If her recruiting strategy is day trips only, she’s killing it….the whole roster is from Minnesota and Wisconsin, except for two. That appears to be an extremely limited and oddly narrow scope.
OPEN: Akron - Maggie Kuhn (Akron assistant; INTERIM) McNeese State - Juan Yepes (McNeese assistant; INTERIM 6/17) Northern Iowa - Alex Place Thomas (Wartburg assistant and HS coach; INTERIM 6/20) FILLED: Bellarmine - Steve Bornhoffer (Northern Kentucky assistant; ??/??-7/22) Central Arkansas - Derek Nichols (Central Arkansas associate head - 7/28) Long Island - Jim O’Brien (Mitchell College head; 7/11-8/6)
This is a good hire - good experience and success which I would think is needed at a place like LIU - it would be too hard of a job for a young coach.
Met him doing ODP years ago. Rode his bike everywhere. He was at Fairfield when those SoccerGrlProbs girls where there! One of the best soccer-related YouTube videos ever. Not sure what happened at Fairfield but for a former conference COY to just be around and available is probably very good for LIU. Hope it works out.
Being very genuine. He knows the recruiting area, he knows the quality of the competition that he'll be up against and he has the experience to get them up and running, along with prepared for this season, in a short period of time. I feel sorry for the program at Mitchell College because they're now left in the lurch but considering the fact they didn't win a game last year, I don't think they'll miss him.
OPEN: Akron - Maggie Kuhn (Akron assistant; INTERIM) McNeese State - Juan Yepes (McNeese assistant; INTERIM 6/17) Northern Iowa - Alex Place Thomas (Wartburg assistant and HS coach; INTERIM 6/20) FILLED: Bellarmine - Steve Bornhoffer (Northern Kentucky assistant; ??/??-7/22) Central Arkansas - Derek Nichols (Central Arkansas associate head - 7/28) Long Island - Jim O’Brien (Mitchell College head; 7/11-8/6) Arkansas Pine Bluff - Emanuel Stephens (club coach; ??/??-8/7)
I’m not trying to be snarky, but I am genuinely curious about the precedent for extending a coach’s tenure in situations like this. When reviewing both Golan’s current record and previous coach’s performance, I’m not seeing a significant difference. How much time is typically given for a coach to turn things around? Should we expect to see improved team performance in year five? It also raises questions about recruiting strategy—there seems to be a heavy focus on local talent (50%) with limited to no international presence. Is that by design, or does it reflect broader challenges in attracting a diverse pool of players? Or is it lackluster recruiting with the strategy mostly being…they will come to me………Will they? While I understand this program could go either way, it does seem odd for a coach entering their fifth season to be granted ‘considerably more time.’ Are there recent examples in the P4 where this has been the standard approach? It’s her program now. How many more years does she get to figure it out? I’d really appreciate more insight into the criteria being used to evaluate progress and determine tenure to ensure no bias.
When I have looked at past history in relation to future performance, I have found that performance over the last 7 years is the best predictor of where a team will be in the future. This doesn't relate directly to your question, but I think 7 years still is a pretty good time period to use in seeing what a coach really can do. Sometimes, there will be earlier indicators, probably more on the "this coach is a disaster" side than on the "this coach is great" side. To draw on a commercial analogy, one element of a business' value is its "good will." These days, it is more talked about as the value of its "brand." In the Division I women's college soccer world, the analogy is that a school's program has institutional good will. While a new coach has the ability to change things, it is not just a matter of the actual players coming and going and how the coach coaches, it also is a matter of the impact of the institutional good will on things such as recruiting. My conclusion has been that institutional good will ordinarily changes more slowly than rosters change. That is why I think 7 years is a good period to use.
I believe North Dakota will surprise and do well. Northern Iowa will be interesting without the big man in charge and the legacy set there but a good team has been inherited.
Well done by the Demons! Mission accomplished with a predominantly domestic roster and three Canadians.
Given the resources that both programs have access to, the headline on the Niagara website is accurate but I think we all now that the reality is a little bit different: "Women's Soccer Upsets Syracuse" BTW, what was the reason Niagara decided to part ways with Peter Veltri so abruptly last year?
Syracuse outshot Niagara 29-5, so yeah it was an upset. Let's be a little more fair when trashing programs.