William & Mary Women’s Soccer – Coach Marsha Lycan
On today’s episode, I speak with Coach Lycan from the William & Mary Women’s Program in Virginia. We talk about their timelines of recruiting. She describes the uniqueness of Williamsburg as a college town. Lastly, we discuss how they have an experienced staff with deep ties to the school. Learn more about William & Mary Women’s Soccer.
Matt: [00:00:00] Hi everybody. Welcome to discover college soccer today. I’m lucky enough to be joined by coach Marsha from William and Mary. Welcome coach.
Coach: Thank you. Great to be here.
Matt: Yeah. Thanks for jumping on. Really appreciate it. Uh, we’re, we’re talking here, June 19th. So, uh, you’ve had about four days of the official opening of recruiting the, the 2026 cycle.
And, uh, You just mentioned to me that I’m like your 31st zoom, uh, you know, in the last few days. So, so needless to say, you guys have kicked off your 26 recruiting. Uh, is that right?
Coach: Can you see the bags under my eyes?
Matt: Well, so. I think there’s, there’s kind of a misconception maybe around how much recruiting happens June 15th, June 16th, not just, you know, obviously that’s the green light for division one, division two, but the other divisions that AI, they can, they can start whatever they want, but how much.
Of your recruiting, let’s say between now and the end of the year, we’ll be focused on 26 versus 25 kind of what’s, what’s your timeline for, for, for a mid major D one, you know, what, what does that look like for you guys?
Coach: Yeah. Great question. And I do think it’s, you know, even within the mid majors, it’s a lot different.
We completed our 25s, um, I think in March or April, [00:01:30] um, last year, we were done with them by January of that year. So, you know, it, it kind of depends. We, we don’t impose a timeline on ourselves. We. We come up with our list, we go after them. We don’t impose a timeline on most of our recruits either. We kind of like it to be driven by them.
Um, and so, in a lot of cases, when we’re working down from the top of our list, it just sort of depends how many, how many Of those players we get starting from the top down as to when when we’re going to be finished.
Matt: Okay.
Coach: So we’ve been fortunate the last couple of years to to land land a lot of kids on our high up on our list.
Matt: So, and maybe I’m generalizing this a bit. But it sounds like then because one of the things I’ve observed, at least through my conversations, I would say it’s slowing down a little, right? So you kind of said it used to be January. Now it’s March. So there’s a couple rounds, right? But but between the transfer portal and that kind of my next question, is that something you guys are looking at?
And and FAFSA stuff? Has that do you think that has maybe slowed down? The decision making process down or the recruiting process down?
Coach: It’s funny you said that because after, after a lot of zooms over, over the course of three or four days, and it was the exact same format we did last year and targeting probably the same type of players.
You’ve got some, you know, really high that, you know, they’re your reach kids. It’s just like when you apply to college, you have your, your reach schools, your target. So, [00:03:00] I would say about the same demographic of a list and overwhelmingly my feeling was getting off the zooms this year that the timeline for the 26 is going to be much faster.
Um, and I thought that was really interesting because, you know, and we tend to ask them, what do you envision your timeline? Like, if, you know, what would be the ideal time? You could be committed. And last year. I recall. Most of those. Girls, even even the really, really strong ones that that ended up going to, you know, really competitive power.
Our 4 is now, um, their sentiment was in June. Oh, I’m going to take my time. I want to find the right fit even the ones who ended up committing early. We’re saying that. Whereas this year. The overwhelming answer was I’m going to take my time, but October or, or by the end of the year. So I thought that was a distinct difference.
I, I tend to call it the social media effect. I think the pressure just gets more and more every year.
Matt: Yeah. Yeah, no. And, and, and honestly, I think even just looking at social media for the last four days, I think I would agree. It seems like the 26 is, it seemed to be more chomping at the bit, so to speak.
Um, well, in terms of. Gathering your list of players, right? The, the, the reach kids, the, the, the ride on kids, whatever your list. Yeah. Um, where is it that, that you like to go? I know you’re about to get on a plane here very shortly, but, but where is it that, that you like [00:04:30] to go see players? How do you formulate that initial list?
Coach: Yeah. Um, obviously it’s. Mostly coming from the national leagues, and, you know, to be perfectly honest, the has consumed most of our time this past year. Um, it it’s tough with, you know, not only budget constraints, but just time constraints in the recruiting world. Now, you could literally go to an event every weekend.
So we have to sort of try to try to have some normalcy and our lives and schedule, even though we’re. We’re still working really hard and we had taken our team to Ireland in March, so we ended up missing the big showcase. Um, that’s on the East coast. So just sort of, you know, with scheduling conflicts and things, we didn’t get to any events since last summer.
So it’s been mostly ECNL, but we’ve attended some regional league events. We, we go to a lot of one off games. We’re, you know, fortunate enough to live in Virginia, which is really proximate to some of the top clubs in the whole country up and down the East coast. So, you know, we’ll go to there, whether it’s their college ID nights or their, their actual league games, even some high school games.
So it’s kind of, kind of all over the map, but you know, at the end of the day, the lion’s share of our. Of our commits, not all of them, but, but I’d say 3 quarters of them are coming from, um, from the, when we, when we look at the statistics,
Matt: okay. And 1 of the things that kind of brought us together today was, [00:06:00] was a post you put on.
On Twitter regarding camps. So I know they’re, they’re a part of your recruiting and see it’d be a growing part of the recruiting. I think maybe there’s some, uh, differing ideas out in the ether around their value and maybe when to do them. So talk a little bit about how you guys use ID camps, but I mean, and besides your own, do you work other ones?
When, when do you think is a good idea for a player to be part of those?
Coach: Yeah. I mean, yeah, that is what, what kind of connected us. And I. I have been reading a lot on on Twitter the past week to the point that I finally had to had to put my 2 cents in because I think there were a lot of generalizations happening that these ID clinics are completely worthless.
Unless you, you know, unless the coaches showed up and knocked at your door and driven you to the clinic. They’re they’re lying. Um, which is just not the case. And unfortunately, from everything that’s. Published on social, it sounds like there are some schools that might take advantage of families and that’s unfortunate, but I would like to believe it’s not most of us.
And I, I think they’re extremely valuable. Um, I think it’s sort of up to the, the parents and and their daughters to sort of be discerning about them. Uh, you know, they, they are costly and. You know, I touched on that a little bit to some people are saying, oh, clinics are, you know, 250 dollars and that’s ridiculous.
So I kind of did a little eyeball and I, I’m constantly doing a market analysis anyway, just to [00:07:30] make sure we’re in the right range. And I mean, it’s rare that you find a clinic. That’s a 1 day clinic. That’s over 200 dollars. Most of them are in the range of, like, 1 to 1, 60, 1, 75, um, But, you know, I, I think we always go backwards after we have our class done and look how many did we know on June 15th?
How many came to clinics? And, you know, I think I put those, those stats on on Twitter. I think in our 24, um, 6 of them, 6 of the 9 that we had committed had come to clinics and of our 25, um, 3 of the 6 had and out of those players, 4 of them, we had no idea who they were. The day they walk through the gates to our field, so they worked out for them.
And, you know, we, at least how we do our clinics and we evaluate every kid. And the reality is at a division 1 program, probably 90 percent of the players that come to your clinics. In most clinics aren’t going to be able to to play at your program. Um, but it, you know, it’s it’s the way to get in front of the school.
If it’s your top school, it’s certainly a way of letting them know you’re interested. You sort of go into a different category with us. Just just the same way all these people on Twitter are saying, oh, the coaches just send those emails and invite you. Well. Let me put it back on the recruits and say, some of these recruits are sending 100 emails and posting Twitter and tagging every program in the country.
So, you know, it’s kind of that game on both sides. And it’s just a big funnel. And at [00:09:00] the end of the day, you have to make your way down that funnel and, um. You know, it’s, it’s, it’s helped out a bunch of kids who have landed in our program where, you know, we might not have known who they were other words other ways.
Matt: So, yeah, and honestly, I’ve, I’ve heard the same from, you know, I think you might be my 270th interview over the last couple of years or something in that range. And, and I would say, on average, there’s a, a, you know, Schools that do ID camps, I feel like they find at least one or two every year that they didn’t know until that person showed up at their ID.
Right. You just, like you said earlier, you can’t be at every game. You can’t be at every tournament. You can’t be on every field at every tournament. Right, right. Yeah. It’s, it’s hard to do. Well, whether it’s at a camp or at a showcase or anything else like that. What are the things that kind of make up your hierarchy of, of attributes that you’re looking for in a player, whether that’s on the field stuff or off the field stuff?
Coach: Yeah. I mean, it’s a coach, coach Jack for Julie and I have been back here for six years. Um, and I think even in that time back at our alma mater, we we’ve sort of evolved, you know, in the beginning, you’re looking for this and that, and that, and the program was in a different place and we were just, you know, Pretty much trying to get players that would help us help us rebuild the program.
And I, I think we’re much more lenient in our, in our criteria. Um, we’re at a point now where we’ve worked really [00:10:30] hard. Um, we have some big time players that have come in and are coming in the pipeline the next 2 years. And I think what we finally landed on is obviously. You know, we have our, our technical and tactical bar that we’re at now.
And, you know, as a coach, you kind of know what that is for your particular team. And hopefully you’re kind of getting better and better each year. Um, but aside from that, the 1 thing that I look for is a competitive mindset. And, You know, that’s a little bit of a, a broad term and a few of the zoom that we had this week players, you know, say, what attributes attributes you look for.
And I, I tell him, I look for somebody who’s competitive. And what I mean by that is, I mean, anybody who’s played soccer, anybody that’s played sports, you know. You know, those players that compete and when you’re on the sideline of a soccer game, they’re the first ones you notice, like that kid competes, they want to win.
So, you know, we, we look for this mindset for a couple of reasons. Number one, those kids are going to help us win. And that’s, that’s our goal at the end of the day to be better and to win games. And, and those kids that are uber competitive and driven are the ones that are going to usually get the job done on the field.
But second, and maybe more importantly is What we have found over the last at least for me over the last six years is those are the players that are more likely to realize their potential at the [00:12:00] next level. And, you know, the reason for that is it’s. It’s kind of comical when you think about it, it’s not talked about enough sort of the, the craziness of taking this 18 year old, ripping them out of their house for the 1st time.
You know, they’re now taking care of themselves for the 1st time. They’re feeding themselves. They’re running their own schedule, being where they have to be managing their money, you know, then you throw in the academics, especially at a school like William and Mary, which is really, really hard. Oh, and by the way, that’s before you even get to the division 1 demand.
So it’s. You know, it’s funny that it doesn’t get as much attention how insane that is for anybody to cope with. And it’s a wonder any of these, any of these people survive. So, again, what I found is those who have that competitive mindset, the edge, the fire and the drive are much more likely to be able to deal 90 miles an hour.
And get through it and be resilient and also be able to develop and, and, you know, reach their potential in college. And so that’s, that’s pretty much our prototype now is we, we just look for those kids with a really competitive mindset.
Matt: I love it. Well, you, you mentioned, uh, you and coach Julie coming back to William and Mary, uh, you guys are, are alumni as well as the coaching staff.
So you got some, some, uh, Really good insights into the school. So let’s talk about the school for, [00:13:30] for those folks who aren’t familiar with William and Mary. What do you find kind of amazing? What brought you back? What, what do you love about the school? Maybe some stuff we wouldn’t even know about going through the website.
Coach: Yeah. Wow. Um, yeah, it’s hard. It’s hard to put into words. Uh, William and Mary is a really special place. Um, it is, You know, it’s a very unique college. We, you know, number 1, we call it the most unique college town in the country, because you have colonial Williamsburg. That is literally a working colonial village, um, that abuts the campus.
Um, and, you know, when we were here, that’s really all there was, it was kind of it was kind of beat down down off campus, but now it’s exploded into this vibrant hipster Williamsburg, you know, with. Breweries and wineries and shops and cafes and Lululemon and, um, so it’s just, it’s very, very unique when you have the, the combination of this super, super historical place.
Um, it’s the oldest university, the oldest public university in the whole country. Um, which sort of is mind boggling. Sometimes when I stop and think about it’s older than America, you know, you wonder how we even had a university here before we were even a country. And that’s why it was, it was the King William and Queen Mary when, when everything was still under England’s rule.
Um, so, you know, and there’s other other things that make it unique or the size. Um, we, we often say, if you go to 1 of those college filters, and you plug in, um, elite academics, um, Um, division 1 sports [00:15:00] rural setting 6 to 8000 population. We’re the only 1 that comes up public institution. We’re the only 1 that comes up.
Um, and and I think that’s true because, you know, you find many universities are either gigantic, you know, 10, 15, 20 plus 1000, or they’re really, really small, like, 2 to 3000 range. And it’s hard to find any, you know, Kind of in the, the 5 to 8 range, you know, Wake Forest comes to mind, any, anything that comes to mind is private.
So I, I can’t think of another one really. That’s, that’s like a, like us.
Matt: Yeah, absolutely. Um, You mentioned the high academics and, and becoming a division one athlete’s hard enough, becoming a division one athlete and succeeding at a high academic institution is a whole nother thing. So what kind of support systems does the school offer to help students come in and succeed both in the classroom and in the athletic department?
Coach: Yeah. Um, great academic support here as you know, as is the case probably with any, any high level university these days. Um, we’ve got a dedicated, uh, academic advisor who’s. Accessible 24 7. The girls are texting her at all hours of the night. She’s going to answer. Um, you know, she’s really integral with the freshman, especially in holding their hand and knows their schedule better than they do and sets it up.
So they’re not taking labs in the afternoon. Um, she she’ll work with them sort of in the big picture, mapping things out and in years rather than semesters. So. They can kind of plan ahead. [00:16:30] And, um, we have free tutoring for all athletes. Um, so there’s, we always say it’s, it’s as hard as it is. It’s, it’s almost impossible to fall through the cracks here with, with all the support.
And, and I, you know, I think more than that, um, You know, ironically enough, we have the highest GPA in the whole department this year. And, you know, we’re, we’re not targeting super, super highest academic players. There are we, we, you know, we’re trying to win soccer games and we’re trying to go after. Really good soccer players that we know are good fits for William and Mary, you know, looking for that, that combination.
But I think it’s more the culture of bringing in these competitive kids that we have when I say we’re, we’re looking for this competitive mindset, they compete in everything. And, you know, these are girls that want to win on the field. They want to be the best in the classroom. They want to have the most volunteer community service hours.
They want to be working with all these other organizations on campus. And we, as a staff spend. So little time talking about academics, because we don’t have to we, we never are lecturing them on academics because when you have a team that has a 3, 7, you don’t really have to. And they, they’re not all geniuses.
They’re, they’re far from that. They’re normal, hardworking student athletes. And I think when they come in and they get into the culture that really our players have established, they. They, they just get sucked right into it and they want, they don’t want to disappoint their teammates. [00:18:00] Everybody’s, you know, looking to be as good in the classroom as they can, because they know that’s their, their individual accountability for, for making the group better.
Matt: That’s great. Well, you mentioned, you know, making sure they don’t have a lab in the afternoon or stuff like that. So fast forward into October, you’re in the heart of that conference season. Walk me through what a typical schedule for a player is going to look like in the week in terms of classes and matches.
Coach: Yeah, sure. Um. You know, our, in the CAA conference, our games are typically Thursdays and Sundays. Um, we’ll have some one game weeks during the season, which is good because it gives you some time to recover. But, uh, in the, the normal rhythm, our off day is Monday. Um, we then train Tuesday. Tuesday’s our only hard training day.
And, you know, again, something that usually takes freshmen by surprise is how Little you really train and develop in the fall during a season because you’re just on a hamster wheel surviving from from game to game. So Tuesday is our hard training day. Wednesday is a pregame practice. Thursday is a game.
Friday is post game practice. Saturday is pregame. Sunday is a game. And then we start over. We, we tend to not lift very heavy in the season. You know, Julie has been doing this a long time, especially, and, um, just, you know, It’s not a big believer and with the loads they’re already carrying during the season.
We just have found that it’s been very counterproductive. You know, maybe that’s high [00:19:30] academic kids as well where they’re so mentally fatigued, but it just doesn’t serve us well and and, you know, we’ve experienced that firsthand. So we’re probably in the weight room during the season just once a week.
And then our strength and conditioning coach spends a lot of time on the field with them, you know, speed training, plyometrics, things that are, are just more beneficial when they’re playing 2 games a week. Yeah.
Matt: Well, let’s talk about, uh, the roster just in terms of how many, how many players, is there a roster size?
You guys that are trying to hit each year, you find it.
Coach: Yep. There is. And we’re way above that right now. Thank you. COVID and thank goodness it’s, it’s over this year. So, um, this fall we’re at 34, probably an ideal roster size for us is like. 28 to 30. Um, that sounds like even a lot to a lot of these club players.
But the reality is, if you’re talking, you know, you might have 4 keepers out of that. You are routinely going to have anywhere from 2 to 6 players injured, even even with rosters of 28. There’s days where you can’t play full field. Um, and, and we kind of always want to be at the point where we can do that.
So, COVID providing all these extra years, um, you know, it’s the way this, the recruiting cycle goes when we’re recruiting. Replacements for players, you know, like these rising juniors that we’re talking to now are going to replace the rising juniors on on our team. So, during these, all these years of extra eligibility, you know, the, the issue for all schools was.[00:21:00]
When you were recruiting the replacements, you really didn’t know if the players who were two years away from graduating what they were going to do. And you don’t want to gamble, you know, you just kind of did your normal recruiting and then we would get to senior year and, you know, are starting. Our 4 year starting center back all says, oh, I want to stay another year.
We say great. We’re not going to we’re not going to turn them down and everybody’s in that position. So, um, after this year, I think, I think it’ll return to some normalcy. We, we don’t have people transfer from William and Mary. We’ve had 1 transfer, um, in the past 4 or 5 years. So. You know, that ends up just accumulating over time.
And again, when you’re recruiting, you don’t. Necessarily plan on the fact that you’re never going to lose anybody. You kind of have to plan on some attrition. So then when it doesn’t happen, you’re going to have a, you know, 1 or 2 extra players. So, um, you know, hopefully we, we held fast in our 25 class at 6 and, um, hopefully.
By the time they come in, by the time our 25s come in, actually, I think we should be down closer to 30.
Matt: Well, besides the roster players, there’s a coaching and support staff roster. So talk to me a little about, uh, who all makes up the staff, what other folks may be in the department help out with the team, what’s that look like?
Coach: Yeah, well, it’s, it’s again, a really unique situation at William and Mary because, uh, Shaq’s and I took over for our coach, John Daly, [00:22:30] who was the head coach here for 35 years. Um, one of the most successful division one coaches in the country, you know, his stats are, I think his 35 winning seasons are, are second to UNC, um, for most consecutive winning seasons in the country.
Um, you know, he’s up there on the wins list and was, was just a spectacular coach, won the CAAs, I think 12 times or so. Um, and so Julie and I, uh, played for him. He recruited us and, um, he, Is now our volunteer on staff at almost 80 years old. He still crushes it. And, um, it’s it’s just amazing and almost, you know, full circle to have the, the coach that recruited you and that you played for be on your sideline.
So, um, we. Typically have, um, another full time assistant. Uh, we’re down 1 right now. So we’re in the process of, of hiring somebody, but, you know, normally it’s that that stuff before. Obviously, we’ve got a strength conditioning coach, uh, the academic performance full time. Support psychologist who actually is employed by our department, which is not the norm everywhere.
I think even at the big school, sometimes they share them with campus, but we have a full time support psychologist right here in our athletic department. Um, so there, there’s a ton of support and we, we meet on During the season, we meet on the regular as a, as a staff, all that whole team and go over every single kid, one by one on all the different aspects of their life.
Matt: Well, coach, [00:24:00] I don’t want to keep you. You’ve been super generous with your time. I’m going to leave you with one last question. If you had one piece of advice, one, one nugget of info, you would want. Anybody going through this college recruiting process to know what, what would that be?
Coach: Um, I mean, it’s probably cliche what everybody says, but I, I, I think you do really just need to take your time.
And, you know, we did see some people commit yesterday. It would make it a hell of a lot easier if the N. C. W. A. Allowed visits the same time we could talk. I’m not quite sure why that’s a delay unless they’re just trying to torture us on on August 1st when we have the start of preseason. Um, but I, I think it’s important to, you know, Be patient, keep everything in perspective.
And, and this is really, really hard for, for these kids, but just to try and keep it about them. And that that’s probably way easier said than done when you have all the social media thrown at you from every angle and things that, you know, we just weren’t privy to, we, we didn’t know what our friends were doing, who was committing what, who was thinking what, who was communicating with who, so, um, the, the more they can just really try to.
You know, keep the right mindset. No, no, they can really only control what they can control in their process. You know, be focused, do their homework, be diligent. And, you know, for, for most people, I think it ends up working out in the end.
Matt: Yeah. You must be listening in on conversations with my [00:25:30] kids. Control what you can control.
Coach: Yeah.
Matt: Well, coach, I do really appreciate the time. Uh, wish you the best of luck in your recruiting travels as well as the fall season, and if you get down, if you get down to any of the ECNL events here, like a ranch. Let me know and we’ll grab a cup of coffee or something. All right, sure. I would love that.
All right. Thanks coach. Thanks man.
