Virginia town, Uh, you know, small, you think, okay, a lot of the downtown’s boarded up. There’s not very much business, like those things are not happening, and here was the exact opposite.
Um, I think my two favorite restaurants in the entire, like within like a two hour radius, are in downtown. It’s a four minute walk. Um, my house right now is a five minute walk to the office, to here every single day. Um, it’s, it’s small, but it, it, it, the way that I think I’ve described it to some people, and actually Kristen, my wife has described it.
She goes, If you’ve seen Gilmore Girls, it’s a cross between Stars Hollow and Ponty from Parks and Rec. And it’s like one of those things where you almost have like J’s Diner, but then you also have like just the downtown area where everything’s happening. Um, there’s a strawberry festival every year, which I.
I’m terrified of strawberries. It’s my, one of my irrational [00:13:30] fears, but there’s like 75,000 people who just come for the Strawberry Festival every single year, like to descend on the town. Like there’s little things like that that you know, are kind of special that I just haven’t really found other places.
And then especially with Florida, the traffic I. The people and just all of those kind of things. You don’t have to deal with it out here. And so you really can focus on the things that matters, which are the school and the sport. Um, and so for me that’s a huge thing is you don’t have a ton of distractions and you get to actually focus on the things that matter in your life.
Um, the school itself has been, you know, extremely. Popular and very good at soccer for a long time. Um, they’ve been around about 34 years. Uh, the program has, and they’ve had about 25 conference championships in 34 years. So like, they’ve been very successful about a 78% win record over those years. Um, and then, like I said, this last, the last few years were really when the downhill slide happened.
And so getting back to that is hugely important. But then also I think rebuilding the trust between the team. The trust between the school and the trust between the team and the community is gonna be where really it starts to get special again. And so that’s one huge thing we’re trying to bring back is those community bonds.
And then also just getting people one, to not just know that we exist, but to start respecting that we exist again. And that’s, uh, I think if that happens, it’s, this is gonna be a, a special place for a lot of people that are really looking to come to. Okay,
Matt: well, besides soccer, obviously the students have to, uh, go to class.
[00:15:00] So, uh, at West Virginia Wesleyan, how would you ss say the, the student athletes really manage that balance between their studies and their sport and kind of what support systems does a school offer to help them out with that? Yeah,
Coach: so obviously I haven’t been here that long. Um, but all the people that I’ve talked to, I’ve gone to tournaments, I’ve gone to different high school things, a lot of different community things, and what seems to be the consensus, especially around here is that.
Wesleyan is one of the top academic institutions in the state of West Virginia. And so that’s a huge thing right off the bat. Um, the second thing is that at our school we kind of, we do a couple things very, very well. Um, so one is our nursing program and the other is our athletic training slash you know, physical therapy kind of tracks.
Um, and those are the things I hear about all the time, especially from players that I talk to when I’m recruiting because there’s a lot of schools. That if they want to go play soccer there, those schools don’t want them to be in nursing. They don’t want them to be in the stems because they think it’s either too rigorous or too difficult, or they have to, really, what it is, is they have to change their practice schedules or workout schedules to adjust to the fact that their kids are high achieving.
And so for us, we automatically do that because. It’s not worth, uh, for me, I want high achieving kids. I want people that are gonna push themselves. ’cause typically they tend to be the best students. They best tend to have the best G p A and they tend to be the best athletes. Um, and so for us that’s a big thing.
Um, in terms of like schedules and the academics and what support that they give, uh, we have learning [00:16:30] center here that helps, um, especially with tutoring, especially with people that are struggling in certain areas. Um, For us, we’re gonna be implementing, uh, specific study times with our team, with our program for, for, especially for players who are not doing where they need to be.
Um, for me, the people that I recruit and we look at typically have anywhere from a three to a 3.3 or higher. Um, we’re not going to be, in terms of the academic scholarships that we can give. The highest we can give the highest level of academic scholarship starts at a three seven G p a. And that’s really what we look at.
Um, so the school’s test optional. It doesn’t matter with your s a T or a c t scores. What matters is what your weighted G P A is. And so we can get, especially players that have high GPAs, really good financial packages. And that’s a huge, I think, advantage for us in terms of the way that we look at things.
So, um, athletically obviously we can give scholarships, but if you’re not getting the maximum amount of academic. Then it’s gonna be more difficult, if that makes sense.
Matt: Yeah, no, that makes sense. Well, you did mention about, uh, working with those specific majors, ’cause a lot of times you do hear nursing and, and the pre-med or, or at PT stuff can be problematic.
But you mentioned kind of working with the schedule. So let’s fast forward, you know, to middle of October. Um, What, what is a standard week gonna look like for a player with, with regards to practice, class, the game, cadence, meals, whatever. What’s [00:18:00] that gonna look like for,
Coach: yeah, so I was a biochem pre-med major.
I. And like I mentioned, you know, was doing all of the sports, uh, and at at, at the D two and D three level. And so for me it just kind of became normal of we’re going to schedule and prioritize and make sure that we’re organized in terms of what we’re doing, um, for a student athlete, especially here. Um, Our workout schedule in terms of lifting, weightlifting is usually about two times a week.
Uh, Monday through, uh, Monday and Friday, um, the team is scheduled, uh, for either 8:00 AM or 7:00 AM Just depends, uh, on what’s going on for lifting. Now, for a lot of our nursing students and especially, um, you know, science students. They have classes that starts, you know, pretty close to them. And so we actually have another scheduled time for anyone who’s not able to hit those times.
That’s a little bit later in the day. Um, and then later about, around either three to five, somewhere in that range, we have actual, you know, physical practice on the field. Um, for us, we have. A couple options. So we have a turf field, we have a practice, uh, field that’s grass, and then we have a grass stadium as well.
Um, so depending on, you know, who we’re playing, what we want to do in terms of tactics, various things like that, we can choose the playing surface that we want to do and how we want to do it. And so that’s very helpful. Uh, games. Are dictated mostly by the conference. So they are Wednesday and Sunday typically.
Um, there’s some leeway there, but not really because in the M E C specifically football’s such a big deal. Um, and Saturdays are [00:19:30] pretty much reserved for football. Um, I think that’s pretty much it in terms of, in terms of scheduling and then also, you know, timeframe. Okay,
Matt: great. Well, let’s talk a little bit more about the, the soccer side of things.
I know you’re, you’re new and, but, uh, do you have a staff in place or will you have a staff in place? What’s that look like besides you at the helm?
Coach: Yeah, so I’m pretty lucky. Um, so I once, uh, you know, Got hired, um, and put out the interview process. I actually had somebody who I’d worked with about seven years ago.
He’s actually the first person who ever gave me a job, um, and down in Florida. And I, uh, you know, I saw his, his resume. I called him and I said, Hey, you know what? Are you sure one, that you wanna give up a job that you’re making a lot of money at? Living in Oregon and come to West Virginia and make, you know, a fourth of that or a fourth of that, he is like, yes, I am bored.
I’m sitting behind a computer every day and I am bored and I would love to do that. And I was like, okay, well you’re the most qualified person we’ve got that’s applied and I know who you are. You’re fantastic. And the only time we, we’ve coached together, we went 18, two and two. So like we know that’s gonna be fine.
Um, but so, you know, I’m very excited that Pedro’s gonna be able to be here. He’s gonna be here in the next couple weeks. Um, and so staffing wise, you know, very excited about that. On top of that, we’re gonna have quite a few different volunteer assistants. That I know from Florida and other places that are going to work virtually, um, and do a lot of filming, scouting, all of sorts of things in terms of analysis.
Um, [00:21:00] and then we also will have a few volunteer assistants that are former players, um, that are alumni of the school, uh, played 15 years ago and still live in the area. Uh, And want to be involved. And so that’s a huge thing that we have as an alumni base that really supports the team and wants us to get back to where we were.
Um, and so that I think is gonna be a huge advantage. And so we’re gonna have, in terms of staffing, in terms of people that have eyeballs on and people that are supporting the program, I think one of the most robust, um, kind of staffs, um, of anybody in the conference. So I’m very excited about that.
Matt: Oh, sounds great.
Well, In terms of your, your roster, I don’t know whether you’ll you’ll be at it this year or not, but do you have in mind what you feel is a, the, the right roster size that you’re trying to hit each year? Well,
Coach: so the school dictates what they want it to be. I have in my head what I want it to be, which is lower than what they want it to be.
Sure. So there’s going to be that push and pull. Um, but. Suffice it to say the way that things used to be run is not the way that they will be run going forward. Um, we also will have a new athletic director. We have a brand new president, brand new C F O at the school. So the school is gonna be changing a lot, but going forward, um, one thing that didn’t happen the years prior is, uh, the roster was a bit larger, um, on the, in terms of the conference, um, this year it will be a lot smaller than it used to be, but we’re gonna be around 30.
And so what we’re actually going to be doing is we’re going to be adding developmental games as well. I know one [00:22:30] huge thing that happens, especially with most college rosters is that, um, The top 12, 15 players, they play every game, almost all the minutes and nobody else gets any development game time, stuff like that.
And for me, the way I’ve always looked at it is, you know, if a player is not getting better from the time the season starts to the time the season ends, then I didn’t do my job. Um, and so what we’re gonna be doing is for players coming off injury, Freshmen who are having trouble adjusting to the speed of play, um, and other players that, you know, they just need that extra development.
We’re gonna have seven to eight games against conference opponents, um, that both me and our coaching staff are going to be at and coaching fully, just like we would anybody else. Um, and so the way that we’re scheduling it basically is that on Wednesday we’ll have the conference game and then on Thursday we’ll have the developmental conference game.
And so one day’s a rest day for one team, um, For that week and the other day’s, a rest day for the other team, and both are playing within the span of two days. Um, and so that. It takes care of the traveling in terms of travel roster. It takes, uh, in terms of the development, in terms of the game time, um, and allows us, you know, with having some more players than some of the teams in our conference, to be able to make sure that, one, they’re getting everything that they need here.
And two, they’re actually developing as players and understanding the game and getting the full coaching that they otherwise wouldn’t. The other thing we do is we tape every practice and every game, and because we have a robust staff that includes virtual, Assistance that they’re, basically their job is to work on the film and make sure that we’re [00:24:00] actually coaching from that standpoint, um, we’re able to get one-on-one player development and also understanding and changes, uh, to each individual player every single week and not just once a month, if that makes sense.
Yeah,
Matt: no, that makes a lot of sense. Well, how would you describe kind of your style of coaching, the style of play that you’re looking to try to implement?
Coach: So, If you had asked me four or five years ago, you would’ve gotten a completely different answer. Um, within the last three, four years, I’ve been working on a system both at the college and the high school level.
Um, it’s more centered in possession around a 3, 4, 2, 1, um, out of possession. It can still sometimes look like a 4, 4, 2 0 4, 2, 3, 1, somewhere in that range. Very similar to what Tukul did with Chelsea a few years back in terms of in possession versus out of possession. Um, but really the thing for us is we want to be able to possess the ball.
Um, we want to pull the other team out, create counter attacking situations while we’re in possession of the ball. So, uh, pull presses, break the lines of, of pressure and then have numerical advantage going the other way at speed. Um, and so doing this with very solid center backs, Outside center backs and wing backs that can control the game, zest the ball, be able to go at teams.
Um, ’cause really the biggest thing for us is we want to be attacking. We also want to be pulling the other team where we want them to be so we can break them and we can just dominate games. Um, very similar in possession structure to what I would say [00:25:30] Liverpool did towards the end of the season, man City did for most of this last season.
It’s gonna change a little bit. Um, but yeah, it’s a, it’s a different structure than a lot of teams in this conference. We don’t play a very direct physical counter attacking style like most teams in the M E c. Okay.
Matt: Well, In terms of anything else that you would like folks to know about West Virginia Wesleyan or your program or anything else like that?
I’ll, I’ll, I’ll give you a
Coach: free one. Yeah, that’s the hardest question to make me actually have to think of a A que so, I mean, the biggest thing is, You know, this is a place that, like I said, has been very successful. Um, and getting it back to that place is a huge challenge. But I think the, the players that we have on this team we’re returning, I think, uh, 10 out of the 11 starters from last season.
Um, the players themselves have the, all the talent in the world, and I’m extremely excited with what we have. And they, they were very young last year, but they were very skilled. And so I think the change of style, the way that we’re gonna go and the way people that we’re gonna be bringing in, in the years to come is gonna be able to get.
Really Wesleyan back to where it should be. Um, and so I think that’s extremely exciting. Um, I think that the players themselves, I love who they are as people, and then also, you know, just how, how they act and react to things. They’ve changed a lot from last fall to this spring and I’m really excited to see what happens, especially this next fall.
Um, to give you a little idea. [00:27:00] Of kind of who they are. So during my interview I was sitting down with a couple of the players eating lunch. Um, and one of them asked me, why Wesleyan? And I said, well, because here is probably the only place in the country where I could coach at and not get made fun of for wearing boots.
And one of the players looked down at the boots that looked up to me and she goes, those aren’t even real boots. Thank you, Kennedy. So that was my introduction to a couple of the players. That’s how they are. That’s kind of the way that they act and just, I love everything about that. ’cause with me, it’s one of those things where if you ask me a question, I’m gonna give you a real answer and it’s probably not gonna be one that you like, but it’s gonna be a real answer.
And so I feel like that kind of understanding, especially in trust amongst the team, the players and everything else is huge. And I think Wesleyan is really unique in that, and especially the town, especially the school. That’s
Matt: great. Well, I always like to ask end these with one last question, and that’s, if you had one piece of advice, one nugget of info, anything you would want to share with a prospective parent player, anybody going through this college recruitment process, what would that be?
Coach: Here’s the unfiltered version you’re gonna go through. Shit. At some point and it’s gonna suck. Um, I mean it’s, it’s, it’s gonna suck and it’s gonna feel like all the work that you put in to get to this place was for nothing. And the question is, when you get to that point, [00:28:30] ’cause it’s not, if, it’s, when, when you get to that point, do you push through it or do you just give up?
Do you transfer out because it’s the right thing to do or. Do you stay because it’s the right thing to do. And the last part of that is whatever decision you make, make it and be all in. ’cause regretting decisions that you have made is not gonna do anything for you. Make the decision. Push through it, do what you need to do and at the end of the day, you’re not just gonna be a better player for it, but it’s gonna change who you are as a person.
The stuff I went through in college, like I had, I got screwed out of a soccer scholarship. I got mono, I got twice, I got bronchitis and sinusitis. I got hit by a car on my bike, riding it to class. I flipped my truck in the mountains ’cause my back tire blew and I flipped three times. Like that was one semester of college that I went through and it’s like when you get to that point, How do you react to it and if it makes you fall more in love with the game?
Then you know that’s the right thing for you. And if it doesn’t, then you’re probably not making the right choice. For me, the only thing that has kind of kept me through all the things I did, business, politics, all of it, is I had something I could fall back on and that I love to do and that was the game.
And then also coaching. And so for me, I finally got to a point in my life where I felt like, you know, this is the time I can actually do this fully. And commit to it and do it a hundred percent. And so for me, in my life, I got to that point. And so that’s really why I’m here is now I can do it, I can focus on it, and I love it.[00:30:00]
For me, if you don’t love what you’re doing and love where you’re at, you’re not gonna be as good as you possibly could be. So that’s my, that’s my one piece of advice, I guess. I
Matt: love it. Well, coach, appreciate the time. Wish you the best of luck this fall, and if you do get down to any of the recruiting events down here in Bradenton, gimme a shout and uh, and we’ll get together.
All right.
Coach: Sounds great, man. Hey, it’s good to meet
Matt: you. Likewise. Thanks, Adam. I.
