Wilkes University Women’s Soccer – Coach John McNichol
On today’s episode, I speak with Coach John from the Wilkes Women’s Program in Pennsylvania. We talk about how he recruits for academic fit first. He describes the support from the campus as well as from the college town. Lastly, we discuss how he works to instill confidence in his players. Learn more about Wilkes University Women’s Soccer.
Matt: [00:00:00] Hi everybody. Welcome to Discover College Soccer Today. I’m lucky enough to be co uh, be joined by Coach John from Wilkes up in Pennsylvania. Welcome coach.
Coach: Thanks, Matt. I appreciate you having me.
Matt: Yeah, thanks for being here. Uh, always excited to talk to, to D three coaches. I got that soft spot for, for my, my D three folks, but, uh, let’s, you know, we’re talking here, it’s the end of May.
Um. I’m guessing school school’s out probably at this point.
Coach: Yep. Just that graduation this past Sunday. Um, you know, it was another great year for, for our program. Um, our, our young women did a fantastic job in the classroom. Uh, with a 3.44 team gpa, over 500 hours of community service. So, you know, the biggest thing for us is we’re always talking about developing them, the person, uh, on top of them, the student, the athletes.
So it’s one of those things where you get to really see it. Um, you know, we graduated a, a group of six this past, uh, Saturday. Uh, and then we have another student, we also have a six year doctoral program in pharmacy. So she’ll complete her doctorate in two years, but just completed her four years with us, uh, as, as an undergrad.
So it was an exciting Saturday for us, but. Um, yeah, it’s definitely be a little bit quieter here for the summer, but, um, it’ll be good to prepare for for August when they get back. Yeah.
Matt: Well let, well, let’s talk about the recruiting side of things, cuz obviously you’re graduating players and I’m guessing it being May.
Is it one of those things where you’re, you’re done and dusted with the 23? Is there is maybe there’s one still kind of hanging out there. What’s that look like for you guys? [00:01:30]
Coach: Yeah, we’re done with our 23 group unless something were to pop up with a transfer or somebody really late in the process, or if someone had to change a heart.
Um, but it’s not something we’re actively looking at Now. If there’s someone who’s unc Uncommitted who reaches out, we’re absolutely gonna do our due diligence, speak with them, talk to them, get ’em up on campus if we can and, and go from there. But we’ve really been really focusing on 20 fours and then kind of starting that 25 process.
Um, but at the same time, yeah, we’re really, really excited about our group of 20 threes that we have coming in and. You know, kind of can’t wait to, you know, it just, it’s recruiting. It doesn’t end, it doesn’t, you just kind of keep going. It goes from one cycle to the next, and recruiting simultaneous cycles makes it a little bit challenging.
But it’s, you know, I’m fortunate to have two great staff members on my staff that do a ton of work with that as well, so, works out really nicely for us.
Matt: Well, when it comes to, like you said, recruiting those simultaneous classes, I guess what, I’m assuming your focus is usually on the, the, the most recent, upcoming one, but you’re trying to.
Set yourself up for success in the future? You know, I mean, how many inbound contacts are you getting? How much of it is people reaching out to you versus you actively looking for for players?
Coach: Sure. I think it’s a good balance of both. Um, obviously the next, I would say six weeks are huge for us in terms of the different tournaments that we have coming up.
Um, you know, starting this weekend, Memorial Day, we have. Uh, you know, the PBA event, um, over in north, in North Jersey, FC Delcos this weekend and just kind of keeps going, [00:03:00] uh, all the way through the GA event. Uh, that’s at, um, down in South Jersey at the end of end of June. So, you know, we’re starting to get emails from players, from, from, you know, that we haven’t heard from, uh, they’re gonna be attending their showcases.
It’s either we’re registered and that we’re attending. Obviously we have the group that we’re heavily recruiting, that we’ve seen play, we’ve had already on campus and. I have been able to, you know, really start to make those contacts with, and then obviously the cold contact group that hey, we’re gonna see them play, we’re gonna continue to reach out, or different things that get sent to us from recruiting sites.
Um, you know, for us it’s really about not leaving any stone unturned and really trying to find, you know, the right person for our program. Um, and, and we’re really excited about, you know, the next six weeks to really get out and see as many people as possible.
Matt: Well, one of the questions I get all the time, or that I see posted all the time is, You know, the, the alphabet soup.
Uh, is this league better than this league? And, and, and it’s funny because you see the, the word better and you’re like, better for what? You know, I’m assuming they’re talking on the college recruitment side of things most times. Um, but. Is that something that factors into what tournaments you attend, what teams you look at?
Or, or, or, or not really.
Coach: I mean, for us it’s, we’re gonna go anywhere, you know, so it’s one of those things for me where it doesn’t matter if you play ga, EC and l or for a local youth club team that maybe gets, gets the smaller, more regional events. Um, you know, for us there’s, I’m never gonna be someone that says, Hey, you have to play for a [00:04:30] elite level club or play for this certain team or, or a certain program to, to come play for us.
So, You know, a lot of, when we do our recruiting, it’s, we’re looking at the academic fit first. Um, and, and really kind of take a strategic approach to that to make sure that, you know, when we do reach out, when we do have these conversations with, with potential student athletes, then we know there’s gonna be that fit academically.
Um, and I always use the example, let’s say like we don’t have a speech pathology major, but there’s someone we really like, we see they want speech pathology. We don’t really even have something that would transfer into that. So it’s one of those things for me where, hey, that’s a great player, but maybe it’s not the right fit here.
You know, so we have a lot of great programs here. We have 40, 46 different majors at this point with a 12 to one faculty staff ratio ratio or faculty student ratio. So, you know, you get a ton of individual attention and a, and a great cross-section of majors from health sciences to business, to engineering.
Um, so we’re really excited about what we have to offer, and that’s a lot of what we look at is the academics. And it really doesn’t matter who you play for, what league you’re in, you know, if you can play, you can play. Um, so we’re, we’re excited about. Pretty much anybody who, who’s on our radar because it means, hey, they’ve been doing their homework, they’ve been looking at Wilkes as well.
And you know, for me, when you get students, you take that time to really invest in looking at their future, it’s exciting cuz you can tell when you talk to ’em on the phone, different excitement level. It’s not just, Hey, I, I sent out like 50 emails and you’re one of five that got back to me to start this process.
So, um, it’s really nice when you get those personal, uh, connections with those student athletes. Absolutely.
Matt: Well, you, you mentioned, you know, looking at academics first. I mean, what, [00:06:00] what kind of, besides academics, what makes up your hierarchy of things you’re looking for in a player both on the field and off the field stuff?
Coach: Sure. I think, you know, as I was younger, I think I looked more at the, on the field, Hey, how can you help us win quicker? And I think the more you, you get through this, and I think the last couple years have really. Put a big spotlight on mental health, which is a big part of it. And we’re very fortunate about the resources we have here at Wilkes, but we wanna find people who understand that, you know, when you go become a student athlete at the college level, there should be certain sacrifices that you have to make.
Um, so we want people that are passionate about it and are driven and want to continue to, to get better. Um, you know, I think whenever we get somebody on campus who, you know, sees everything and then they know, Hey, great strength and conditioning coach, you know, when we’re training what we’re doing, and they’re not afraid of that.
That’s really exciting to me because we want someone who, you know, when they get here, they’re, they’re on their own. You know, they have us, they have their faculty members, they have different people on campus, um, but they don’t have that structured standard routine that they we’re so comfortable with through high school and club.
Um, so understanding that they’re not gonna have their parents right here to kind of help them along the way. And, you know, we want people that have that passion to want to get better. I think the more passionate you are about that, uh, the better teammate you’re gonna be. Um, we really pay attention a lot to how our potential student athletes.
You know, one of the things we talk about, you know, at halftime, what are you doing during your game? You know, sometimes you try to jump from field to field, but I like to kind of watch a little bit of halftime to see, do you go right to your phone? Do you check it? Or are you really kind of engaging with your [00:07:30] teammates, engaging with your coaching staff, paying attention?
How quickly after the game are you running to go get to that next person? Or are you paying attention, you invested in what’s going on? Um, how you treat your parents is a big one too. When you’re on a campus visit, you know, if you’re gonna say something that to me is a little bit shocking to a. To your parent.
I kind of can only imagine what you’re gonna say to me, uh, while you’re here. But, you know, those are the off-field things. It’s really paying attention to those people who are, who want an inclusive environment, uh, who wanna build a strong culture and, and be a part of a, a family that really wants to connect and get better.
Um, you know, on the field. Sure, we all want that bigger, faster, stronger, super technical player that gets it. But for me, you know, positional versatility is a big part of what we do. You know, I think part of our identity as a program is we love the press. Um, can we do that every year? No, but it’s what we’d like to do.
Um, so if we have players that can play a couple different spots who understand the different things, being a little bit more system fluid with how we wanna play, uh, is really important. But I always say if you’re a super athlete, hey, we can work on the technical. That’s part of the, the player development part of what we do.
Uh, if you’re somebody who’s really technical, hey, we’ve got a great situation here with our strength and conditioning coaches. With everything that we do year round that can get you stronger, get you quicker, get you faster. So, you know, for me it’s just looking at people who honestly, if, if you want to be at, at Wilkes, you know, then it’s easier for us to, to kind of take a look at it and say, Hey, these are the things that we can correct.
These are things that we can get better. These are things we can help with. Uh, and then when you kind of find that player that has it all just kind of flows even smoother. Absolutely.
Matt: Well, let’s talk a little bit more about the school. I’m sure there’s folks out there not [00:09:00] familiar, uh, with Wilkes. Um, But you know, you’ve been there several years now.
So kind of give us some background. What are some of the awesome things about Wilkes that maybe we’re not gonna learn just by going through the website?
Coach: Sure. I think, you know, the one thing that I think Wilkes did a really great job of, and I think whenever we look, you go on a website, you see the pictures, like the stock photos of, of the campus, um, we actually look like our pictures.
And I think when we get families here, they’re like, wow, this, this looks. Very familiar. And I’m like, you know, they, they did a fantastic job a couple years ago. You know, our previous president, he did a fantastic job. It was, uh, called Gateway to the Future Project, and then it started about 15 years ago. Uh, so I was fortunate that when I got here, almost six years ago in June, um, well they were on the last stage of that process and it was just kind of redoing our greenway in the center of campus.
Um, and, and really what they did was took campus and brought it forward. Ton of enhancements, a couple new buildings, uh, taking our old buildings and, and bringing them a little bit more modern, but at the same time, With where we’re located in Wilkes Spread, there’s a lot of really cool, neat old mansions that are incorporated on campus.
Some of them are, um, office buildings, some of them are campus housing. Uh, the Kirby Mansion is where our English department is housed. Um, and they kept with the old architecture and that old charm and didn’t kind of make it look out of place. They did a fantastic job with campus. Um, you know, the city itself, it’s a college town, you know, so it’s one of those things where within walking distance, movie theater, different restaurants, Uh, the Kirby Center as well, which is where you can go see, uh, different concerts.
Mohegan Sun Arena is about five minutes away, so you know if minor league, uh, [00:10:30] penguins, minor league hockey team is there. Um, and, and really you have a lot within walking distance. And then if you’re into skiing, if you’re into the outdoors, you have the Poconos are 20 minutes away. Uh, we have a lot of great state parks that are very close to us right now.
Um, we’re very fortunate, you know, at the same time to have great academic resources, uh, and fantastic administration. I can’t say enough about. Current president and current directors who really do support athletics. Um, it’s one of those things where all of a sudden I’ll turn around and, hey, there’s university presidents five feet away from our bench watching our game.
Um, you know, his first year he came up to one of our playoff games, uh, it was cold. Um, it was in a away game. And, and he went, he sat through the whole thing. And it’s, it’s one of those things where we really do have that support on campus. Uh, it’s the great part about being, you know, a smaller school with close to 2300, right around 2200 students here.
Um, and with 23 different NCAA offerings, you know, you have a lot of support from, from other athletes and, and the rest of campus as well. So it really is a, it’s a great place to go to school. You’re right in a college town, you’re in a city, you know, for me, you know, having grown up outside of Philadelphia, it’s more of a, a small town, uh, that with a downtown area, but it’s a, it’s a great place to go to school.
Um, there’s some great local rivalries as well, um, that we’re in, you know, it’s an exciting time at Wilkes. We’re transitioning from the Mac Freedom to the Landmark Conference, uh, this coming fall, which is, Really exciting for us. Um, you know, we had a great, great time within the Freedom. Um, just a really long tradition and, and history.
Got an opportunity to move over to the Landmark, which [00:12:00] when I was in college, I actually went to Kings, which is just down the road, which makes it a little bit interesting being, I love it being here, but it was the first year I was like, oh, this is a little bit different. But, um, you know, it’s, it’s one of those things where we, we will lose some of those games, but we’re really excited about getting the landmark, which when I was in college was.
All but two of those schools were in the Mac. Um, so it’s one of those things for us where for me, it’s getting back to playing a lot of teams I’m very familiar with from, from my playing days. And a lot of teams we played at non-conference. So, you know, it’s a lot of great local rivalries, a lot of great local soccer, and it’s just a, it’s a great place to be.
Matt: those, one of those two was, was where I went Catholic University. So I have to go down to DC and, uh, And take on my alma mater. So good luck with that. But, uh,
Coach: Uh, one of
what, they come the first year so we don’t have to make the trip Okay. Just yet. So we’ll see some other teams that’ll have to make that first so we can figure out the best way to, to do it.
Matt: Well, there you go. Well, you, you’ve kinda mentioned a little bit, but like you said, for student athletes coming in, it really can be a balance between sport and academic commitments. Um, so what, what kind of support mechanisms are in place at Wilkes and, and how do your players really. You know, strive to, to meet that balance and succeed on, on both sides of it.
Coach: Sure. I think the hardest thing for fall athletes is that quick turnaround. Um, you know, you get here, I think this year we move in August 18th, we start classes August 28th. So it’s 10 days and it’s a, it’s a whirlwind and you know, I think we’re probably one of the last couple schools that start that week [00:13:30] later.
Um, whereas most are starting around the 21st and I believe. The following school year, we’re gonna be on that, that cycle. So, you know, the biggest thing for us is trying to get our, our group as comfortable as possible. So, you know, I know our, our returning players do a ton over the summer, just keeping in contact with our new players, trying to get them as comfortable with them as possible.
So when we get here that first day, there’s that they’ve already met everyone. They’ve already seen everyone. You kind of get those initial jitters out of the way knowing that. Hey, it’s gonna be a lot in these next 10 days. And we really do focus on that. We do a lot of team building activities, uh, during our pre-season.
We have a wonderful woman on campus. Her name’s Jill. She’s in charge of our adventure ed. Um, so she does a couple of activities with our team to help them with kind of getting on board, go mini golfing as a team, uh, and then obviously sprinkle the soccer side of things in there as well to get ready. But, Uh, works out really nicely for us so that by the time, um, you know, classes start, we’ve got a pretty good grip handle on our group.
Um, one of the things we do in-house is we have a daily recovery log, uh, that our team, uh, fills out. So for me, it’s a great way, whether you have 15 people on your roster or 35 people, it’s hard to have individual conversations with each one to check in. How are you doing each day? Um, and while still being productive with everything else that you have to do as a job.
So for me, We’re able to get how they feel about this session, day session in terms of their perceived exertion, general muscle soreness, uh, sleep quality, sleep hours, uh, general moods, stress levels. Uh, and then we just had a, one of our graduating seniors who was a psych major, uh, did an internship with our team this past summer and kind of revamped the mental health piece to our [00:15:00] recovery log as well.
So we added a couple of new questions on there as well so we can dive a little bit deeper for our group. And, you know, when we see elevated stress le levels and, and everything, it’s simple as me is. Hey, just quick text message. Hey, how you doing? Saw your stress levels are up. And a lot of times it’s, Hey, coach, two tests today.
Test tomorrow. Okay, got it. No worries. Or, Hey, I’m, I’m gonna come in around noon, you’re gonna be in the office. Great. You know, it just kind of opens that dialogue and, and really helps, um, across campus fantastic academic resources. Um, so University College, which is our academic support center, does a, a great job with our student athletes.
Um, not only and our student athletes, but our students in general. So tutoring center, writing center, um, they really work a lot with our undeclared majors as well. So then that way they’re starting to get an idea of what they want to do. Um, we have a great, uh, counseling center as well. They’ve devoted a ton of resources over the past couple years to e even giving them more space.
You name it. Um, it’s, it’s something that, you know. We’re very fortunate to have what we have here for, for our students. Uh, and then, you know, every college has a faculty, uh, athlete representative. Um, a couple years ago we started a program, quite a faculty athlete mentor. Uh, so each team has a, a faculty member on campus that’s been paired up with them.
So Dr. Mattis, who’s our faculty mentors in our business program, uh, he’s been a godsend to our program. Just in terms of everything that he has done with our group. We do a year round community service project with him. Uh, called Super Sunday. So we basically serve soup to, uh, less fortunate, um, areas in in the community.
We do it with him year round. We do [00:16:30] Christmas bags with him. If we’ve got an away game and we’re leaving at 8:00 AM he and his wife are meeting us at the bus in the morning. They usually have drinks, donuts for the whole group. They’re at almost every home game. Um, when we have senior day or different tailgate to our families, they’re always out there grilling with everybody.
So to have that support from our faculty members, to have people who want to be involved. Just, just makes life so easy. And I think for our student athletes, we always talk to ’em about everyone’s adjustment period to college is different. Um, I use the example, we had a A player my first year, she was a freshman, she was from Miami, and her adjustment was different than anyone else’s because anybody else who’s a little bit homesick can jump in a car and drive home and she didn’t have that option.
So that’s what we always talk to our student athletes about. Some people that adjustment is a week, a month, a year, a year and a half. But we’re here to help you through that adjustment and we want them to know that. You know, they’re not alone. They have a great group of, of women that are a part of what they do.
Fantastic group of coaches here that really wanna work with them to help them. So, you know, we talk to ’em all the time about there is no magic. Hey, you need to be ready to go. You need to be playing 90 minutes every game. And you know, it’s an unrealistic expectation. Everybody’s adjustment period is different, and we have a lot of resources to help you reach your goals academically, athletically, but, In time, it’s gonna come for some, it comes quicker.
For others, it comes later and it’s about being patient. And we talked about connecting, developing those relationships, and that’s the most important part of it starts the recruiting process and it continues to build throughout their four years here. That’s something that we really do focus on as a program.
Matt: No, sounds good. Well, let’s talk a little bit more about the, the soccer side of it. [00:18:00] Um, you know, you, you mentioned you got a, a group just graduated, so, and you finished up the recruiting class. What do you have a. Roster size you feel is ideal that you’re effectively trying to get to each year?
Coach: Sure. We’re typically the last couple years we’re a little bit bigger and you know, we still have another year with the Covid waiver as well.
Um, which has impacted, you know, how we recruit and how we do things. Cuz at the same time I wasn’t gonna say, all right, hey, we’re only losing four and three might come back. We’re like, we just had a recruit and if we have a couple extra, we have a couple extra. So the last couple years we were right around 32, um, which was a little bit on the high side.
We. Ended up being pretty comfortable with it. Unfortunately, we’ve been pretty unlucky with injuries, so even though it was 32, it was more like 28 healthy, um, student athletes for us this year we’re looking at 27. Um, and the reason being is we lose a very small class this coming year, uh, where we’re probably only gonna lose three, maybe four.
Um, depending on that fifth year for another one, uh, two of which are goalkeepers. So, you know, it was one of those things for us where we wanted to, not that 27 is a small roster by any stretch of the imagination, but we want it to be closer to that so we can bring in a normal size class next year and.
Still be in a good spot with, with everything and not overtaxing our, our roster size. So I would always say somewhere between that 27 to 31 number really is kind of that number we we look to shoot for. Um, just because you’re gonna have injuries, you’re gonna have class conflicts at training, you wanna make sure that you’re putting a, [00:19:30] you know, quality sessions on and making it competitive every day.
Matt: No, for sure. Well, you mentioned it a little bit earlier about like in depressed, but kind of gimme a quick summary of, of your coaching style, team style of play. What does that look like?
Coach: Yeah. So I think for me, the biggest thing is instilling confidence within our group. Um, you know, I’m somebody who, you know, yes, we wanna do it a very specific way, but if you’re not confident, you’re not gonna be a great decision maker.
You’re not gonna be somebody who can look at a situation in front of you, diagnose it quickly, and then, and then make that decision and, and kind of live with it. And that’s one of the things that we really talk to our group about is, you know, we want to have a system in place, we wanna have a structure in place, but we don’t want it to be robotic.
You know, we want you to have that creativity, to want to go and, and have seen certain situations in training that mirror what we’re gonna see in games. So then you can kind of make the best decision. And in that moment, you know, you might see a little creative flare, you might see something that’s a little bit different, and we’re gonna all make mistakes.
And, and what we really talk about is, I’m never gonna hammer you as soon as you make that first mistake. I think when you have situations like that, it, it impacts your confidence. And if you’re not a confident. Student athlete when you get back to campus and it wasn’t fun at training that day or it wasn’t, you know, what you were hoping for.
It was constant negativity. It’s gonna impact the academic side of things. So first and foremost, it’s about instilling confidence in our players. You know, talking to them about team ownership within how we play and how we give corrective feedback. Um, also with one another. We talk a lot about delivery Trump’s message a hundred times out of a hundred.
And you can have the [00:21:00] greatest message in the world, and if your delivery’s off, it doesn’t work. But what we talk to him about is you’re in a game and. Energy’s high adrenaline’s pumping, and you’re gonna say something to a teammate where you’re trying to make that correction and it might not come off great, but that’s where we, we have to connect.
And if we can connect prior to that, you’re able to then grab that person at halftime and go, Hey, listen, I know that maybe came off, here’s what I was trying to say. Like, care a lot about you as a person. You know, we, you do a great job, but we gotta look at this and, and, and fix this. And this is what I was seeing.
And you know, it was being able to have those receptive conversations. So, you know, that’s what we really focus on with the mentality of our players in terms of how we wanna play. Um, yeah, we do wanna press as much as we possibly can, play a little bit higher up the field. I think with our group, what we’ve talked to ’em about is having more of a transition mindset.
So if there’s something that, you know, we do eight passes to get somewhere where it could have done it in three, how can we think about eliminating some of those smaller passes that maybe don’t move defenders? And we talk a lot of time like, Hey, move ball versus moving the fender and, and making sure that we’re moving.
Um, I think for us, one of the things we’ve struggled with at times, a little bit of our off ball movement, something that we’ve talked about a lot in the spring. Um, but at the same time for us, it’s looking to try to get as high up the field. I think a lot of times we kind of fall into a little bit of a lull, um, in, in that defensive half of our middle third, we start to get real comfortable connecting passes in there and then you lose it and kind of put steams in a short position to transition and go quick.
So we try to find those opportunities and those different windows to isolate our, our wide players at one v one in space or. You have our target back to goal where they can combine with an attack and player underneath them. So, you know, that’s really what we talk about a [00:22:30] lot is the defensive side of it.
Making sure we’re staying organized. I think, you know, we have moments where we can be very organized and we have others where, hey, it gets a little bit chaotic. So, you know, we’re fortunate to have different times with film study and what we do in training to really kind of clean those, those issues up.
Um, but as a group, they, they do a great job of adjusting. And I think one of the things we’ve talked to ’em about, unfortunately we have had some pretty significant injuries. We talk about, you know, our group that just graduated. Um, I think they actually, when we added it up, um, missed more games than they played, uh, collectively is a class between multiple acls, a torn labrum for a field player in their shoulder, which is again, an odd, very odd injury on top of, you know, the normal injuries that happened throughout the course of the career.
Um, we had two ones very healthier freshman year, never played again with injuries through the next three years, and then with the covid year and then, Hailey’s the opposite where she missed her first three years due to injuries and, um, now she’s back, finally got to play at the end of her senior year and is playing her fifth year next year.
So, um, you know, we’re, we’ve talked to her a lot about having to be a little bit more system fluid and be able to play a couple different ways and understand that Sure, we might wanna press, but we might have to do it a little bit differently based on what our personnel, uh, is. So we’re, we’re very flexible in what we want to do and looking at it from a standpoint of, hey, You know, it might not work in this game, but it could work on Wednesday.
Um, so we just have to change and tinker some things a little bit. So, um, you know, for us, we just talk about being able to be flexible and, and go from there. Great. Well,
Matt: coach, you’ve been super generous with your time and just wanna wrap it up with one question that I [00:24:00] like to get from everybody, and, and that’s, if you had one piece of advice, one nugget that you wanted to share with any parents or players that are going through the recruiting process right now, what would that be?
Coach: Enjoy it and ask as many questions as you can. You know, I think for me it’s, we always say once you get on campus, especially if we’ve seen you play, you’ve already done the hard part. You know, you’ve got our attention. So enjoy the free lunch. Enjoy the opportunity to go and see a place. Um, but go with questions and don’t be afraid to ask, Hey, where do I stand in the recruiting process?
We want to give, we’ll always tell you, we’re gonna give you very honest and open feedback about what we see in you as a player, how we think you can get better. And we know that. You know the recruiting process, it’s interesting. You’re being told how much you’re wanted and liked and want to be here, and then you get here and you have to have that mindset of, Hey, I need to get better.
I need to improve, because there’s a ton of other players that want that same thing that I want, which is to be in that starting group or in that first reserve, in that spot, knowing that you’re gonna feature in every match. So, you know, it’s one of those things for us where, you know, we want recruits to enjoy the process, but please ask questions.
Don’t ever just look somewhere and say, eh, maybe it’s not for me. Go visit. You know, it was one thing I, I hated doing it when I was in high school. My parents drug me to I think 10 or 12 different colleges. And what it helped me do was it helped me see what I liked and what I didn’t like. And now when I was able to find that place that, hey, this actually you put it all together, it makes the most sense, it’s there.
Um, so enjoy that. Enjoy the process. Ask questions, um, cuz you can only get answers that are gonna help you.
Matt: Uh, couldn’t agree [00:25:30] more. Well, coach, I really appreciate it. Wish you the best of luck moving into the Landmark, and, uh, if you make it down to any recruiting events in Florida, you know, gimme a shout and, uh, we’ll grab a cup of coffee or something.
All right?
Coach: Absolutely. Thanks Matt. I appreciate you. Thanks for having me. Thank you.
