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Quinnipiac coach Dave Clarke. (Source: QuinnipiacBobcats.com) |
The list is endless. And nowhere is soccer even mentioned. Welcome to the world of college coaching.
If there is a least enjoyable aspect of coaching it would be dealing with parents at the youth level and doing recruiting at the college level. Both are headaches I could do without, but deep down I know they are necessarily evils. They are aspects of the game that make it seem like real work and by extension so too is the spring or non traditional season in college.
Being a college coach is a great job when you are at the right school and I certainly have no complaints in that area at Quinnipiac. But when the regular season ends, the position becomes a tangled web of institutional and departmental rules compounded by NCAA restrictions. It is less about coaching and soccer and more about administration and secretarial skills.
My players returned to school Jan. 22 and for the eight weeks leading up to spring break they trained five days a week with the mandated two days off, per NCAA rules. Everything had to be planned in an eight hour block with no more than two hours on the ball – again, the NCAA’s rules, not mine. Of course, being located in the Northeast, there was no chance of playing outside at that time of the year, so we had to plan the fitness workouts while working around class schedules, gym hours, fitness coach schedules and weight room schedule.
My players did two days weight training and fitness classes, such as aerobics, kickboxing, Pilates, etc, one session of technical work and one session of footwork. Each of the 23 player’s programs was planned to fit their needs and schedule. For example, the goalkeepers did kickboxing to help improve their footwork and upper body strength.
We also factored into the schedule (and NCAA countable hours) other team activities like meetings, watching games -- such as the champions League and EPL (Spurs of course) --, and attending other Quinnipiac sporting events. The schedule was all over the place: Monday at 8 p.m., Tuesday at 2 p.m., Wednesday at 6 a.m., Thursday at 3 p.m., Friday at 4 p.m., Saturday at 8 a.m. and Sunday off.
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Members of Dave's team picked an EPL club to follow all season. (Source: QuinnipiacBobcats.com) |
Despite the inconsistent schedule, things worked well, except when it snowed and the schedule went out the window to accommodate the winter and spring teams who needed to train inside. Frustration, frustration! The joys of a Connecticut winter and being a fall sport.
As with most American players, my Quinnipiac players don’t watch the game enough. I have taped games for them to watch, but they lost interest beyond seeing the goals. And Champions League games that I found exciting and interesting were not to them. We did watch the Women’s World Cup, so there was some interest there, but not enough to help them learn more about the game. I needed to come up with another way to stimulate their interest and help them continue to learn and develop as players.
So this spring, each player picked an English Premier League side out of the hat and had to research the roster and find a player who played their position, the player who wore their number and a player they liked. We started a competition using where a player received points if their team won, their players scored or kept clean sheets. It has worked out well to date, but only time will tell if it will help my players become more soccer savvy.
And while the spring season is a frustrating time to be a college coach, this year had a silver lining for me: the Spurs won the Carling Cup and I was there to see Ledley King lift the trophy. Take that Woolwich!
Dave Clarke just finished his ninth season at the helm of the Quinnipiac Division I women’s soccer program. Check for Dave’s insights in the “Coach’s Corner” periodically at Soccer-New-England.com
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