Latest / I Hate Soccer with Jason Collinsworth / I Hate Soccer #89 - Mike Aubry, founder and Executive Director of GTFC, an ECNL club

Transcript

I Hate Soccer #89 - Mike Aubry, founder and Executive Director of GTFC, an ECNL club · I Hate Soccer with Jason Collinsworth

0:00
SPEAKER_00: A few years back, I heard about this uh RL team that came to Western New York Flash and smashed them.
0:09
SPEAKER_00: And it it was a club called GTFC.
0:12
SPEAKER_00: And I was like, who in the world is GTFC?
0:16
SPEAKER_00: And I didn't know.
0:18
SPEAKER_00: Um, I've never heard of them.
0:20
SPEAKER_00: And I had only lived, grew up two hours away from GTFC.
0:25
SPEAKER_00: It's a club that started in 1996, and the same executive director has been there the entire time.
0:31
SPEAKER_00: He started it, and he's still the executive director.
0:34
SPEAKER_00: Uh Mike Aubrey, who is the executive director of GTFC.
0:39
SPEAKER_00: I went down to talk to him about uh how they got into the ECNL.
0:44
SPEAKER_00: They had to spend three years in the in the RL to kind of prove that they're at the level of the ECNL.
0:52
SPEAKER_00: And he was saying that there is that that that over their six teams, their six age groups, in three years, they had a goal differential of plus one thousand.
1:02
SPEAKER_00: It's a great story, it's a uh great conversation.
1:06
SPEAKER_00: And uh again, please subscribe.
1:10
SPEAKER_00: Uh, I'm trying to get to like three million views on YouTube.
1:15
SPEAKER_00: So if you're watching on YouTube, please, please, please, please subscribe, like this video, and share it with anybody that you think would would benefit.
1:29
SPEAKER_00: I hate soccer.
1:31
SPEAKER_00: So I stayed there, did my thing for 10 years, started this podcast just to talk to my college players.
1:39
SPEAKER_00: Okay, because to be honest with you, I didn't really know the college recruiting process.
1:46
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
1:46
SPEAKER_00: I really didn't, you know, and sure a lot and I was like, you know what?
1:51
SPEAKER_00: Once I after the 10 years about year nine, a lot of my girls and I mean Buffalo is a girls' soccer area, it's not really strong on the boys, but once they started going to school and college, I was like, you know what, I'm gonna have you on because I want to know your recruitment process.
2:12
SPEAKER_00: Right.
2:12
SPEAKER_00: And then I started getting emails from my younger players or texts from my younger players that I learned more from that podcast than the flash advertising.
2:24
SPEAKER_00: Sure.
2:24
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
2:25
SPEAKER_00: So well, it's it's interesting because it's it's a very individual individualized process anyway, right?
2:30
SPEAKER_00: Like, I mean, for every kid, it's never one size.
2:33
SPEAKER_00: Each college coach does their own thing.
2:34
SPEAKER_00: Right.
2:34
SPEAKER_00: So to get those experiences just to look at I think that's super helpful.
2:38
SPEAKER_00: That's actually a great idea.
2:40
SPEAKER_00: You still have those podcasts?
2:41
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, they're up, they're up.
2:43
SPEAKER_00: They're on the they're yeah, uh, they're up on YouTube and everything.
2:47
SPEAKER_00: How far back would that be?
2:49
SPEAKER_00: It would be uh the one that really stood out was Ella Rudney.
2:53
SPEAKER_00: Um, she is at Nebraska, she's actually done two with me now.
2:58
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
2:58
SPEAKER_00: Um, I don't know the numbers, it would be probably number like 17.
3:03
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
3:04
SPEAKER_00: But they're on my catalog, and I'll send them to you after.
3:08
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
3:09
SPEAKER_00: Um because yeah, I just want to know their recruitment process.
3:14
SPEAKER_00: And a lot of times, because of the ECNL platform, it wasn't like these kids always uh reached out to the college first, right?
3:24
SPEAKER_00: They're just seen, or uh with with Ella specifically, they were there recruiting somebody else on another team, and then they were like, Who's this?
3:33
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it was a study, yeah, right?
3:35
SPEAKER_00: And and then it's just it's so fascinating to me, and then I just want to learn more.
3:40
SPEAKER_00: But then people later on, once this really caught up, and people are like, Jason, if you are really gonna go back to Michigan, where it's more of a hotbed, right?
3:52
SPEAKER_00: I'm two hours from Toledo, I'm two hours from Grand Rapids, right?
3:56
SPEAKER_00: I'm an hour from Michigan, University of Michigan, I'm an hour from Michigan State.
4:01
SPEAKER_00: And they're like, if you can do this in Buffalo, what are you what's it gonna become when you're in Michigan?
4:07
SPEAKER_00: And now I'm I'm gonna be going out to Chicago in a couple weeks, talk to like uh the FC United folks and the MLS Next and whatnot.
4:16
SPEAKER_00: So I mean, it's it's wild, and I believe, and I'm and I had this conversation yesterday.
4:25
SPEAKER_00: I think that every club should have a podcast.
4:27
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, because think about what you could do as an executive director, you could talk to all the directors of the club, all the staff, the college coaches that you know that are always here.
4:40
SPEAKER_00: Like I saw a cliff from Toledo when I came and watched uh the flash play.
4:45
SPEAKER_00: Um you could have alumni and and really just grow and because parents I think parents want transparency.
4:56
SPEAKER_00: Sure.
4:57
SPEAKER_00: So and I think it helps a lot of clubs, especially clubs that aren't really known, or the people within the club that aren't really well known, because it's just a conversation, it's not like I'm here with a script or anything like that.
5:11
SPEAKER_00: And so people really get to like know what the club is, right?
5:16
SPEAKER_00: And so I think that's a great idea.
5:18
SPEAKER_00: Maybe that's my new gate now.
5:20
SPEAKER_00: Do it, yeah.
5:20
SPEAKER_00: Do it.
5:21
SPEAKER_00: I love it.
5:21
SPEAKER_00: So you live in Adrian?
5:23
SPEAKER_00: I live like southwest of Adrian.
5:25
SPEAKER_00: How far what is it?
5:26
SPEAKER_00: An hour?
5:27
SPEAKER_00: A little under an hour.
5:28
SPEAKER_00: Little under I drive fast still, so I don't drive like a country boy, but yeah.
5:32
SPEAKER_00: So it's about it's about 50 minutes usually.
5:34
SPEAKER_00: And how much land did you about 12 acres I have right now?
5:38
SPEAKER_00: That's awesome.
5:39
SPEAKER_00: Awesome.
5:39
SPEAKER_00: How close is that to Ann Arbor?
5:41
SPEAKER_00: Uh it's still about an hour, 45 minutes.
5:43
SPEAKER_00: Adrian, really?
5:44
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
5:44
SPEAKER_00: There's just not a good way to get there.
5:46
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's all back roads.
5:47
SPEAKER_00: You gotta come across and get up, go up 23, or you gotta go through the country.
5:51
SPEAKER_00: So is that where okay?
5:53
SPEAKER_00: Obviously, Adrian College is there.
5:55
SPEAKER_00: Isn't that where Sienna Heights was?
5:56
SPEAKER_00: Yep.
5:57
SPEAKER_00: Yep.
5:57
SPEAKER_00: Rest in peace.
5:58
SPEAKER_00: Yep.
5:59
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
6:00
SPEAKER_00: I have not I have not come across Sienna Heights since I've been up there, but I know it's up there.
6:04
SPEAKER_00: I had a kid play up there, so I knew it's such a good level, yeah.
6:07
SPEAKER_00: Such good teams, and you know, but I mean we're rolling, okay, and it's just a conversation and it's just it's just like it's a recorded cup of coffee.
6:18
SPEAKER_00: Okay, you know what I mean?
6:19
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
6:20
SPEAKER_00: Instead of going and get a cup of coffee, we just record it.
6:25
SPEAKER_00: Cool and everything.
6:26
SPEAKER_00: Um, but okay.
6:29
SPEAKER_00: Again, and I said this off air.
6:31
SPEAKER_00: The reason why I wanted to have you on is because I thought it seemed like you guys came out of nowhere or I didn't know of you, at least in Buffalo.
6:40
SPEAKER_00: And then I'm like, GTFC, what is that?
6:43
SPEAKER_00: And I think it I think it you guys stood out when you guys smashed a flash team in the RL.
6:50
SPEAKER_00: I I actually think that's what happened.
6:52
SPEAKER_00: And I was like, who are these guys?
6:54
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and then I'm like, Greater Toledo, because the only club that I really ever knew in this area was Pace Setter.
7:01
SPEAKER_00: Right.
7:01
SPEAKER_00: And is Paysetter still around?
7:03
SPEAKER_00: Are you guys they're still around Paysetter?
7:05
SPEAKER_00: They're still around.
7:06
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
7:06
SPEAKER_00: Talk about the talk about the start of Impact.
7:08
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so um, so our first official year le legally speaking was 1996.
7:14
SPEAKER_00: So that's when we started the fall of 1996.
7:16
SPEAKER_00: So we're going on our 30th year this coming fall.
7:19
SPEAKER_00: Really?
7:19
SPEAKER_00: Um, yeah.
7:20
SPEAKER_00: So we were uh little club.
7:23
SPEAKER_00: I mean, my first our first year of existence, I ran an ad in the paper, the Toledo Blade, had 12 kids come to a tryout out at Schneider Fields, and uh that was we had one team that year, and then just kind of built from there.
7:36
SPEAKER_00: Um obviously our landscape has changed quite a bit because now we're around 1,400 kids.
7:43
SPEAKER_00: Um, we have campuses down in Lima, Finlay, and then our West Campus, which is out in Springfield Township, a little west of here.
7:51
SPEAKER_00: Um so things are very different than they used to be.
7:54
SPEAKER_00: But you know, I kind of started off like Paysetter was not just the king of the area, but they were one of the, you know, one of the crown jewels of the region at the time when we started.
8:05
SPEAKER_00: And uh I played for Paysetter for a year as a kid.
8:08
SPEAKER_00: Um played for the Toledo Celtics.
8:10
SPEAKER_00: I don't know if you're familiar with them as well.
8:12
SPEAKER_00: They're still kind of around a little bit.
8:13
SPEAKER_00: That's all almost all boys now.
8:15
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
8:15
SPEAKER_00: Um, but that was another, when I was in high school, that club started, and that was another, so that was a place where I played for several years.
8:22
SPEAKER_00: Um and uh yeah, I mean, we've been through some ups and downs, we've been through some bumps and bruises, but um, we got invited into the ECNL RL by Ralph Richards, uh, the uh the Great River Conference, which doesn't exist anymore.
8:36
SPEAKER_00: Right.
8:36
SPEAKER_00: It was the first conference in the country that was all first team, all first teams for the clubs.
8:42
SPEAKER_00: Um, so it was, you know, it was an RL in theory, but it was all teams that were supposed to be able to gain promotion by dominating the conference.
8:52
SPEAKER_00: Right.
8:52
SPEAKER_00: Um I'm trying to think of who was in that at the time because that so that was Northwest Indian Alliance, um, indie elite from out in that Chicago, just east of Chicago.
9:03
SPEAKER_00: Um there was a uh I'm trying to think of who else was in it.
9:07
SPEAKER_00: Uh Sporting Columbus.
9:09
SPEAKER_00: Um there was I think there was eight clubs, eight clubs, and it wasn't terrible.
9:12
SPEAKER_00: Indie Fire South, which is I don't even know what they are anymore.
9:17
SPEAKER_00: They kind of Alliance, which was in it, ceased to exist.
9:20
SPEAKER_00: I think is that in like Noblesville or like or uh Carmel?
9:24
SPEAKER_00: It's it's farther south than that.
9:26
SPEAKER_00: It's down like bottom of Indiana.
9:28
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
9:29
SPEAKER_00: Um and I can't remember.
9:32
SPEAKER_00: I think that they still exist, but maybe are in a southern regional league now somewhere.
9:37
SPEAKER_00: Um I might be thinking of Pride.
9:40
SPEAKER_00: Pride is FC Pride.
9:41
SPEAKER_00: FC Pride is like Lawrence, they're in Indianapolis.
9:45
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
9:45
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
9:46
SPEAKER_00: So so anyway, so that was our that was our first year.
9:49
SPEAKER_00: Um, we also played in Elite 64 that year because we were just kind of coming out of the uh whatever it was.
9:57
SPEAKER_00: What was it called?
9:58
SPEAKER_00: The the Great Lakes GLA or GLA.
10:01
SPEAKER_00: Something like that.
10:01
SPEAKER_00: So we're just coming into that.
10:03
SPEAKER_00: Isn't that crazy?
10:03
SPEAKER_00: All the initials.
10:04
SPEAKER_00: It's hard to keep everything apart.
10:05
SPEAKER_00: When what year is this?
10:07
SPEAKER_00: What year is the E64?
10:08
SPEAKER_00: So, so 22, 22, 23, I think was when we started that.
10:14
SPEAKER_00: I know nothing about that.
10:15
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I don't, it's not there anymore.
10:17
SPEAKER_00: E64 is gone?
10:19
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I think so.
10:20
SPEAKER_01: I think so.
10:21
SPEAKER_00: I mean it kind of it kind of faded into and then and now there's like a new merger of like MPL or ECNO and like all kinds of I have no idea what's going on.
10:31
SPEAKER_00: It's very hard to keep track of, yeah.
10:33
SPEAKER_00: I mean, we could have we could have less less stuff to choose from.
10:36
SPEAKER_00: It would be nice to have and just consolidate everything.
10:39
SPEAKER_00: A little bit little bit easier to keep track of everything and and nowhere to go.
10:42
SPEAKER_00: I mean, you know, ultimately we were just always wanting competition.
10:45
SPEAKER_00: You know, we always wanted to play the best teams we could, we wanted some kind of a showcase for our players, and we had committed to Elite 64 first because there was nothing else for us, and that was basically like a club v club platform from the MRL, right?
11:01
SPEAKER_00: That's what it was.
11:02
SPEAKER_00: That was the entity that was the good old days, yes, was being created.
11:06
SPEAKER_00: Um MRL, yeah.
11:08
SPEAKER_00: So that that became maybe GLC.
11:11
SPEAKER_00: Was it the GLC?
11:12
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, one of the things it's GLC.
11:14
SPEAKER_00: Either G O A or GLC.
11:15
SPEAKER_00: So we we committed to Elite 64.
11:17
SPEAKER_00: Um, Ralph Richards called me and asked me about this Great River conference.
11:22
SPEAKER_00: And I was like, Yeah, of course.
11:24
SPEAKER_00: We're not gonna say no to the ECNL, exactly, even though it was the RL at the time.
11:28
SPEAKER_00: And um I mean, we had a you know, we had a great experience for three years.
11:32
SPEAKER_00: We did it for three years, and each year I go back to Ralph and say, Hey, have we done enough?
11:36
SPEAKER_00: Like, can we get in?
11:37
SPEAKER_00: Can we get in?
11:39
SPEAKER_00: And he's like, We talked about it, the answer's no.
11:43
SPEAKER_00: We talked about it, the answer's no.
11:44
SPEAKER_00: And Ralph was great.
11:45
SPEAKER_00: I think Ralph was Ralph was a proponent of ours.
11:48
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
11:49
SPEAKER_00: Um, but you know, there was just there's there's uneven numbers, and there was nobody else from our region that was really doing extraordinarily well at the time, right?
11:59
SPEAKER_00: And so we just kind of toiled there for three years until uh I think we got really lucky, like King's Hammer decided to go to the GA, and because we'd been told no again.
12:10
SPEAKER_00: And I called Ralph up.
12:12
SPEAKER_00: What other than okay, first of all, where's Ralph at?
12:16
SPEAKER_00: Ralph was the gross director of the ECNL at the time.
12:20
SPEAKER_00: Okay, got it.
12:20
SPEAKER_00: He's now just back at Scott Gallagher coaching, doing what he loves.
12:23
SPEAKER_00: So he was he left his last spring, was the season that we got accepted.
12:28
SPEAKER_00: Got it.
12:29
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
12:30
SPEAKER_00: Is it this episode is brought to you by the North American Soccer Expo.
12:35
SPEAKER_00: If you remember last year when I had Alexi Lawless on, so many of you were blown away and kept on messaging me how did you get Alexi Lawless to talk to you?
12:46
SPEAKER_00: And to be honest with you, it was the North American Soccer Expo.
12:50
SPEAKER_00: The Expo has workshops and seminars and field presentations from top coaches and industry experts.
12:58
SPEAKER_00: I will be there this year.
13:00
SPEAKER_00: 100%.
13:01
SPEAKER_00: I'll be set up on podcast row.
13:03
SPEAKER_00: In addition to the podcasts that I'm going to be filming there, I'm also going to have an open hour where any coach at the expo or anybody at the expo can come sit down at the chair and have a one-on-one, 15-minute chat with me, and you guys can just come and chat and talk about whatever you want.
13:22
SPEAKER_00: North American Soccer Expo, July 30th to August 1st, Novi, Michigan.
13:27
SPEAKER_00: I'll see you there.
13:28
SPEAKER_00: I remember back in the day when it was Vardar and Wolves in the DA.
13:34
SPEAKER_00: And US Soccer said that they messed up by giving the area two DAs.
13:40
SPEAKER_00: And because basically it split the age groups.
13:43
SPEAKER_00: Like the U17 Wolves were really good, but their U 16s were bad because Vardar had all the U 16 talent.
13:51
SPEAKER_00: Right.
13:51
SPEAKER_00: Is that part of the the pro like the thought process of that?
13:55
SPEAKER_00: I think they don't want to water the product down.
13:58
SPEAKER_00: You know, I think they don't want to have that, but I think there's a lot of there's a lot of communities that could support multiple teams.
14:05
SPEAKER_00: I mean, it it doesn't hurt, you know, Cleveland, Flash or International, or not Flash, Force or Internationals.
14:11
SPEAKER_00: Right.
14:11
SPEAKER_00: You know, I mean, it's it's not exclusive to that, I don't think.
14:16
SPEAKER_00: Um a lot of these cities are big enough.
14:18
SPEAKER_00: Toledo's probably not big enough for two competing entities.
14:22
SPEAKER_00: Um, but bigger, bigger places, you know.
14:26
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I think the Hawks and or the Wolves and and Vardar probably had some times where two age groups were both good.
14:32
SPEAKER_00: Yes, and those were great battles.
14:34
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
14:34
SPEAKER_00: You know, so I mean, Scott Gallagher, I mean, what's St.
14:37
SPEAKER_00: Louis at Scott Gallagher, Scott Gallagher Navy, Scott Gallagher Greece, City or whatever.
14:42
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and Luffoos.
14:44
SPEAKER_00: And yeah, I mean, you've got five clubs, six clubs that can put great teams out there.
14:50
SPEAKER_01: Right.
14:50
SPEAKER_00: You know, so I don't I don't know that that's always a thing.
14:53
SPEAKER_00: I don't know that I think they try to have travel partners.
14:56
SPEAKER_00: That's one of their goals, is that make it convenient so that you're not coming to play Toledo and then you have to drive to Albany for your second game, you know, or whatever.
15:04
SPEAKER_00: Right.
15:05
SPEAKER_00: So you have this happened during the COVID.
15:07
SPEAKER_00: It's happened, it's happened.
15:08
SPEAKER_00: Yes, it has happened.
15:09
SPEAKER_00: Uh so they try to they try to be logistically intelligent about it.
15:14
SPEAKER_00: Um, but I don't know that that's necessarily what they're gonna do.
15:17
SPEAKER_00: They didn't read us in any of it, you know.
15:18
SPEAKER_00: We were just we were on the outside begging for crumbs at that at that point in time.
15:22
SPEAKER_00: So when okay, those first three years in the RL, did you notice a jump in some of your players getting more access to college coaches and and whatnot?
15:33
SPEAKER_00: For sure.
15:34
SPEAKER_00: Even just RL.
15:35
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, for sure.
15:35
SPEAKER_00: Because I think the RL gets a bad rap, so RL is low level.
15:39
SPEAKER_00: RL's really good, especially especially if you're in an area that doesn't have a lot of ECNL clubs, right?
15:45
SPEAKER_00: Oftentimes the RL is the better, is uh is the second best option in that city.
15:50
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, Buffalo is one of those, right?
15:52
SPEAKER_00: No, I didn't we did we we saw an instant jump.
15:55
SPEAKER_00: I mean, going to you know, you go to your standard showcases that like normal clubs used to go to like Crossroads and Blue Chip, and there was nothing wrong with those events, but you'd have 10 coaches that would watch from a corner.
16:05
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, our first ECNL RL event was uh St.
16:10
SPEAKER_00: Louis, which was I don't know, probably 35 degrees, yeah, raining the entire time, miserable.
16:18
SPEAKER_00: And we had we made 150 profiles and handed them all out.
16:21
SPEAKER_00: We actually had to go make profiles that last night before we came out, not knowing that there would be nobody there on the last day anyway, so we had extra profile.
16:29
SPEAKER_00: But I mean, it was crazy.
16:31
SPEAKER_00: It was crazy.
16:32
SPEAKER_00: Florida, like Florida, the Florida RL event is I mean, it's gotta be one of the best events in the country, and it's just there's coaches everywhere, you know, and it doesn't compete with anything else.
16:41
SPEAKER_00: So it's you know, the coaches go down there, then they watch the ECNL Florida event right after the RL event, and it's amazing.
16:48
SPEAKER_00: I mean, it really is a tremendous product.
16:50
SPEAKER_00: So and you guys were not GA, you guys were didn't do go that route?
16:54
SPEAKER_00: Did you guys try at all?
16:56
SPEAKER_00: We never tried the GA.
16:57
SPEAKER_00: Um we we we had some conversations uh with my friend Ken Rick out at uh uh Indie Premiere out in Indianapolis.
17:06
SPEAKER_00: Uh we had some conversations about the GA right around the time that we went into the RL.
17:11
SPEAKER_00: Um, but my belief was that the ECNL was the goal to obtain, that that's where we wanted to be, was in the full ECNL.
17:19
SPEAKER_00: Um and so, you know, for us it was kind of, you know, we were never off of the GA and turned it down for the RL or anything like that.
17:25
SPEAKER_00: But it was kind of like this is the path that we're gonna go because I feel like this is this is the league.
17:30
SPEAKER_00: And I mean it's hard to argue now that we're there.
17:32
SPEAKER_00: I mean, yeah, the professionalism, it's it's not different from the RL to the the ECNL in terms of the professionalism, but the competition and the visibility.
17:40
SPEAKER_00: I mean, again, we had we had a 50-minute game in North Carolina because of the conditions of the field.
17:46
SPEAKER_00: The conditions and everything had to get moved to the 50-minute game fields, right?
17:49
SPEAKER_00: We had 87 coaches on the sidelines for one 50-minute game.
17:53
SPEAKER_00: I mean, we've gone years where we haven't seen 87 coaches.
17:57
SPEAKER_00: So, you know, the the product is just again better.
18:01
SPEAKER_00: But um we made the right choice, in my opinion.
18:04
SPEAKER_00: I think we did what was best for our program and our club, and you know, nothing against anybody else.
18:09
SPEAKER_00: But I think this is a this is a great place for girls to be for sure.
18:12
SPEAKER_00: Do you think we're headed to somewhere where a club to be healthy and long-lasting, that they have to get into one of the platforms like like the ECNL, the RL, or the GA, and on the boy side, MOS next?
18:30
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean, I think it's it's it's it's tough for this level of kid, right?
18:34
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I think there are clubs out there that they know who they are and they're they're there for enjoyment or they're there for something else.
18:40
SPEAKER_00: For kids that want to play at the next level, it's really hard to it's really hard to keep your kids.
18:44
SPEAKER_00: And that was one of our driving factors to get into the RL.
18:47
SPEAKER_00: If you don't have right, if you're not in one of these platforms, you're losing kids to those platforms.
18:52
SPEAKER_00: Correct.
18:53
SPEAKER_00: Correct.
18:54
SPEAKER_00: And that's a really hard thing to fight.
18:55
SPEAKER_00: And we were very fortunate for in the last two years before we got in the RL.
18:59
SPEAKER_00: We didn't have a lot of turnover.
19:01
SPEAKER_00: We worked really, really hard for that visibility and you know, bringing coaches in to train our kids and bringing coaches in to watch games and whatever we could do to kind of up our visibility.
19:12
SPEAKER_00: Um, but you know, getting into the RL was vital to keeping the club on the path that was on.
19:19
SPEAKER_00: Right.
19:20
SPEAKER_00: Do you split a lot of kids?
19:21
SPEAKER_00: Like, okay, for example, you have Flash and then you have Cleveland Force.
19:26
SPEAKER_00: It's about three hours-ish.
19:29
SPEAKER_00: Three hours, right?
19:30
SPEAKER_00: Smack dab in the middle, hour and a half from each is Erie, Pennsylvania.
19:35
SPEAKER_00: So you get some kids going to Flash, and then you get some kids going to Cleveland Force.
19:40
SPEAKER_00: Now, you're about an hour from Cleveland Force?
19:44
unknown: No.
19:44
SPEAKER_00: Probably an hour and a half.
19:45
SPEAKER_00: Hour and a half.
19:46
SPEAKER_00: So that 45-minute window, like, are you splitting kids with Cleveland Force?
19:52
SPEAKER_00: No.
19:53
SPEAKER_00: It's kind of a soccer wasteland between us and Cleveland.
19:56
SPEAKER_00: So there's not much, there's not much there.
19:58
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
19:58
SPEAKER_00: What is that?
19:59
SPEAKER_00: Is that it's like Sandusky.
20:01
SPEAKER_00: Oh, I mean, it's it's a lot.
20:03
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's not there's not a lot.
20:04
SPEAKER_00: Not a lot of soccer there.
20:06
SPEAKER_00: Um, east side of Cleveland or west side of Cleveland is starting to become a little bit of a contested area, I would say.
20:12
SPEAKER_00: Um, so we have four or five kids from Cleveland from the west side of Cleveland that are out here now.
20:17
SPEAKER_00: Got it.
20:18
SPEAKER_00: Um we've got some youth from Michigan, um, but there's not much around us.
20:25
SPEAKER_00: I mean, again, you have to go two hours.
20:27
SPEAKER_00: So we have a branch down in Lima, and some of our Lima kids will come up here, and some of the kids in that area will go to like uh galaxies down in Dayton, or they'll go down to OP.
20:38
SPEAKER_00: It's you know, they'll go that direction.
20:40
SPEAKER_00: Um, so that's maybe the most contested place, but again, Lima's not a huge city, it's not a huge population, right?
20:46
SPEAKER_00: There isn't really much around us.
20:47
SPEAKER_00: I mean, the only thing everything is north, but the high school, the high school for girls is different.
20:52
SPEAKER_00: So nobody's weird.
20:54
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, nobody goes up there, they don't come down here.
20:57
SPEAKER_00: I never thought about that.
20:59
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so it's kind of almost like there's an ocean there.
21:01
SPEAKER_00: So the only the only potential of losing a kid from Toledo to a Hawks is that because they have the full year and you guys go half year.
21:13
SPEAKER_00: Yep.
21:13
SPEAKER_00: Have you guys ever thought about going the full year or not really?
21:16
SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's it's a war we can't win.
21:18
SPEAKER_00: You know, high school, high school is really important here.
21:20
SPEAKER_00: And I'm actually a high school coach for the first time.
21:23
SPEAKER_00: Well, this is this be my second year.
21:25
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
21:25
SPEAKER_00: And uh I understand it now.
21:27
SPEAKER_00: I mean, there's a there's a something to it on the girl side.
21:30
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
21:30
SPEAKER_00: There's something to it.
21:31
SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's absolutely it's pretty cool.
21:32
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you know, it's different, you know, and I don't think the quality, it's not it's not contributing to their soccer growth, but it's contributing to other stuff.
21:39
SPEAKER_00: But it's uh per uh individual, like personal growth.
21:44
SPEAKER_00: Yep, for sure.
21:45
SPEAKER_00: Leadership, you know.
21:46
SPEAKER_00: I always loved it when a player, let's say they're a center back and they're kind of overlooked at their ECNL, then they go to their high school, they're the best player.
21:58
SPEAKER_00: Right.
21:58
SPEAKER_00: They're the captain as a sophomore.
22:00
SPEAKER_00: And it and it's just like it's I think kids need to experience that.
22:05
SPEAKER_00: I agree.
22:06
SPEAKER_00: You know, so no, I agree.
22:07
SPEAKER_00: I'm not sure that war that's constantly going on, and then the age change, and then only MLS next like when are we when are we having fun?
22:15
SPEAKER_00: Because we're still kids, right?
22:16
SPEAKER_00: Like we're still kids.
22:18
SPEAKER_00: So that's the that's the hard part.
22:20
SPEAKER_00: It's just become it's become a job for a lot of kids, and I feel like keeping the love of the game is harder now than ever, you know, keeping them passionate about what they're doing.
22:30
SPEAKER_00: So it's tough.
22:31
SPEAKER_00: Because a lot of the environments, I'm not gonna name clubs, but some clubs can be toxic because of how stress-packed it is.
22:43
SPEAKER_00: Sure.
22:43
SPEAKER_00: And stress can be a really good thing, you know, because uh you grow through stress and whatnot.
22:49
SPEAKER_00: But I mean, some of the stories or the horror stories that I hear from kids about some being at some places is like there has to there has to be a way out of that stress.
22:59
SPEAKER_00: There has to be, you know, if a kid that's you know, kids the last, you know, plays the last five minutes of every game.
23:04
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's not like there's no hope that kid that feels that stress and pressure is never digging herself out of that hole.
23:10
SPEAKER_01: Right.
23:10
SPEAKER_00: So that's a tough thing to battle, you know.
23:12
SPEAKER_00: Or I mean, even you know, kids, some kids can't study in the car.
23:15
SPEAKER_00: So you're gonna drive two hours of practice and you can't study in the car.
23:17
SPEAKER_00: So you come home and you sleep four hours because you gotta do homework when you get home.
23:21
SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
23:21
SPEAKER_00: And it affects everything in your life.
23:23
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, there's a lot of stuff where you've really I think we've kind of lost the ability to prioritize what what the sacrifice is really getting us, right?
23:32
SPEAKER_00: You know, so I think that's the nice thing about the growth of these bigger leagues, is there's more options now.
23:37
SPEAKER_00: Maybe we're giving people the opportunity to kind of diversify a little bit.
23:42
SPEAKER_00: Maybe we'll we'll balance things out a little bit and people can kids can still be kids a little bit.
23:46
SPEAKER_00: Right.
23:47
SPEAKER_00: So, how was the jump from RL to ECL?
23:52
SPEAKER_00: Were you always playing in the Ohio Valley?
23:55
SPEAKER_00: So the Great River Conference was our first and second year.
23:59
SPEAKER_00: Okay, and then we went into the Ohio Valley after so Great River ceased to exist.
24:03
SPEAKER_00: Yep, then that was West.
24:04
SPEAKER_00: Most of our guys came into the GLA.
24:08
SPEAKER_00: Got it.
24:09
SPEAKER_00: And then there were four clubs that went into the Ohio Valley with us.
24:14
SPEAKER_00: Yep.
24:14
SPEAKER_00: Um, so we played one year in the Ohio Valley at the RL level, and then we went to And that's when I was like, who are these guys?
24:22
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so that's kind of when I think we've that's when we fully arrived on the scene.
24:26
SPEAKER_00: And yeah, the people, the people that were in the ECNL knew who we were at that point.
24:30
SPEAKER_01: Good.
24:31
SPEAKER_00: So yeah, we made we probably made some people angry.
24:34
SPEAKER_00: So they're getting the revenge this year.
24:36
SPEAKER_00: It's been it's been a big jump.
24:37
SPEAKER_00: It's been a big jump.
24:38
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
24:39
SPEAKER_00: Um, Doug Bracken, who uh founded Ohio Elite or runs Ohio Elite and is the vice president of the ECNL, um, yeah, he called me the day we got in.
24:48
SPEAKER_00: He's on that podcast with Christian Lynn.
24:50
SPEAKER_00: Correct, yeah.
24:50
SPEAKER_00: Correct, yeah.
24:51
SPEAKER_00: And I've known Doug for probably almost 30 years.
24:54
SPEAKER_00: So I mean, we, you know, we've kind of grew up together in this in the soccer world.
24:59
SPEAKER_00: Uh so he called the the day we got in to congratulate me.
25:02
SPEAKER_00: And I'll never forget, but the you know, gave me the congratulations.
25:05
SPEAKER_00: He's like, I just want you to know you're not ready.
25:07
SPEAKER_00: And I was kind of like, I'm ready.
25:10
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we scored a million goals and we beat everybody.
25:13
SPEAKER_00: And then he said, he's like, it's not it's not personal.
25:15
SPEAKER_00: He's like, nobody's ever ready.
25:17
SPEAKER_00: He's like, you don't, you're not gonna be ready this year.
25:19
SPEAKER_00: He's like, it's just gonna be faster and and tougher than you're expecting it to be.
25:24
SPEAKER_00: And he's like, but you'll get there, you know.
25:26
SPEAKER_00: And it was like, it wasn't totally defeating.
25:28
SPEAKER_00: There was a little bit of hope.
25:29
SPEAKER_00: He's like, you know, give it a year or two, you'll start to figure things out, your kids will start to get a little bit better.
25:33
SPEAKER_00: He's like, but don't expect don't be don't be ruined next year when things don't go well because they're not gonna go well.
25:40
SPEAKER_00: And in hindsight, best phone call I could have gotten because I rethink about that a lot now.
25:46
SPEAKER_00: It is hard, it's very, very hard.
25:48
SPEAKER_00: It's it's it's so much different.
25:50
SPEAKER_00: Um, I was watching your your podcast with Dave Robertson where he was talking about, I mean, that's again, they came out of four national championship games in the GA and then went into the ECML.
26:00
SPEAKER_00: And kind of struggled.
26:01
SPEAKER_00: They had a bad, they had a bad year by their standards for sure.
26:04
SPEAKER_00: And they hear him say, not athletic enough, not technical enough.
26:07
SPEAKER_00: I'm like, that's all true.
26:09
SPEAKER_00: I think the thing he missed is the mentality.
26:12
SPEAKER_00: Um, we've had games where we've played, you know, we've had 12, 15 chances to score a goal.
26:18
SPEAKER_00: Our opponents had three, and we lose 3-0.
26:20
SPEAKER_00: You know, and I think that mentality, that ruthlessness that these teams have around the goal or in the the moment that matters the most, we haven't been good at identifying that moment, you know.
26:32
SPEAKER_00: So we make a casual mistake and we give up a goal after playing great for 40 minutes.
26:36
SPEAKER_00: You know, and I'm gonna go back to our last three years.
26:39
SPEAKER_00: Like we never got we never got punished for those moments the last three years.
26:42
SPEAKER_00: Now every time we have that mistake, we get punished.
26:45
SPEAKER_00: That's the hardest thing to to you know reconcile, I think.
26:49
SPEAKER_00: You don't know how to, you can't go to training and fix that immediately.
26:52
SPEAKER_00: You know, that's gonna be a process where we're gonna have to take our lumps.
26:55
SPEAKER_00: And so that, you know, what Doug said makes a lot of sense to me now.
26:58
SPEAKER_00: Like we're gonna have a bad year, we're gonna take some lumps, we're gonna be a little bit better next year, you know, we'll have some victory that we can build on, and then hopefully, you know, year three, we're competing and you know, we're in the middle of it instead of close to the bottom.
27:13
SPEAKER_00: Right.
27:13
SPEAKER_00: I compare it to almost transitioning to the college game and catching up to the speed as a okay from RL to ECNL, and then it's like it's maybe a year and a half, two, yeah, two-year process of really getting comfortable and like, oh, this is the standard.
27:32
SPEAKER_00: Correct.
27:32
SPEAKER_00: And then girls finding out what their standard is and what they're capable of, and be like, okay, I have to live up to that standard now.
27:40
SPEAKER_00: Right.
27:40
SPEAKER_00: And it's a day in and day out, and it's 365, and it's different for us too, you know.
27:47
SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's different for us too.
27:48
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I'll say in the in the last three years before we came to East NL, we probably came out of a 4-3-3 once.
27:55
SPEAKER_00: And it was the last 20 minutes of the national championship game.
27:58
SPEAKER_00: We're holding on for dear life, it's 150 degrees, and we went to a 4-5-1.
28:02
SPEAKER_00: It's probably the only time we didn't play a 4-3-3 in three years, right?
28:07
SPEAKER_00: And you know, now we have to adjust.
28:09
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes we're adjusting at halftime, we're adjusting going into a game, you know, you don't, and we can see it as coaches, but the kids don't have the familiarity with that, so it's hard for them.
28:22
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and then there's a million questions.
28:23
SPEAKER_00: It's like, well, we're we're losing four nil right now, and we've got to try to figure out a way to answer this question because it matters, and being able to answer the next question because we're paying attention to what's going on, and not lose six nil.
28:34
SPEAKER_00: And so there's a lot of adjustment, even for us, in terms of, you know, I have a great staff, but trying to divide up the duties on game day and make sure that everybody's getting the attention they need, extra attention now, because it hasn't been easy, you know, it hasn't been easy, and it's been great because of that, but it's also really hard.
28:50
SPEAKER_00: It's a very different challenge.
28:52
SPEAKER_00: How is your staff doing with that transition?
28:56
SPEAKER_00: Is it uh more education?
28:59
SPEAKER_00: Is it more camaraderie amongst or more discussions amongst just talking soccer in here or wherever?
29:07
SPEAKER_00: Or did you have to did you seek um any outside coaching coaches in the area that that you're trying to recruit to Yeah?
29:19
SPEAKER_00: So I think you know, it's been discussion, it's been arguments, it's been frustration too at times.
29:24
SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's you know, it's not things are great when you're you know 100 oh and oh, goal differential again.
29:31
SPEAKER_00: We we had just over a thousand goal differential in the over those three years.
29:35
SPEAKER_00: So I mean it's hard all five age groups, six age groups, yeah.
29:39
SPEAKER_00: Six age groups.
29:40
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's a crazy amount of goals.
29:43
SPEAKER_00: We we have in the we have not scored that many goals this year.
29:48
SPEAKER_00: So it's been you know, it's been a little different.
29:50
SPEAKER_00: So interrupt.
29:51
SPEAKER_00: No, no, no, you're good, you're good.
29:53
SPEAKER_00: So so there's I mean again, we're we're we're figuring our way through the pressure as well.
29:57
SPEAKER_00: You know, again, there have been some there have been some tough days, there's been some frustration.
30:01
SPEAKER_00: Um but the staff is great, you know, we're just trying to figure things out, and sometimes we don't agree and you know we want to be heard, and so it's tough.
30:10
SPEAKER_00: Um, we need more staff.
30:11
SPEAKER_00: I mean, that's something that we definitely learned.
30:13
SPEAKER_00: So we're bringing in, you know, kind of our our pathway next year is we're gonna bring in a couple more coaches that will work with us on game day.
30:20
SPEAKER_00: Uh, we're bringing in an alumni, maybe my favorite alumni of all time, who's gonna do some video analysis for us.
30:25
SPEAKER_00: She's not gonna live in the area, but she's a she was a huge film nerd when she was here.
30:29
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and she could do so remotely.
30:30
SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
30:31
SPEAKER_00: She's gonna do film, she's gonna watch some film with kids, you know, help them figure some stuff out, which I think is just an awesome presence for us to add.
30:38
SPEAKER_00: So just trying to put some of those pieces into place, get some more eyes on it, um, take some pressure off of the people that are there every day and get some more opinions because I everybody's willing to listen.
30:50
SPEAKER_00: Everybody wants it to be great.
30:51
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you know, but again, I think there's some there's some things that are just gonna take some time.
30:55
SPEAKER_00: You can't get comfortable under fire until you're under fire.
30:59
SPEAKER_00: You know, there's no there's no training for that.
31:01
SPEAKER_00: So we have to be under fire every day.
31:04
SPEAKER_00: And we're working through it.
31:05
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
31:06
SPEAKER_00: How okay, how what are you offering the teams during the winter?
31:12
SPEAKER_00: Because obviously you're training in here uh throughout.
31:15
SPEAKER_00: Like, are you guys going three days a week, two days a week?
31:18
SPEAKER_00: What's what's that like?
31:19
SPEAKER_00: So we go two to three days a week.
31:20
SPEAKER_00: It in the winter time, it's harder to go three just because the amount of teams that we have in here.
31:24
SPEAKER_00: So again, a large club, one dough.
31:26
SPEAKER_00: So it's really hard to fit everybody in here.
31:28
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
31:28
SPEAKER_00: Um, but that's also kind of showcase season.
31:31
SPEAKER_00: So we get those third sessions when we can.
31:33
SPEAKER_00: We're doing film.
31:34
SPEAKER_00: We've actually partnered with Sagility, who they will come in and they'll do a session with the girls every week.
31:41
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
31:41
SPEAKER_00: Um, so that's a lot of times in our third session, we'll do Sagility and then film or something like that.
31:46
SPEAKER_00: Um, so we're trying to expand that into you know, adding some weightlifting.
31:52
SPEAKER_00: Um, because again, every time we get out of a car, you know, we're not built the same way that these kids are that we're playing against now.
31:59
SPEAKER_00: Because that's a part of their life, you know.
32:00
SPEAKER_00: I mean, again, our kids are we're in a strange place.
32:03
SPEAKER_00: Toledo is a strange place because other sports mean a lot here, high school soccer means a lot more.
32:08
SPEAKER_00: We kind of touched on that.
32:09
SPEAKER_00: So it's not, we don't have kids that are soccer seven days a week.
32:15
SPEAKER_01: Right.
32:16
SPEAKER_00: And that's our battle a little bit right now.
32:18
SPEAKER_00: And and we respect that and we honor that because that's something that we've always been committed to.
32:23
SPEAKER_00: But we're also trying to figure out a way to add some of this stuff without killing these kids.
32:29
SPEAKER_00: Because again, if you go from track practice to weightlifting to soccer practice, your head's gonna fall off.
32:33
SPEAKER_00: You're gonna be bad academically.
32:35
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
32:36
SPEAKER_00: So it's that's the hardest part for us, is like we know we need to catch up, but we also don't want to say, like, no, you can't do that anymore.
32:44
SPEAKER_00: And I know a lot of clubs do that, and those are the clubs that we're competing with.
32:46
SPEAKER_00: It's hard, but it's not what's right for us, and so that's the that's the challenge that we're facing.
32:52
SPEAKER_00: It's like what you know, what compromises are we willing to make?
32:55
SPEAKER_00: What compromises can we make?
32:57
SPEAKER_00: Right, and how do we help everybody meet their goals?
33:01
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
33:03
SPEAKER_00: So, okay, you were founded in 98, 99.
33:06
SPEAKER_00: 96, 96, and it's always been you, you've always been a part of it?
33:11
SPEAKER_00: Correct.
33:13
SPEAKER_00: I'm just trying to think, like building all the way up.
33:17
SPEAKER_00: How's the boys' side?
33:19
SPEAKER_00: Do you have a boy's side?
33:20
SPEAKER_00: We have a boys' side.
33:20
SPEAKER_00: So what are they playing in?
33:22
SPEAKER_00: They're in the R ECNL RL.
33:24
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
33:24
SPEAKER_00: Yep.
33:25
SPEAKER_00: Um, so we had uh we were all girls for a while.
33:29
SPEAKER_00: Then we slowly started to add boys.
33:32
SPEAKER_00: Then we decided we don't want to have any boys anymore.
33:34
SPEAKER_00: So TFA was formed with an employee of mine.
33:37
SPEAKER_00: Then we came to COVID, and my friend Paul Holgate, who was running TFA, it's kind of like I'm kind of done with this.
33:45
SPEAKER_00: I was a little bit worried that we were gonna shrink in size, you know, because you're thinking like some people aren't gonna come back out of their houses ever, was the rumor, right?
33:52
SPEAKER_00: So I was like, I'm from a business perspective, it might be time to add boys.
33:55
SPEAKER_00: So we decided to bring TFA in.
33:57
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
33:58
SPEAKER_00: We lost nobody, added the boys, and that's you know, there was an explosion.
34:02
SPEAKER_00: We went from probably 700 kids to a thousand kids that first year.
34:06
SPEAKER_00: Um, and the boys have been here since then, right?
34:08
SPEAKER_00: So do you think I think Dave Robinson said this?
34:12
SPEAKER_00: Because I was thinking, okay, if you think about like the Hawks Wolves, you know, split, and you know, everybody in the MLS next, and then everybody in the ECNL, it's like, why don't the girls just do this and then the boys do this, and then why don't we just have clubs that are girls only and boys only?
34:30
SPEAKER_00: But then I started thinking about the financials.
34:33
SPEAKER_00: Like, wait a minute.
34:36
SPEAKER_00: Most clubs don't make as much money as everybody thinks.
34:40
SPEAKER_00: Correct.
34:40
SPEAKER_00: And if you are girls only or boys only, that would be even less.
34:46
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
34:46
SPEAKER_00: And it's it's not financial, it's not smart business.
34:51
SPEAKER_00: As long as you I think as long as you do keep them separate within the same club, uh all systems go.
34:58
SPEAKER_00: You have to recognize the differences, right?
35:00
SPEAKER_00: I mean, they're very different games, there's different platforms.
35:02
SPEAKER_00: There's, I mean, the recruiting, you talked about recruiting earlier, right?
35:04
SPEAKER_00: Recruiting.
35:05
SPEAKER_00: Girls are being recruited when they're eighth grade freshmen.
35:08
SPEAKER_00: Boys don't get recruited until junior senior year.
35:11
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
35:12
SPEAKER_00: And we've got seniors that are still, you know, they're committing now.
35:15
SPEAKER_00: It's like exactly.
35:16
SPEAKER_00: Somebody somebody messaged me maybe yesterday.
35:19
SPEAKER_00: They're like, I think all MLS next, and this is coming from an MLS next coach.
35:24
SPEAKER_00: He goes, I don't think there should be a night U19 age bracket.
35:30
SPEAKER_00: Because and then they should all go play high school.
35:32
SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, wait a minute.
35:34
SPEAKER_00: If you do that seniors, uh senior season on the boys' side is when most get recruited.
35:41
SPEAKER_00: Right.
35:42
SPEAKER_00: Because they're not going to Duke and they're not going to Michigan.
35:45
SPEAKER_00: Those kids are going to the D2s, the D3s, the N AIAs.
35:49
SPEAKER_00: Right.
35:50
SPEAKER_00: So it's you can't well, you can't do that on the MLS next side, but yeah.
35:56
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
35:57
SPEAKER_00: You just have to recognize the differences.
35:58
SPEAKER_00: I mean, they've got to have different personnel, they've got to have different, you know, methods on how they're approaching things.
36:04
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I think that's the the key to a club having girls and boys.
36:07
SPEAKER_00: But you know, there was a lot of there's a lot of resources poured into the girls when we were just the girls program.
36:14
SPEAKER_00: And I think that's that helped us a lot.
36:16
SPEAKER_00: You know, now we're trying to figure a way to turn around.
36:18
SPEAKER_00: The boys are relatively new to us.
36:19
SPEAKER_00: So dumping those same resources into the boys, and now we're finding that we need, you know, new resources, different resources for the girls.
36:27
SPEAKER_00: So it's kind of you know, yeah, leapfrogging our way up the the soccer world.
36:32
SPEAKER_00: So are the boys in the Ohio Valley?
36:35
SPEAKER_00: Uh it's the it's the GLA.
36:37
SPEAKER_00: Oh, okay.
36:38
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's the GLA.
36:38
SPEAKER_00: So they play out you know, Cleveland.
36:40
SPEAKER_00: It's do they play Flash at all?
36:43
SPEAKER_00: Uh they do.
36:44
SPEAKER_00: I don't know if they're in our conference though.
36:46
SPEAKER_00: I don't got it.
36:47
SPEAKER_00: I don't tinker on that side of the club too often.
36:50
SPEAKER_00: So I let yeah, I let the pros do that.
36:52
SPEAKER_00: So I mean also another thing is this the decision making of ECNL versus um MLS Next.
37:04
SPEAKER_00: And when I hear a club that is MLS Next and GA and they go to ECNL, I think I immediately think that's a girls' club.
37:15
SPEAKER_00: Correct.
37:16
SPEAKER_00: That's a girls club that needs to focus on their girls because maybe they have more teams.
37:21
SPEAKER_00: Maybe they have 20 girls' teams and only 12 boys' teams.
37:25
SPEAKER_00: Well, what are you what are you going to lean towards?
37:30
SPEAKER_00: And then if I see somebody leaving the ECNL and going to MLS Next and GA, I immediately think boys' clubs.
37:38
SPEAKER_00: Right.
37:38
SPEAKER_00: And they have more boys' teams.
37:41
SPEAKER_00: Is that correct?
37:42
SPEAKER_00: Is that a correct line of thinking?
37:44
SPEAKER_00: I think that's the way most people think.
37:46
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
37:47
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I don't know.
37:48
SPEAKER_00: I haven't had enough experience with either the ECNL boys or MLS Next to really know that's the world.
37:54
SPEAKER_00: I think the ECNL definitely drives the girls.
37:57
SPEAKER_00: And I think that the standard right now is the MLS Next is driving the boys.
38:02
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
38:02
SPEAKER_00: Um I do believe that there's been a lot of growth with the ECNL on the boys' side because that used to be a very small sample size.
38:10
SPEAKER_00: So we're getting there.
38:12
SPEAKER_00: Um, and and I'm certainly happy with that platform for our boys right now.
38:16
SPEAKER_00: Right.
38:16
SPEAKER_00: You know, but I think MLS Next is the is the sexy platform for boys at the moment for sure.
38:22
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
38:22
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I was talking to uh Lewis Robinson, he's uh executive director at Midwest, and he was saying we were talking about this, we're talking about ECNL GA.
38:37
SPEAKER_00: And he's like, all of our girls get in front of the coaches that they need to get in front of.
38:43
SPEAKER_00: And so I think that's kind of the same with the boy.
38:49
SPEAKER_00: I guess that's kind of the same with the boys, but it's obviously a different animal on the girls' side.
38:54
SPEAKER_00: Right.
38:55
SPEAKER_00: But when we're talking about the ECNL and the ECNL RL, it's such a different animal because these events, like you said, you have you didn't see that many coaches in the previous five years before you even got into uh into the RL.
39:15
SPEAKER_00: That being said, when you're going okay, you talked about your senior class.
39:19
SPEAKER_00: Every single one is playing college, every single one's committed.
39:22
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, what is the radius from Toledo of the universities that your players are going to?
39:28
SPEAKER_00: That is a good question.
39:29
SPEAKER_00: I'm trying to think if there's anybody's, there's there's a there's a there is a Georgia in there.
39:35
SPEAKER_00: Um but I think that was a very warm weather, very driven to be in Georgia.
39:40
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
39:40
SPEAKER_00: Um, the vast majority is three hours.
39:45
SPEAKER_00: The vast majority.
39:46
SPEAKER_00: Right.
39:46
SPEAKER_00: I mean 99%.
39:48
SPEAKER_00: Um, I can't think of somebody other than um than our Georgia girl, to be honest with you.
39:55
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
39:55
SPEAKER_00: Everything's like maybe a little bit north, yeah, and then just in this three-hour radius.
40:00
SPEAKER_00: Yep.
40:01
SPEAKER_00: Do you think that's how it is at most clubs?
40:04
SPEAKER_00: I think I think the Hawks, and you get the Flash, but Flash has Flash has a radius around it where they get all the great talent.
40:12
SPEAKER_00: So that's why they have Alinda Olmark, who's now in the NWSL.
40:15
SPEAKER_00: That's why they have Rihanna, who was the uh the college cup player of the college cup, right?
40:22
SPEAKER_00: Right?
40:22
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so they get all this talent.
40:25
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
40:26
SPEAKER_00: Whereas when there's a a lot of clubs within a two-hour radius, most of those kids are going local colleges for the most part.
40:36
SPEAKER_00: Well, and I think I mean I think again, you've coached girls, like you know, like the comfort zone is I still want to be close enough to my I might not ever say this, but I want to be close enough to mom and dad just in case something goes down, right?
40:48
SPEAKER_00: I haven't a bad day, laundry, whatever.
40:51
SPEAKER_00: Like just want to go to the city.
40:52
SPEAKER_00: I've had kids I've had kids swear that are going to California.
40:55
SPEAKER_00: I'm going to California for college, I'm going to California for they're at Toledo, they're at Bowling Green.
41:00
SPEAKER_00: You know, it's like you couldn't have been further from California if you wanted to.
41:03
SPEAKER_00: So I think that's a very normal thing.
41:05
SPEAKER_00: I think I get it.
41:06
SPEAKER_00: Like, who wants to be that far away from family anyway?
41:09
SPEAKER_00: Right.
41:09
SPEAKER_00: You know, so I think the big, you know, there's clubs that have kids that are recruited by, you know, the top 10 schools in the country.
41:17
SPEAKER_00: And those kids, like, it's hard to turn down Stanford or UCLA if you're being recruited by them.
41:22
SPEAKER_00: There are probably kids that do it too, though, you know.
41:24
SPEAKER_00: But I think outside of those options, like, you know, there's a California option that's not UCLA.
41:30
SPEAKER_00: And then there's, you know, I can go to Ohio University.
41:35
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
41:35
SPEAKER_00: You know, and Ohio University makes more sense for me because I can see my parents or I can, you know, whatever.
41:42
SPEAKER_00: Do you know Aaron at all?
41:43
SPEAKER_00: Aaron Rodgers?
41:44
SPEAKER_00: Um, he is, he's he's actually the coach of the the girl that I told you is gonna be on film analyst, Ray Ann Pruss.
41:50
SPEAKER_00: Oh, okay.
41:50
SPEAKER_00: So he recruited her.
41:51
SPEAKER_00: I don't know him super well.
41:53
SPEAKER_00: I've talked to him a couple of times.
41:54
SPEAKER_00: If we DM back and forth all the time, he's you know, he's gonna be on the show eventually.
41:59
SPEAKER_00: But I mean, how many D1 schools are in Ohio?
42:03
SPEAKER_00: Do you know that number?
42:05
SPEAKER_00: I don't.
42:06
SPEAKER_00: Um, there's gotta be eight to ten trying to think.
42:12
SPEAKER_00: I'm I mean, there's a couple that I weren't weren't sure were D1 schools, might be even more than that.
42:17
SPEAKER_00: That's true.
42:18
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's Cleveland State's a D1 school, Wright State's a D1 school.
42:22
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
42:23
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you think you forget about like in Michigan, you forget about Oakland, you forget about University of Detroit.
42:29
SPEAKER_00: In in New York, you you everything is about University of Buffalo, right?
42:35
SPEAKER_00: You forget about Niagara being a D1, you forget about Kenetius being D1, right?
42:40
SPEAKER_00: You know, or Bonnie's, yeah.
42:42
SPEAKER_00: But yeah, I when you're okay, with the college recruiting process, you said it was all individual, or it or it's not a one size fits all.
42:54
SPEAKER_00: Correct.
42:55
SPEAKER_00: So a co-op can help, but it's it's so player focused.
43:01
SPEAKER_00: When how how do you educate parents or how do you educate the players?
43:05
SPEAKER_00: Like that's gotta be a constant.
43:08
SPEAKER_00: It's it's it's it's a year-round, that's a year-round job.
43:11
SPEAKER_00: Like even if the kids aren't in the building, there's a lot of that going on, right?
43:14
SPEAKER_00: Because every every college coach does it a different way, right?
43:17
SPEAKER_00: Some coaches offer a bunch of kids and say, you know, whoever takes these offers first, you get them.
43:22
SPEAKER_00: Some coaches won't offer until you've been on campus.
43:25
SPEAKER_00: You know, some coaches want to talk to the coach before they talk to the player.
43:28
SPEAKER_00: So it's a very strange, uh, it's strange just how many people are involved in it, how different it is for every person in every journey.
43:36
SPEAKER_00: Right.
43:37
SPEAKER_00: Um, some kids will email 50 schools, some kids will email three schools.
43:42
SPEAKER_00: You know, so it's just it's it's really hard to walk through a process, you know.
43:48
SPEAKER_00: So we give you some general parameters like make sure you're picking a school that you want to be at if soccer doesn't work out.
43:53
SPEAKER_00: That's our most important thing.
43:55
SPEAKER_00: So, you know, radius, does it have a Greek system if you want to be in a sorority?
44:00
SPEAKER_00: You know, is it in a big city?
44:01
SPEAKER_00: Is it near a big city?
44:03
SPEAKER_00: You know, whatever.
44:04
SPEAKER_00: You know, I mean, all those does it have your major, that's the biggest one.
44:07
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
44:07
SPEAKER_00: You know, got a couple kids that have gone to school.
44:08
SPEAKER_00: It's like, oh, I got a full ride to wherever.
44:11
SPEAKER_00: They're like, you want it to be a vet, they don't have a vet school.
44:14
SPEAKER_00: Right.
44:14
SPEAKER_00: It's like, uh, transferring, you know, it's immediate.
44:18
SPEAKER_00: So it's really hard.
44:20
SPEAKER_00: So you try to give them some, you know, general parameters, and then it's, you know, you give them the tools to explore the college world, send the emails out, contact coaches, have some conversations.
44:35
SPEAKER_00: People get front, you know, send, I sent 50 emails out, nobody wrote me back.
44:39
SPEAKER_00: You're a freshman, they're not allowed to write you back.
44:42
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
44:42
SPEAKER_00: We've told you that, but it's still that panic, right?
44:45
SPEAKER_00: Like, why am I not hearing anything right away?
44:47
SPEAKER_00: We go to our first showcase, we're freshmen.
44:49
SPEAKER_00: You know, there's not a ton of there's not a ton of schools that are out there recruiting freshmen right now.
44:54
SPEAKER_00: There's an elite group of schools that's recruiting freshmen.
44:57
SPEAKER_00: Do you ever wonder why they have showcases then at that level?
45:02
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I know why they have showcases at that level, which is somebody's making a lot of money off of those showcases, right?
45:08
SPEAKER_00: Like that's not my dad told me that when I was a kid.
45:11
SPEAKER_00: If it doesn't make sense, it's probably somebody making money off of it.
45:14
SPEAKER_00: Um, I think the showcases are valuable for the younger kids because they learn how to travel, they learn how to compete.
45:22
SPEAKER_00: You know, it's it's hard to justify it with the freshman.
45:24
SPEAKER_00: We've had a couple come to us this year and say, hey, you know, like the money's not there right now.
45:28
SPEAKER_00: Is this super important?
45:30
SPEAKER_00: It's not super important, it's important because you learn right how to compete at the comfort zone here.
45:37
SPEAKER_00: Or you might not be having the coaches at your field, but you're walking by the U17 field with uh the a hundred coaches on you're like, whoa, this is a different level.
45:49
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and this is where we're headed.
45:50
SPEAKER_00: Yep.
45:51
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
45:51
SPEAKER_00: And you you see that, I mean, you know, back in the day, you'd see Anson Dorrance at the showcase, and you'd be sitting sitting on somebody's bench talking to the one kid that he was recruiting.
45:59
SPEAKER_00: You know, it's like people knew who he was.
46:01
SPEAKER_00: Like there's coaches out there that people recognize.
46:03
SPEAKER_00: And so, yeah, I mean, I think the experience is valuable, um, but it's not as valuable as you know, at that level, as it's valuable for the top 25 kids in the country.
46:15
SPEAKER_00: That's a I'm glad, I'm glad we we touched on that because that's a question that I get.
46:20
SPEAKER_00: It's like, why are we going to this when we're can't even be recruited yet?
46:24
SPEAKER_00: It's like you're learnt, but you're still learning and you're out of your comfort zone, and you might play teams that are there's still national team staff that you might be playing against somebody that's like being scouted.
46:38
SPEAKER_00: It's like, you know, there's tons of reasons.
46:40
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, absolutely.
46:41
SPEAKER_00: Tons of positives.
46:42
SPEAKER_00: And we have kids that haven't flown before, you know.
46:45
SPEAKER_00: So to get on a plane that first time, it's true, and then parents who haven't flown, trying to figure out the airport and the run, like uh work out the case, and it's good for that for sure.
46:54
SPEAKER_00: How is your travel?
46:55
SPEAKER_00: Like just just talking Ohio Valley.
46:59
SPEAKER_00: I mean, you go to Tennessee, you go to Flash, which is what four hours maybe from here.
47:05
SPEAKER_00: Flash might be four or five.
47:07
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
47:07
SPEAKER_00: Riverhounds is three and a half.
47:09
SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah.
47:09
SPEAKER_00: I forget.
47:10
SPEAKER_00: I have to River Hounds.
47:11
SPEAKER_00: I think the drive between River Hounds and Flash is worse than the drive to Flash, or the same.
47:16
SPEAKER_00: It's weird because it's like four, yeah, you're right.
47:19
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
47:19
SPEAKER_00: Because it's four hours to each.
47:22
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
47:22
SPEAKER_00: But then it's four hours from then.
47:25
SPEAKER_00: It's like a perfect triangle.
47:26
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
47:27
SPEAKER_00: So, I mean, how how was that a culture shock for some of your parents?
47:33
SPEAKER_00: No, because we'd already been doing the showcases.
47:36
SPEAKER_00: So we'd already been doing, and we had, I mean, we've been blessed because, and I go back to Ralph, who had Ralph Richards who've been great to us.
47:42
SPEAKER_00: He got us into ECNL showcases.
47:44
SPEAKER_00: He put us in events where we were playing against full ECNL teams.
47:47
SPEAKER_00: Even when you were when we were in the RL.
47:49
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
47:50
SPEAKER_00: But not before you were in the RL.
47:51
SPEAKER_00: Not before, not before.
47:52
SPEAKER_00: But those three years, he was he was promoting us the whole time.
47:56
SPEAKER_00: He's like, go here and speak ECNL teams.
47:58
SPEAKER_00: So we go and we beat ECNL teams.
47:59
SPEAKER_00: We won more ECNL teams at those showcases than we have this first year.
48:03
SPEAKER_00: Did that help?
48:04
SPEAKER_00: Did that help you get promoted?
48:07
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it was certainly part of the resume.
48:08
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it was certainly part of the resume for sure.
48:10
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
48:10
SPEAKER_00: Again, I mean, you're not you're not playing, you know, San Diego Surf.
48:14
SPEAKER_00: You're playing, you know, somebody that's at the bottom of their conference.
48:16
SPEAKER_01: But that's fine.
48:17
SPEAKER_00: You know, it's still not the level that we're at, it's the level we want to be at.
48:20
SPEAKER_00: So we did those events, you know, we did that travel.
48:23
SPEAKER_00: We didn't have to travel for league games like that.
48:27
SPEAKER_00: Um, but Tennessee is the only real shock.
48:30
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I think you know, four hours is not a huge stretch.
48:32
SPEAKER_00: We do Indianapolis all the time.
48:34
SPEAKER_00: That's easy.
48:35
SPEAKER_00: Everything else is really easy.
48:37
SPEAKER_00: What is Indianapolis to Buffalo?
48:39
SPEAKER_00: Because FC Pride is right, yeah.
48:41
SPEAKER_00: FC Pride didn't eleven.
48:43
SPEAKER_00: They almost have to fly.
48:44
SPEAKER_00: I would imagine.
48:45
SPEAKER_00: I would imagine.
48:46
SPEAKER_00: Well, think, I mean, yeah, even like uh Cincinnati, Racing Louisville, or you know, I mean, racing Louisville's gotta be a hike.
48:53
SPEAKER_00: It's it's right across the river, but it's you know, or Highway League.
48:56
SPEAKER_00: Those are all hikes.
48:57
SPEAKER_00: Does anybody down here do any uh college showcases that are just like the Ohio teams?
49:02
SPEAKER_00: Because Michigan Jaguars does one in this uh what was it, February?
49:07
SPEAKER_00: In February, and it's three fields all indoor, and it had FC Pride and Hawks and Nationals didn't come, but we were up, we were up there.
49:17
SPEAKER_00: You were up there?
49:18
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we were up there.
49:18
SPEAKER_00: We go to Jag Showcase, yeah.
49:19
SPEAKER_00: Oh, okay.
49:20
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so you oh they have a great showcase.
49:22
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's another it's just nice, and it's nice for coaches because they can hit three fields.
49:26
SPEAKER_00: It's not going out to Arizona and 24 fields or IMG.
49:30
SPEAKER_00: You guys were there this year?
49:31
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we've been there the last two or three years.
49:33
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, good.
49:34
SPEAKER_00: Good.
49:34
SPEAKER_00: Do you know Doug?
49:35
SPEAKER_00: Doug Steiner.
49:36
SPEAKER_00: I don't, but my director of coaching does.
49:38
SPEAKER_00: Got it.
49:38
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
49:39
SPEAKER_00: So talk about that.
49:40
SPEAKER_00: Talk about your your club setup.
49:42
SPEAKER_00: So you're the executive director that has been here since 96.
49:46
SPEAKER_00: Yep.
49:47
SPEAKER_00: 96?
49:48
SPEAKER_00: 96, yep.
49:49
SPEAKER_00: And then like how how did that whole morph go?
49:53
SPEAKER_00: Because do you remember the days where it was just you and you were the director of coaching and you saw the boys and the girls of most clubs?
50:03
SPEAKER_00: And now every club has an executive director, and then every and then there's director for the boys, director for the girls.
50:11
SPEAKER_00: There might be a coaching or a coaching education coordinator or a college.
50:16
SPEAKER_00: Like, yeah, talk about that whole process.
50:19
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I remember how you guys are set up now.
50:21
SPEAKER_00: I remember doing all the registration.
50:22
SPEAKER_00: I remember handing out uniforms from the trunk of my car at tournaments.
50:25
SPEAKER_00: I mean, doing everything.
50:27
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, back in the day.
50:28
SPEAKER_00: I don't know how I don't know how we've come to this from that because that was trying to find out.
50:34
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so this is impressive.
50:36
SPEAKER_00: So um there was a period of time, and I've had I've had a handful of coaches, I call them the OG, where they've been here for 20 years.
50:42
SPEAKER_00: You know, they've been around forever.
50:45
SPEAKER_00: So they get.
50:52
SPEAKER_00: It was a good friend of mine running the club with me, and he wound up starting his own club.
50:56
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
50:56
SPEAKER_00: Um, that was the year after Paul went with TF, created TFA, and started the boys side.
51:02
SPEAKER_00: So we had become all girls, and then he started his own club, and a large part of our girls went there.
51:08
SPEAKER_00: That was probably 12 years ago now, 10 years ago now.
51:11
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
51:11
SPEAKER_00: So we were we got real small again.
51:13
SPEAKER_00: We were big and then we got real small.
51:15
SPEAKER_00: Um, and then we've kind of grown from there.
51:17
SPEAKER_00: And when that when that happened, in my mind, we needed to have a little bit more division of power, a little bit more, rather than having two people doing everything, have smaller pockets, make it a little bit easier to kind of manage some people.
51:30
SPEAKER_00: So that's when my staff started to get bigger and diversify.
51:34
SPEAKER_00: Um, Michael Albert, who's my director of coaching for the entire club, he's been with me for I think eight years now.
51:40
SPEAKER_00: It was a couple years before COVID.
51:42
SPEAKER_00: He managed, he he does all the soccer stuff, he handles all the soccer stuff.
51:46
SPEAKER_00: Uh then we have a girls director of coaching who's Josh Dickinson, um, who does all of our ECNL teams.
51:53
SPEAKER_00: Uh, and the boys director of coaching is Ross Brown.
51:56
SPEAKER_00: Okay, and then we have our uh our like pre-ECNL directors, that that kind of age, uh, which that's where Michael Albert, he also coaches those girls.
52:05
SPEAKER_00: Uh Roland Gibson coaches the boys.
52:07
SPEAKER_00: We have an RL director for the girls.
52:09
SPEAKER_00: Um, so now we have things a little bit more compartmentalized so that it's a little easier for each of those.
52:15
SPEAKER_00: It's just changed so much, right?
52:17
SPEAKER_00: Like the ECNL girls just need different things than the pre-ECNL boys need or the 4v4 teams need.
52:23
SPEAKER_00: So just having people that understand that dynamic and can respond to questions, concerns, whatever, just makes more sense.
52:30
SPEAKER_00: Right.
52:30
SPEAKER_00: So everybody's in kind of their own little area, and then there's, you know, obviously there's coaches below all that that each program is kind of run its own way.
52:38
SPEAKER_00: You know, Ross will run the boys' program how he sees fit, Josh will run the girls' pro program how he sees fit.
52:44
SPEAKER_00: Right.
52:44
SPEAKER_00: You know, I still kind of have my hand in that, so I'm watching that and helping him through it, answering questions for him.
52:51
SPEAKER_00: But that's kind of you know, it's a different bird even than the RL because it's more traveling.
52:56
SPEAKER_00: How about uh how about your affiliates with uh Lima?
53:00
SPEAKER_00: Yep.
53:01
SPEAKER_00: And what was the other one?
53:02
SPEAKER_00: Lima, Finley, and then uh Springfield Township.
53:06
SPEAKER_00: So uh what do they or what do you provide them?
53:12
SPEAKER_00: So we we bring them our curriculum, yep.
53:15
SPEAKER_00: We bring them uh coaching education.
53:18
SPEAKER_00: So we'll go down and we'll run training sessions or we'll run uh coaching education courses for them.
53:23
SPEAKER_00: Yep.
53:24
SPEAKER_00: Um, and then there's that obviously that pathway for those kids to come up here.
53:27
SPEAKER_00: Yep, and and then if those kids do come up here, how far is Finlay?
53:32
SPEAKER_00: Finley's 30 minutes.
53:33
SPEAKER_00: Okay, how far you refer to this?
53:36
SPEAKER_00: Lima's about an hour.
53:37
SPEAKER_00: Do you ever have kids that like, okay, they don't have to come up here every day three times a week, and then you can train with a Lima team down there?
53:45
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we even do that in Finley.
53:46
SPEAKER_00: We even do that in Finley.
53:48
SPEAKER_00: You can like, you know, younger kids, I mean, they're getting they're getting the same training.
53:52
SPEAKER_00: Sure.
53:52
SPEAKER_00: So you can stay there, you can come up once a week, train there twice a week.
53:55
SPEAKER_00: That's a lot of times how the transition happens.
53:57
SPEAKER_00: Got it.
53:57
SPEAKER_00: Just come up once a week and make sure that it's right for you.
53:59
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
54:00
SPEAKER_00: Because that's a big commitment to make if you hate it.
54:03
SPEAKER_00: Because I mean, I one of the one of the most common questions is okay, what do I do for my girl that's a high-level girl, but we're live in the middle of nowhere.
54:14
SPEAKER_00: And it's like it's tough.
54:16
SPEAKER_00: It's tough.
54:16
SPEAKER_00: You gotta reach out, you gotta hope that a club will uh allow guest players or anything like that.
54:22
SPEAKER_00: But I have one Hey guys, thanks for watching this episode of the I Hate Soccer podcast.
54:29
SPEAKER_00: If you feel stuck in your recruiting process, we created a guide that includes feedback from 15 college coaches and 10 current college soccer players.
54:39
SPEAKER_00: Inside this guide, you'll find out what really works in recruiting from showcases, ID camps, highlight reels, and more.
54:47
SPEAKER_00: Check it out at playmakertraining.com slash recruited.
54:51
SPEAKER_00: This episode is brought to you by Salt Athletic.
54:53
SPEAKER_00: A couple weeks ago, I'm training one of my college players.
54:56
SPEAKER_00: Uh, she plays at Kentucky.
54:58
SPEAKER_00: I noticed that she has uh one of these salt bags.
55:01
SPEAKER_00: Uh, I see them on social media all the time, and I was wondering, I was like, okay, does this thing really work?
55:07
SPEAKER_00: Well, she opened up her bag and pulled her cleats out, and it was the worst smelling pair of cleats, maybe that I've ever smelled.
55:16
SPEAKER_00: While they were in the bag, I didn't smell anything.
55:20
SPEAKER_00: And it was amazing that it could trap in all of the smell so that her bag doesn't stink, that her car doesn't stink.
55:30
SPEAKER_00: I could not vouch for this product more.
55:33
SPEAKER_00: As a goalkeeper, I wish I had this 20 years ago to for my gloves, and they do have a glove bag.
55:39
SPEAKER_00: Go to the link in the description for 10% off and get rid of all the smell, guys.
55:46
SPEAKER_00: Nationals have a girl from Sault Ste.
55:48
SPEAKER_00: Marie in the in the UP.
55:50
SPEAKER_00: It's like five hours away.
55:52
SPEAKER_00: Midwest United has a girl in Traver City that's two hours away.
55:56
SPEAKER_01: Right.
55:57
SPEAKER_00: And then the best one was Phoenix Rising in Arizona, has a boy from Alaska.
56:04
SPEAKER_00: They they fly down, they live, and they do all homeschool, so everything is online, and then he stays with the family down there.
56:15
SPEAKER_00: It's just crazy.
56:17
SPEAKER_00: Wild crazy, you know, and think about all the programs that he flies over on the way to Phoenix, right?
56:23
SPEAKER_00: Like there's probably a shorter flight involved somewhere.
56:27
SPEAKER_00: Right?
56:27
SPEAKER_00: I mean, come on.
56:29
SPEAKER_00: Isn't that nuts?
56:30
SPEAKER_00: It is crazy.
56:31
SPEAKER_00: We have a we so this is this is this is when we got promoted.
56:35
SPEAKER_00: We got promoted, we found out in April that we were being promoted.
56:38
SPEAKER_00: And so we do our we do the OP friendlies every year.
56:41
SPEAKER_00: So we go play Ohio premiere, yeah, and it's usually Cup or Nationals is down there, uh, Hawks has been down there, internationals comes down.
56:48
SPEAKER_00: So it's it's OP in somebody that we play those games, and we get to match up against their full ECNL teams.
56:54
SPEAKER_00: And so strangely, they they own their complex.
56:58
SPEAKER_00: They they own a house that's on that complex.
57:01
SPEAKER_00: So they were having food for the coaches, and you come in and eat some food.
57:04
SPEAKER_00: So Flash, Flash has a house.
57:05
SPEAKER_00: It's crazy.
57:06
SPEAKER_00: What like that's just um who needs a house as a side, whatever.
57:09
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I asked that question.
57:11
SPEAKER_00: But um, so we're in there, we're eating, and I'm sitting next to Willie who's who runs OP, and I'm saying, hey, explain like this discovery player thing to me, because I'm just trying to figure out like how to keep up with the Joneses here.
57:24
SPEAKER_00: How can I get some kids to come in and help us?
57:26
SPEAKER_00: And I start hearing stories, and there's four four or five other coaches from different places around the table.
57:32
SPEAKER_00: So I don't even, I'm not even sure who everybody was.
57:34
SPEAKER_00: There's literally a kid from Columbus that flies to Texas to play for solo in Texas.
57:43
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and it's like they fly down for practices, they have a have a family plane and they fly.
57:50
SPEAKER_00: I'm like, what on earth?
57:51
SPEAKER_00: The kids never played in Columbus.
57:53
SPEAKER_00: I don't think she's ever played Columbus.
57:54
SPEAKER_00: She played for somebody else.
57:55
SPEAKER_00: And there's a there's a a keeper from a club up in Michigan who showed remain nameless, but she was playing for them.
58:02
SPEAKER_00: She's she lives here now.
58:04
SPEAKER_00: She actually lives in this area.
58:05
SPEAKER_00: Um she's played for that club, but she came from the East Coast, and she was playing goalkeeper for them from the East Coast in Boston.
58:13
SPEAKER_00: It's like, I don't like wild.
58:16
SPEAKER_00: You gotta, there's gotta be another like how's that fun for somebody?
58:21
SPEAKER_00: I I had somebody on yesterday, I forget what club she's with in Michigan, but she goes and guests plays for the slammers.
58:28
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
58:28
SPEAKER_00: In California.
58:29
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's like, what are we doing?
58:31
SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
58:32
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I don't I'd be interested to hear like what they really get out of that, like what they think that provides.
58:37
SPEAKER_00: Because I mean, again, like it's hard to beat.
58:39
SPEAKER_00: Like the Hawks, everybody that the Hawks have on their roster gets recruited by somebody, right?
58:45
SPEAKER_00: They're all they're all playing somewhere, they're all probably playing where they want to play for the most part.
58:49
SPEAKER_00: So why do you have to go to California?
58:51
SPEAKER_00: Like, I don't I just don't understand the commitment.
58:54
SPEAKER_00: And it's almost it's almost to the point with the clubs like that.
58:58
SPEAKER_00: It's like, why are you even going to some of these showcases, right?
59:03
SPEAKER_00: Because they get North Carolina to come to their games or or to come to Michigan for their little like friendlies training facility, yeah, whatever.
59:15
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, of course.
59:16
SPEAKER_00: I mean, when I was here watching The Flash, Toledo was here.
59:19
SPEAKER_00: You know, uh how much does bowling green come around?
59:21
SPEAKER_00: I'm sure all the time, yeah.
59:22
SPEAKER_00: They were probably here that weekend at some point, yeah.
59:25
SPEAKER_00: And I mean, how many of it, how much of that is they're coming to see your girls, but they're also coming to see the talent from the other parts too, right?
59:35
SPEAKER_00: Sure.
59:36
SPEAKER_00: You know, making sure that no stone is unturned and whatnot.
59:38
SPEAKER_00: I think that that weekend you were out here.
59:41
SPEAKER_00: Um we've had we've had probably 10 to 15 coaches in the building every weekend that we've had games.
59:46
SPEAKER_00: I love it.
59:46
SPEAKER_00: That's up.
59:47
SPEAKER_00: That was not the way it was last year.
59:49
SPEAKER_00: Bowling Green and Toledo are always around.
59:51
SPEAKER_00: Finley's always around, which is a D2 school right down the right down the was it like that when you were just RL?
59:58
SPEAKER_00: No, not not to that level.
59:59
SPEAKER_00: And then before RL, any at all?
1:00:02
SPEAKER_00: No.
1:00:03
SPEAKER_00: We get division three schools that pop in, yeah.
1:00:07
SPEAKER_00: And just to see this growth and just and then 15 coaches, 10 to 15 coaches every year.
1:00:15
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:00:16
SPEAKER_00: The strangest thing to me is I don't feel like our players are all that different, you know.
1:00:20
SPEAKER_00: Like I think we've had the same kids for a really long time.
1:00:22
SPEAKER_00: You have the top of the top, and then there's like, and I'm not even gonna say bottom of the bottom because there isn't really a bottom of the bottom of the ECNL.
1:00:32
SPEAKER_00: I mean, sure, every team has their top and bottom, but as a whole, you're right.
1:00:41
SPEAKER_00: Okay, you got the top one percenters that are going to North Carolina and Florida State and whatnot, but then everybody else is mid-major, maybe D2, high-level D2, you know?
1:00:52
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:00:52
SPEAKER_00: I mean, do you have any D2 girls go into uh from your senior class?
1:00:58
SPEAKER_00: Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah.
1:01:00
SPEAKER_00: We have a good actually, so Finley.
1:01:02
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, Finley's always been so good.
1:01:03
SPEAKER_00: And Finley's head coach is an alumni of the club.
1:01:05
SPEAKER_00: Oh she played for me.
1:01:07
SPEAKER_00: Great.
1:01:07
SPEAKER_00: Um, so she loves our club culture, and she she goes and gets you know three or four kids every year.
1:01:13
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:01:13
SPEAKER_00: So which has been good for them.
1:01:15
SPEAKER_00: So yeah.
1:01:15
SPEAKER_00: How about Toledo or uh bowling green?
1:01:17
SPEAKER_00: Anyway, we have a couple kids in Toledo.
1:01:19
SPEAKER_00: We have a kid committed to bowling green.
1:01:20
SPEAKER_00: Love it.
1:01:21
SPEAKER_00: Um, that will be she's actually graduating early, so this is the first time I've we have two kids that are graduating early this year.
1:01:26
SPEAKER_00: Going to bowling green.
1:01:27
SPEAKER_00: One's going to bowling green, one's going to Houston.
1:01:30
SPEAKER_00: Um, she came to us via Florida, so she we've only had her for a year.
1:01:34
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
1:01:34
SPEAKER_00: Um, so I can't claim that one, but but so those kids are graduating after their fall high school season than they're going to to college.
1:01:43
SPEAKER_00: So that's apparently a new thing now.
1:01:44
SPEAKER_00: I'm starting to see that a lot more at the mid-majors.
1:01:47
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:01:47
SPEAKER_00: UB, the University of Buffalo just had one.
1:01:50
SPEAKER_00: And it's like, okay, I'm used to that at Nebraska or Florida State or something like that, but not mid-majors.
1:01:57
SPEAKER_00: And mid-majors, some of these schools have money now, right?
1:02:00
SPEAKER_00: They they're having that they're in on that NIL.
1:02:03
SPEAKER_00: It's all based on your athletic director and how much they care about that sport.
1:02:07
SPEAKER_00: But some of these mid-majors, they're given money on top of scholarship, and it's like, it's crazy.
1:02:15
SPEAKER_00: I mean, how so we were talking uh the reason why I started the process the podcast was to learn more from my players about their college recruiting process.
1:02:28
SPEAKER_00: Did you ever have to go through a thing where it's like I need to learn more about this or more about college recruiting or more about developing coaches or anything like that throughout your career?
1:02:40
SPEAKER_00: Oh god, I mean, I think all of it.
1:02:42
SPEAKER_00: All of it.
1:02:42
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:02:43
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I were always learning.
1:02:44
SPEAKER_00: I started when I was in my early 20s, is when the club was started.
1:02:48
SPEAKER_00: So I was coaching a little bit before that.
1:02:50
SPEAKER_00: Um I came out of high school, I went to Miami University.
1:02:54
SPEAKER_00: I didn't have a great experience, I didn't have a great experience in the classroom at Miami University, so I came home.
1:03:00
SPEAKER_00: It's a really hard school.
1:03:02
SPEAKER_00: Well, it it's easier if you go to class, which was not my wheelhouse at the time.
1:03:07
SPEAKER_00: So yeah, I mean, I wouldn't know, to be honest with you.
1:03:10
SPEAKER_00: Um, I came home and you know, got my life together a little bit, but that's when I started coaching for my old club, which was the Celtics, um, and kind of moved on from that and started my own thing.
1:03:20
SPEAKER_00: Celtics didn't really offer a great platform for the girls, and I had started to coach a couple girls' teams.
1:03:25
SPEAKER_00: I was like, I kind of like this, so let's let's go this route.
1:03:29
SPEAKER_00: Um, and that's where GTFC really kind of came to be.
1:03:33
SPEAKER_00: Um, but yeah, I mean, I can't think of a single thing that I didn't have to buckle down and learn.
1:03:39
SPEAKER_00: Very little of it comes naturally.
1:03:40
SPEAKER_00: I think my can my ability to communicate with people is probably the one skill they have, and I have great lungs.
1:03:45
SPEAKER_00: Like I can yell really loudly over a tremendous distance.
1:03:48
SPEAKER_00: But everything else, man, I mean, and it changes so much, you know.
1:03:52
SPEAKER_00: The game changes, the rules change, recruiting has changed so much over the years.
1:03:57
SPEAKER_00: I mean, now we're down to you know, now we have roster limits instead of walk-ons and all of it.
1:04:02
SPEAKER_00: It's just the walk on is crazy.
1:04:04
SPEAKER_00: Crazy, yeah.
1:04:05
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's all but gone.
1:04:06
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it sucks.
1:04:08
SPEAKER_00: It's a very different world than it was, you know, 30, obviously 30 years ago.
1:04:12
SPEAKER_00: It's a different world than it was five years ago.
1:04:14
SPEAKER_00: Right.
1:04:14
SPEAKER_00: I mean, how much of COVID changed?
1:04:16
SPEAKER_00: So yeah.
1:04:18
SPEAKER_00: How how does how do you recruit your staff and how do you educate your staff in terms of all of that?
1:04:31
SPEAKER_00: And and like it's almost like don't be set in your ways, right?
1:04:35
SPEAKER_00: You always have to be versatile and you always have to be adaptable because, like you said, every it's always changing.
1:04:43
SPEAKER_00: Right.
1:04:44
SPEAKER_00: That's tough.
1:04:45
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I don't think everybody has that quality.
1:04:47
SPEAKER_00: I think that's a that's maybe a personality trait, or you know, I mean, I don't know how learned learning is, you know.
1:04:54
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:04:56
SPEAKER_00: That's the right way to say that.
1:04:57
SPEAKER_00: But you know, I have some I have some coaches that are really hard to get to change their opinion on anything because this has worked.
1:05:04
SPEAKER_00: This is how they're or this is what I believe, you know.
1:05:07
SPEAKER_00: And I mean, I'm very dug in on my beliefs, so I understand that to a degree, but you know, the people that do the most understand how the world has changed, you know, and I mean, even you know, we used to never travel with our young kids.
1:05:20
SPEAKER_00: Now we have pre-ECNLs.
1:05:22
SPEAKER_00: Now we're traveling all over the place.
1:05:23
SPEAKER_00: We're going to Utah with our pre-ECNL teams.
1:05:26
SPEAKER_00: What?
1:05:26
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:05:27
SPEAKER_00: We got two teams that earn the the pre-ECNL World Championship.
1:05:31
SPEAKER_00: Or yeah, they're going to they're going to Utah.
1:05:33
SPEAKER_00: We got two teams going that won their league, and this was something that was offered to them.
1:05:38
SPEAKER_00: Like, ah, it's so exciting.
1:05:39
SPEAKER_00: I'm like, you're not gonna think that in three years.
1:05:40
SPEAKER_00: In three years, you're gonna have traveled all over Earth.
1:05:45
SPEAKER_00: But it's cool.
1:05:46
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I've never been to Utah, so I'd like to go, but I'm not invited.
1:05:50
SPEAKER_00: But it's just, I mean, you would never invited.
1:05:52
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:05:52
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I guess I could go if I wanted to.
1:05:54
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I could go.
1:05:55
SPEAKER_00: I could go.
1:05:56
SPEAKER_00: So, I mean, it's stuff like that was never a thing when.
1:06:00
SPEAKER_00: You know, 10 years ago.
1:06:01
SPEAKER_00: I mean, you know, we would we could go to Dayton and Cincinnati and Indianapolis and have all the competition we could handle.
1:06:06
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:06:07
SPEAKER_00: But I do think that, you know, you're starting to find more and more of these elite groups of kids are starting to combine.
1:06:13
SPEAKER_00: And now where do they go to compete?
1:06:15
SPEAKER_00: You know, so maybe that's I don't know, maybe that's hurt us a little bit too.
1:06:19
SPEAKER_00: You know, you put the best 14 kids together in an area, they have to go to some other area to compete.
1:06:26
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:06:26
SPEAKER_00: I get that.
1:06:28
SPEAKER_00: But I don't know if that's great for the kids.
1:06:32
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and everybody says, well, why don't you just play local?
1:06:35
SPEAKER_00: It's like guys, when I got to when I got to Flash, I'm the very first game I watched it was a U-12 girls team.
1:06:45
SPEAKER_00: It's like the O3s.
1:06:47
SPEAKER_00: And that was a really good group at Flash.
1:06:51
SPEAKER_00: And I'm watching, and I'm like, man, the size of the other team is huge.
1:06:55
SPEAKER_00: Like, what is going on?
1:06:58
SPEAKER_00: Turns out they're playing like U15.
1:07:01
SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, wait a minute, where am I?
1:07:03
SPEAKER_00: Why are why is it 12 girls of why are 12-year-olds playing against 15?
1:07:07
SPEAKER_00: Right.
1:07:08
SPEAKER_00: And the 12-year-olds beat the 15-year-olds like 7-0.
1:07:11
SPEAKER_00: Right.
1:07:11
SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, oh god.
1:07:13
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:07:14
SPEAKER_00: Either that team is the best team that I've ever seen, and I'm coming from Michigan.
1:07:17
SPEAKER_00: I'm thinking Hawks, and I'm thinking, you know, and I've been around really high-level players.
1:07:22
SPEAKER_00: I'm like, either that's the best team that I have ever seen, or we've got a problem.
1:07:28
SPEAKER_00: Yep.
1:07:28
SPEAKER_00: And 12-year-olds have to play against 15-year-olds to get to get a competitive game.
1:07:33
SPEAKER_00: Right.
1:07:33
SPEAKER_00: And that's how it is a lot of times.
1:07:35
SPEAKER_00: And people are like, well, why don't we just play local?
1:07:38
SPEAKER_00: Because games would be 15 to nothing.
1:07:41
SPEAKER_00: Right.
1:07:42
SPEAKER_00: A lot of these games are not competitive if it's just local.
1:07:45
SPEAKER_00: Right.
1:07:46
SPEAKER_00: And it's it's just frustrating.
1:07:48
SPEAKER_00: It's like we have to be national.
1:07:50
SPEAKER_00: If you we want to have all the top players have meaningful games, it has to be national.
1:07:57
SPEAKER_00: Because there's not that many high levels.
1:07:59
SPEAKER_00: But then people that don't know the ECNL or they don't know the MLS next, they don't realize that there's levels to this.
1:08:07
SPEAKER_00: Correct.
1:08:08
SPEAKER_00: There's layers.
1:08:08
SPEAKER_00: And you guys are going through that right now.
1:08:10
SPEAKER_00: It's like, you know, we're we're smashing teams in the RL.
1:08:13
SPEAKER_00: Right.
1:08:14
SPEAKER_00: But then when we get into the ECNL, that's a different layer.
1:08:17
SPEAKER_01: Right.
1:08:18
SPEAKER_00: And it's it's so that's another good thing about this podcast is that I've been able to talk to people like you that can really show, like, guys, you're listening to this and I don't know, in the middle of nowhere in North Dakota, right?
1:08:34
SPEAKER_00: And you're upset about the ECNL system.
1:08:38
SPEAKER_00: It's like there's layers.
1:08:39
SPEAKER_00: Right.
1:08:40
SPEAKER_00: I mean, yep.
1:08:41
SPEAKER_00: Has that helped you get kids being in the ECNL, has that helped you get kids that you wouldn't previously have gotten?
1:08:50
SPEAKER_00: A little bit, but a very little bit.
1:08:52
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
1:08:52
SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, we talked about the geography of our area a little bit.
1:08:57
SPEAKER_00: There's really not that much to our east until you get to Cleveland, this side of Cleveland.
1:09:01
SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, south again, there's outside of Lima, which is kind of our territory, I guess.
1:09:08
SPEAKER_00: Um, we had a couple kids.
1:09:10
SPEAKER_00: We had a couple kids come over from from um local programs.
1:09:15
SPEAKER_00: We had a couple kids come down from Michigan that are youth players.
1:09:18
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:09:18
SPEAKER_00: Um, but not it's not a ton.
1:09:21
SPEAKER_00: You know, it's not a ton.
1:09:22
SPEAKER_00: I mean, think in our area, there's Perrysburg Soccer Club and Anthony Wayne Soccer Club, who are the youth community programs.
1:09:30
SPEAKER_00: Perrysburg.
1:09:31
SPEAKER_00: And they produce a lot of good little players.
1:09:34
SPEAKER_00: Right.
1:09:35
SPEAKER_00: And then, you know, when they age out of their programs, those kids usually wind up here sometimes a little later than we'd like them to end up here.
1:09:41
SPEAKER_00: But that's usually where we get.
1:09:42
SPEAKER_00: I mean, that's the the foundation of this club, is mostly Perrysburg and Anthony Wayne kids.
1:09:46
SPEAKER_00: Right.
1:09:47
SPEAKER_00: Um, and Paysetter's always traditionally been Sylvania, they're they're you know, 30 minutes north of us.
1:09:52
SPEAKER_00: Those kids are certainly starting to trickle down here because they don't have the same platform.
1:09:57
SPEAKER_00: You know, it's not the same.
1:09:58
SPEAKER_00: It's not the same.
1:09:59
SPEAKER_00: Those two clubs have duked it out for you know, for 30 years.
1:10:02
SPEAKER_00: We've been battling each other.
1:10:03
SPEAKER_00: And so right now we're in a place where we're, you know, no holds barred the best club in the area.
1:10:09
SPEAKER_00: And so the kids are filtering to us.
1:10:11
SPEAKER_00: So, you know, outside of that, there's not there's not a lot of places where we could go.
1:10:15
SPEAKER_00: You know, Fort Wayne might bring a couple kids this way occasionally, but yeah, there's just not a population that we don't already have.
1:10:25
SPEAKER_00: So you got some younger age groups that are pretty good?
1:10:28
SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah.
1:10:28
SPEAKER_00: We got some we got some little guys that are real fun to watch.
1:10:31
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:10:31
SPEAKER_00: So, and I'm actually kind of, you know, this age group switch, like we're starting to look at that and and see how that's gonna change our teams.
1:10:37
SPEAKER_00: And I think that's also gonna be it's coming at a good time, I think, for us.
1:10:41
SPEAKER_00: Really?
1:10:41
SPEAKER_00: Little refresher, little things are gonna get scrambled.
1:10:44
SPEAKER_00: There's not gonna be that same memory of how last year was or this year was in the ECNL.
1:10:48
SPEAKER_00: That's a good point.
1:10:49
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's like a little reset button.
1:10:51
SPEAKER_00: So I think it's gonna be good for us.
1:10:52
SPEAKER_00: And everybody's gonna go through some growing pains.
1:10:55
SPEAKER_00: Sure.
1:10:55
SPEAKER_00: Sure.
1:10:56
SPEAKER_00: What else are you doing for the age change for the club?
1:10:59
SPEAKER_00: Like education or to calm parents down, because I mean, but so many people are stressed.
1:11:04
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean, I get and I get it.
1:11:06
SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's so so it's so social for 90% of the people, right?
1:11:09
SPEAKER_00: Like you just want to be with your friends and leave us alone.
1:11:11
SPEAKER_00: And I went through it the first time we went to.
1:11:13
SPEAKER_00: I thought that going to the birth year was the stupidest thing in the world.
1:11:16
SPEAKER_00: Right.
1:11:16
SPEAKER_00: Because I'm a club coach, I'm not a U.S.
1:11:20
SPEAKER_00: youth national team coach.
1:11:21
SPEAKER_00: Our kids just want to play with their friends.
1:11:22
SPEAKER_00: You're only caring about the 1%, right?
1:11:25
SPEAKER_00: Correct.
1:11:25
SPEAKER_00: Right.
1:11:26
SPEAKER_00: And so moving back, I mean, it's you gotta rip the band-aid off, but I think it's gonna be back to what we wanted it to be, which is you're with your schoolmates, you're with your class.
1:11:36
SPEAKER_00: It's easier to recruit you now.
1:11:37
SPEAKER_00: It's easier for you to be seen by you know, one more people to be seen by one coach because you don't have to chase.
1:11:42
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, college coaches know exactly what they're looking at.
1:11:45
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:11:46
SPEAKER_00: So, and I again, I mean, I think the the reset psychologically for us because there'll be all kinds of new new faces on the team, new faces for the coach.
1:11:55
SPEAKER_00: You gotta try to figure some things out differently.
1:11:57
SPEAKER_00: It's coming at a good time for us for sure.
1:11:59
SPEAKER_00: So you guys know, and and you were talking to uh um Doug on the on the phone call uh when he was saying you guys.
1:12:09
SPEAKER_00: Doug Bracken, yeah, yeah, yeah.
1:12:11
SPEAKER_00: And did you ever communicate that to the parents?
1:12:15
SPEAKER_00: Like how so okay, culture shock to the players, right?
1:12:20
SPEAKER_00: Culture shock to some of the coaches, but the parents, how did you communicate or educate your parents of like, hey guys, this is a different beast?
1:12:30
SPEAKER_00: Right.
1:12:31
SPEAKER_00: Um, by far the biggest failing of our transition was that was that point right there.
1:12:37
SPEAKER_00: We didn't do it, we didn't have that conversation.
1:12:39
SPEAKER_00: And so I think the expectations were really high, falsely high.
1:12:43
SPEAKER_00: I think our expectations were high that we were gonna be okay, that we were gonna figure out a way to be in the middle.
1:12:49
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:12:50
SPEAKER_00: And um no, we did not have that conversation.
1:12:54
SPEAKER_00: So I've uh I've I've got I've got that clip of of Dave Robertson this going.
1:13:00
SPEAKER_00: I'm actually doing a parent presentation to our ECNL teams next week.
1:13:04
SPEAKER_00: I've got that little clip in there, so I'm gonna plug in if that's okay.
1:13:06
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, but I just wanted to show you here's a guy that had four teams at a national championship at the GA level and they struggled.
1:13:13
SPEAKER_00: So yeah, we're gonna struggle.
1:13:15
SPEAKER_00: Um, but no, I didn't I didn't convey that.
1:13:17
SPEAKER_00: Um at the time I didn't understand the message.
1:13:20
SPEAKER_00: At the time I was frustrated with the message because I felt again, you know, like, oh yeah, we can we can do this.
1:13:25
SPEAKER_00: Like, look what we did.
1:13:26
SPEAKER_00: Nobody else is doing that.
1:13:28
SPEAKER_00: He doesn't know how good we are, stupid Doug, you know.
1:13:31
SPEAKER_00: So yeah.
1:13:33
SPEAKER_00: I mean, again, it was it was a it was uh I wish I had been more humble in that moment, but I don't think it would have changed the outcome.
1:13:42
SPEAKER_00: You know what I mean?
1:13:42
SPEAKER_00: I think we were gonna take a whooping this year, so and I think it's only gonna grow the club, and it's only gonna grow you as a as a director and as a coach and everybody as a coach and the families, because I think the I think almost going through that stage creates more, can create more buy-in from the parents.
1:14:04
SPEAKER_00: Right.
1:14:05
SPEAKER_00: Remember the days when we were 13 and we were getting smash, and now now we're 16, and now we're beating these teams because we've we've adjusted to the level, right?
1:14:15
SPEAKER_00: That's gonna that's gotta be so much fun.
1:14:17
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:14:18
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I like I love the build.
1:14:20
SPEAKER_00: I love the build, and I think that that's that's what was missing the last three years because you weren't building anything.
1:14:25
SPEAKER_00: We were just smashing teams.
1:14:27
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we weren't adding a ton of kids, like our teams were all the same, and we're just coming out and pummeling people and pummeling people and pummeling people because we didn't belong at that level, you know.
1:14:35
SPEAKER_00: So now we have to prove that we belong at this level, and that's hard, but it's also, I mean, it's led to some so much fun discussions with the coaches.
1:14:43
SPEAKER_00: You know, how do we have to change this?
1:14:45
SPEAKER_00: What's this?
1:14:45
SPEAKER_00: You know, you come up with the craziest ideas like what if our kids wear bungee cords and hang from the seat, you know, whatever crazy idea you come up with, right?
1:14:52
SPEAKER_00: Like, oh, we can solve it this way.
1:14:54
SPEAKER_00: No, that didn't work.
1:14:55
SPEAKER_00: Let's try this, you know.
1:14:56
SPEAKER_00: What do we need?
1:14:56
SPEAKER_00: We just need another bag of balls or whatever.
1:14:58
SPEAKER_02: Right.
1:14:59
SPEAKER_00: So you have some great conversations to work some of these things out.
1:15:02
SPEAKER_00: You have some moments where you're frustrated, but you get to be frustrated together, you know, because you want things to be better.
1:15:09
SPEAKER_00: Because, you know, I mean, there's teams we've played where I think we were a better team, and we just couldn't figure out that moment that that team is great at figuring out.
1:15:18
SPEAKER_01: Right.
1:15:18
SPEAKER_00: You know, there's teams, I mean, there's even teams where we look at the stands like this should be a win for us today, or we're gonna have a good day today.
1:15:24
SPEAKER_00: We come away with one point in four games or four points in four games.
1:15:27
SPEAKER_00: It's like, how did that all go bad?
1:15:29
SPEAKER_00: But it's always like that, you know, that little mistake that I made.
1:15:31
SPEAKER_01: A little moment.
1:15:32
SPEAKER_00: Our kids will get there.
1:15:33
SPEAKER_00: I do think that.
1:15:34
SPEAKER_00: I do think our kids will get there.
1:15:35
SPEAKER_00: I believe that 100%.
1:15:36
SPEAKER_00: It's like the higher you go, the smaller the attention of detail can cost you a win or a loss.
1:15:43
SPEAKER_00: For sure, you know, and it's like I learned that at Flash, you know, it was the first environment where a player in front of goal felt the responsibility of the entire team.
1:15:55
SPEAKER_00: And I felt that.
1:15:58
SPEAKER_00: And I remember getting the first win when I was at Flash with in the NWSL, and it's like, wait, lift it off your shoulders and like just get it, seeing the ball hit the back of the net.
1:16:10
SPEAKER_00: It's so important, right?
1:16:11
SPEAKER_00: And the way that I looked at it was you're training three times a week, four times a week, at that level, five or six times a week.
1:16:19
SPEAKER_00: You're doing all this work, everybody is sacrificing something to be on this team, and you're putting in so much so many hours, and when you're in front of that goal, you gotta you gotta find a way to get it from point A to point B.
1:16:34
SPEAKER_00: You gotta solve the problem to get it into the back of the net because you have everybody watching, and it sounds like that's what the ECNL is to you guys.
1:16:44
SPEAKER_00: It's like, hey, take responsibility for your team to put to get the job done, right?
1:16:51
SPEAKER_00: You know, or do your job, you know, bock that shot, bot the cross.
1:16:55
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean it's as simple as you know, you know, we'll play, we'll play Flash, and their kid will slide to finish a ball that's rolling across the goal, exactly.
1:17:02
SPEAKER_00: And our kid will lean.
1:17:03
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's like, yeah, you know, I mean, throw your face on it, figure out a way to put it in the back of the net, and that's just that's the difference, you know.
1:17:11
SPEAKER_00: When I had this conversation when I was still with the the youth at Flash, and they wanted to merge with another club and get ECNL right away.
1:17:24
SPEAKER_00: And I thought that that was the wrong idea because his the O3s was such a strong age group.
1:17:31
SPEAKER_00: I'm like, why don't we just start with the O3s and put them in?
1:17:35
SPEAKER_00: Little did I know that the ECNL requires you to have the five or six age groups, right?
1:17:42
SPEAKER_00: Do you know of that doesn't exist where you can just say, okay, they only have a U13 team?
1:17:49
SPEAKER_00: No.
1:17:50
SPEAKER_00: And then and then they grow in.
1:17:52
SPEAKER_00: Because it doesn't make sense for travel.
1:17:54
SPEAKER_00: Why would you only send one team, right?
1:17:57
SPEAKER_00: Is that why they don't do that?
1:17:59
SPEAKER_00: I think it's yeah, it's because it's all club versus club competition.
1:18:01
SPEAKER_00: Do you wish they did that though?
1:18:03
SPEAKER_00: If if it was if it was logistically possible, yeah.
1:18:06
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I love the club, the club versus club philosophy.
1:18:12
SPEAKER_00: I love having that day where I'm out there all day watching all my kids play at the same place, and you can get some little rivalries going.
1:18:21
SPEAKER_00: You know, when Pace Hutter, we used to be in the same league with Paysetter, the Ohio, the Ohio River Conference, right?
1:18:26
SPEAKER_00: And or the Great River Conference, and we would have our little Toledo Derby and we would just go after each other all day.
1:18:31
SPEAKER_00: And it was, it was, it was fun because it was a rivalry.
1:18:34
SPEAKER_01: Right.
1:18:34
SPEAKER_00: And so when you you lose that when you do it with just individual teams to a degree, right?
1:18:38
SPEAKER_00: You don't have the same thing.
1:18:39
SPEAKER_00: So I like the club versus club model, but there are times when I feel like we're missing the development of certain teams that should be in or shouldn't be in, or whatever, right?
1:18:50
SPEAKER_00: You know, and so that's a that's a hard piece.
1:18:52
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I can't criticize the model because I don't know that I have a better model right now, you know.
1:18:58
SPEAKER_00: I mean, logistically, if you think about it, you just do the top eight teams in the region play each other.
1:19:03
SPEAKER_00: Right.
1:19:04
SPEAKER_00: That could be crazy competition or crazy distances, and that's that's the argument that I have with almost everybody about the model or about our system.
1:19:14
SPEAKER_00: It's like, okay, how do you change it?
1:19:16
SPEAKER_00: Well, we need to get rid of uh uh of pay-to-play.
1:19:19
SPEAKER_00: Okay, try me.
1:19:21
SPEAKER_00: Tell me your plan, how, right, or um the whole NIL uh executive order, you know, about transfer portal and stuff like that.
1:19:34
SPEAKER_00: And it's like, this is ridiculous.
1:19:37
SPEAKER_00: There, this executive order is never gonna stick.
1:19:39
SPEAKER_00: It's like something needs to be done, and they're like, Well, it'll get fixed by the NCAA.
1:19:44
SPEAKER_00: Like, what?
1:19:46
SPEAKER_00: They started they they created this mess, they want this mess, right?
1:19:50
SPEAKER_00: And it's like, but uh okay, if the executive order is so bad, you tell me how you would fix it.
1:19:57
SPEAKER_00: And then they'd be like, Well, there shouldn't be a you know, you should only be allowed to transfer once.
1:20:02
SPEAKER_00: Well, that's in the executive order, so you can't say, you know what I mean?
1:20:05
SPEAKER_00: Yes, it's like everybody, okay, tell me your plan.
1:20:08
SPEAKER_00: It's easy to point out the problem, right?
1:20:10
SPEAKER_00: But present a solution, exactly, and nobody does that.
1:20:13
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and no, uh, you know, and it's like MLS Nex versus the ECNL war arms race, right?
1:20:19
SPEAKER_00: Yep.
1:20:20
SPEAKER_00: What do you think about the Michigan doing the RL league?
1:20:24
SPEAKER_00: The greater do you wish that you guys were in it?
1:20:26
SPEAKER_00: That's I guess you can't be because it's of the high schools.
1:20:30
SPEAKER_00: That's what I mean, that's kind of the same principle that we came up with, which was when we were in that league with all first teams, right?
1:20:38
SPEAKER_00: With all clubs first teams.
1:20:39
SPEAKER_00: I think that's great to allow them that avenue to prove themselves to be promoted.
1:20:46
SPEAKER_00: If that's the true purpose of it, I think that's great because we wouldn't be here without that opportunity.
1:20:52
SPEAKER_00: You know, we weren't ever going to just be in the Ohio Valley Conference by invite because we didn't have ECNL level teams.
1:21:00
SPEAKER_00: So I don't know if we would ever be here if we didn't have Ralph Richards in that Great River conference.
1:21:05
SPEAKER_01: Right.
1:21:05
SPEAKER_00: So I think that that's a really important piece of identifying which clubs are next.
1:21:11
SPEAKER_00: Um, I don't know how that league is going.
1:21:13
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I haven't really followed it all, so I don't know if it's working out or not.
1:21:16
SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
1:21:17
SPEAKER_00: Um I don't know.
1:21:19
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:21:20
SPEAKER_00: I mean, you talk about rivalries.
1:21:22
SPEAKER_00: What uh what is your biggest rivalry right now?
1:21:25
SPEAKER_00: Is it internationals?
1:21:27
SPEAKER_00: Is it Cleveland?
1:21:29
SPEAKER_00: Is it OP?
1:21:32
SPEAKER_00: I don't know that we're in that place right now.
1:21:37
SPEAKER_00: Um I don't, you know, it's it's funny, like I would say two years ago, three years ago, when we were getting to play against Paysetter, like even that wasn't a rivalry in terms of results.
1:21:47
SPEAKER_00: It was just like the it's always been awesome.
1:21:49
SPEAKER_00: Not a rivalry if you always lose.
1:21:51
SPEAKER_00: Correct.
1:21:52
SPEAKER_00: Correct, you always win.
1:21:54
SPEAKER_00: So um it so I don't even know that that was a rivalry, but it was fun to kind of get your blood boiling for a day.
1:21:59
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:22:01
SPEAKER_00: We don't really have that right now.
1:22:02
SPEAKER_00: We don't have that, you know.
1:22:04
SPEAKER_00: OP is our travel partner, so we play them twice a year, but OP is really good and we're not there yet.
1:22:09
SPEAKER_00: So, you know, we're looking up at everybody right now.
1:22:12
SPEAKER_00: Um I think the Flash girls play a very, I'm trying to figure out a way to politically put this, they play really hard and really physical.
1:22:25
SPEAKER_00: And so those games with us are nasty.
1:22:27
SPEAKER_00: Like those games, that might be our rival, even though they probably don't see it that way.
1:22:32
SPEAKER_00: And we don't see them very often, but that seems to be like the most contested matches of the year.
1:22:37
SPEAKER_00: It's always us and flash.
1:22:39
SPEAKER_00: Parents always seem to be worked up on the sidelines, screaming at each other.
1:22:42
SPEAKER_00: It's usually when we get the worst referees for those matches.
1:22:45
SPEAKER_00: But I do feel like that's our like that's who gets our blood boiling now.
1:22:51
SPEAKER_00: And that's no disrespect.
1:22:52
SPEAKER_00: I just I love that that that we feel that way about anybody.
1:22:56
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:22:56
SPEAKER_00: But I think they're the they're the club that we play that's it's always it seems a little personal.
1:23:02
SPEAKER_00: It seems a little bit, the tackles are a little harder.
1:23:06
SPEAKER_00: The you know, there's always a little something on the end of it, you know, like this, which is great.
1:23:10
SPEAKER_00: I think that's great for kids.
1:23:11
SPEAKER_00: Like I loved, I love playing like that as a kid.
1:23:13
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you know, and that might be that might be it.
1:23:15
SPEAKER_00: That might be flash.
1:23:16
SPEAKER_00: I mean everybody else, like, there's a lot of like really nice people, and you know, yeah.
1:23:20
SPEAKER_00: You you were great.
1:23:21
SPEAKER_00: Thanks for having us today.
1:23:22
SPEAKER_00: I was like, well, you're welcome for pumping you up at the standings.
1:23:26
SPEAKER_00: OP and internationals, they seem like they have that.
1:23:30
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:23:30
SPEAKER_00: Um, I mean, I think OP internationals, you know, force and internationals because they're in the same area.
1:23:35
SPEAKER_00: I mean, OP doesn't really share an area with anybody, right?
1:23:38
SPEAKER_00: They're in Columbus, kind of kind of all by the lower lonesome.
1:23:42
SPEAKER_00: Um, but there's those, I mean, those, I mean, the funny thing is you sit down with those guys and they all talk to each other like the best friends.
1:23:47
SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
1:23:48
SPEAKER_00: Which is not something that I totally understand.
1:23:49
SPEAKER_00: Because if I have a rival, like I live that rivalry.
1:23:52
SPEAKER_00: You know what I mean?
1:23:53
SPEAKER_00: Like that's not that's not data and yeah, like but run them over with my car in the parking lot or like at least bump them with the side view mirror.
1:24:00
SPEAKER_00: But yeah, so I I mean it's it's that's that's something that I've really struggled with.
1:24:04
SPEAKER_00: Is you know, I have very few, you know, people that I would call in the soccer world and be like, hey, give me some advice because I always feel like hey, they're taking care of them.
1:24:13
SPEAKER_00: They're not gonna give me advice because I am their competitor.
1:24:17
SPEAKER_00: Competitor.
1:24:17
SPEAKER_00: Right?
1:24:18
SPEAKER_00: So that's always been hard for me to see those guys all, you know, they all sit there, they're going drinking together, and I'm like, I'm just gonna go home.
1:24:24
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I'll go out with my guys, you know.
1:24:27
SPEAKER_00: But right, I don't, I don't, like, I don't know.
1:24:30
SPEAKER_00: I feel like that whole club versus club thing carries over for me a little bit.
1:24:35
SPEAKER_00: And then I'm thinking of Michigan, because Flash are definitely like you, where they do not talk to anybody, like they're not into you know, the camaraderie with other staff, then Michigan, it's like of course there's uh the outliers, there's a couple clubs that are the outliers, but for the most part, everybody gets along, right?
1:24:56
SPEAKER_00: Everybody loves each other.
1:24:57
SPEAKER_00: It's like it's like Michigan Mafia.
1:25:00
SPEAKER_00: That's what we used to call it at the convention.
1:25:01
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we'll even we'd all go out there and yeah, it's everybody goes and hangs out.
1:25:06
SPEAKER_00: I've I've uh my buddy or my director of coaching, my girl's director of coaching, Josh, was up there at the Shag Shag Showcase.
1:25:11
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, went out with a couple of the guys.
1:25:13
SPEAKER_00: They were talking about how a bunch of them, when they go to events, they'll just get a house together.
1:25:17
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, like all the different clubs.
1:25:18
SPEAKER_00: I'm like, I do not want to get whooped by you and then come home and grill you a steak.
1:25:24
SPEAKER_00: It's going on the ground.
1:25:26
SPEAKER_00: Like you are getting some pine needles.
1:25:29
SPEAKER_00: I just yeah, I can't, I can't, I can't grab my head around.
1:25:32
SPEAKER_00: I got I mean, I have guys I love to see.
1:25:33
SPEAKER_00: I mean, there's you know, I got a buddy at a buddy at Forrest, love Jamie at FC Pride.
1:25:38
SPEAKER_00: Like, there's guys, the Indie 11 guys always take really good care of us.
1:25:41
SPEAKER_00: So I have lots of guys out there that I see that I like, right?
1:25:44
SPEAKER_00: But I just can't, I can't get that.
1:25:46
SPEAKER_00: We're not sharing airbags, we're not sharing a house, yeah.
1:25:49
SPEAKER_00: No, no way, no way.
1:25:51
SPEAKER_00: That is true, though.
1:25:52
SPEAKER_00: They do do that.
1:25:53
SPEAKER_00: Uh it's crazy.
1:25:55
SPEAKER_00: So, what is your like day-to-day role?
1:25:57
SPEAKER_00: You're off the field and you live in AJ.
1:26:00
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so uh it's kind of funny.
1:26:02
SPEAKER_00: So we we got in in April, we had I think four teams went to nationals, three teams went to nationals this past year.
1:26:11
SPEAKER_00: So I went to you know, went through the rest of the season, went to nationals.
1:26:15
SPEAKER_00: On the way home from nationals, I was like, I think I might be taking a break for a little while.
1:26:21
SPEAKER_00: Like it was in the in the car with my staff.
1:26:23
SPEAKER_00: What was that?
1:26:24
SPEAKER_00: Seattle or no, we were uh uh Richmond.
1:26:26
unknown: Richmond.
1:26:27
SPEAKER_00: Okay, oh that yeah, the finals were in.
1:26:29
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, you're right.
1:26:30
SPEAKER_00: So we were driving home, and I'm just like, I think I might be taking a break.
1:26:34
SPEAKER_00: Because it just felt like, I mean, the last three years in the RL, like just having to get big results and not playing kids that I wanted to play just takes a toll.
1:26:45
SPEAKER_00: Oh, it's exhausting.
1:26:46
SPEAKER_00: It was exhausting.
1:26:47
SPEAKER_00: And I'm old.
1:26:48
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I've been doing this for 30 years.
1:26:49
SPEAKER_00: I'm 52 years old, 53 years old.
1:26:52
SPEAKER_00: Um, I'm you know, I'm tired.
1:26:54
SPEAKER_00: I'm tired.
1:26:55
SPEAKER_00: And so I was, you know, I was telling them I was like, and they're like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
1:26:58
SPEAKER_00: And then, you know, I got to mid-September and I not taken a break.
1:27:03
SPEAKER_00: I got to mid-September and I bought a farm, which I told you about.
1:27:08
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, bought a little tiny farm in in um and over by Adrian.
1:27:13
SPEAKER_00: And I was just like, I'm gonna go up there and hang out for a week.
1:27:16
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna take a week off.
1:27:18
SPEAKER_00: And I sat on my porch and I watched the sun come up in the morning, sat on my back deck and watched the sun go down in the evening.
1:27:24
SPEAKER_00: And I was like, I don't know if I might take another week off.
1:27:27
SPEAKER_00: And so I called my guys, like, hey, like I need some time.
1:27:30
SPEAKER_00: You know, I'm I'm tired, I'm worn out, I'm not helping, you know, I I couldn't drag down here and I'm not, I'm just exhausted.
1:27:38
SPEAKER_01: Right.
1:27:38
SPEAKER_00: And they were great.
1:27:39
SPEAKER_00: They're like, no problem, we got you.
1:27:40
SPEAKER_00: Like, come back when you want to.
1:27:41
SPEAKER_00: So I started to pop in at uh games and and stuff like that in October, November, watch a little bit, watch the high school kids come back.
1:27:49
SPEAKER_00: Um, but I haven't done much.
1:27:51
SPEAKER_00: And I'm at the point now where I'm starting to really miss the kids.
1:27:54
SPEAKER_00: Like, that's the thing.
1:27:56
SPEAKER_00: I probably miss the kids two weeks into that little vacation.
1:27:59
SPEAKER_00: It's just that.
1:28:00
SPEAKER_00: Everything else.
1:28:00
SPEAKER_00: I don't want to be on a plane anymore.
1:28:01
SPEAKER_00: I'm tired of being in the car all the time.
1:28:03
SPEAKER_00: But I missed the kids.
1:28:04
SPEAKER_00: So I started to come back and I'll do a practice a week or a couple days a week.
1:28:07
SPEAKER_00: And you know, kids were some of the kids were happy to see me, and that helped me want to be here, you know.
1:28:12
SPEAKER_00: Right, of course.
1:28:13
SPEAKER_00: Um talked about chickens a lot for the first month that I was back.
1:28:17
SPEAKER_00: There were lots of chicken stories, which is all the stories I have, really.
1:28:20
SPEAKER_00: Um so I'm not on the field, but I'm gonna come to the home games for sure, go to some of the away games, I'll cover when they need help.
1:28:28
SPEAKER_00: Um, but I think especially with the expanding staff, like I could just be kind of a proud grandpa in the corner now versus being hands-on all the time.
1:28:37
SPEAKER_00: Right.
1:28:37
SPEAKER_00: You know, and you're just running the day-to-day basically.
1:28:40
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I do all the all the all the business stuff, you know, making sure X's get filled out where they need to be filled out, you know, talking.
1:28:48
SPEAKER_00: My my director of coaching, Michael, does all the the hiring and firing of coaches.
1:28:52
SPEAKER_00: So he'll call me.
1:28:53
SPEAKER_00: We'll talk every day.
1:28:54
SPEAKER_00: You know, every day I get an update.
1:28:56
SPEAKER_00: He calls, he's like, hey, what'd you think about this?
1:28:57
SPEAKER_00: Or this guy's driving me crazy.
1:28:59
SPEAKER_00: He usually just needs to call the event, and then I try to get him to be a less dark shade of red, and then he goes back to work, you know.
1:29:06
SPEAKER_00: But but I a lot of that stuff has just been passed on to other guys that I trust and learning how to delegate.
1:29:13
SPEAKER_00: You know, and so going from doing everything to delegating six teams, you know, three practices a night, four nights a week, and doing that for 30 years.
1:29:24
SPEAKER_00: It takes a toll.
1:29:25
SPEAKER_00: I just got a message from a uh a GA coach up in Michigan, and they're like, I'm done.
1:29:35
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, like I'm trying to get off the field.
1:29:37
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna do a couple other things on the side, still working in the game, but getting off the field because it's just too crazy for that for them, or it's too when you're when you do this for 20 years, 30 years, it it takes a toll on just mental health and physical health and it's just everything.
1:29:59
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean, how many how many you get home at 11 o'clock at night, 12 o'clock at night, then you've got emails waiting for you.
1:30:04
SPEAKER_00: You said this, you did this, you know.
1:30:06
SPEAKER_00: It's like, oh, or we need guest players for tomorrow.
1:30:08
SPEAKER_00: It's like it is.
1:30:10
SPEAKER_00: It's you know, people I think the the the one thing I wish is that people could understand, you know, those of us that are in the profession, what we do, because a lot of people think we just show up at the fields at five o'clock, coach for four hours, and go home and get these huge paychecks.
1:30:24
SPEAKER_00: And it's like, I'm up at five o'clock every morning answering emails from the day before that I couldn't get to, you know, getting myself balanced.
1:30:32
SPEAKER_00: Then I go to the fields.
1:30:33
SPEAKER_00: It's you know, sometimes you work at 80 hours or more a week when you have to travel and you're not home.
1:30:38
SPEAKER_00: It's hard to have a family.
1:30:39
SPEAKER_00: Like, there's just a lot of stuff that you don't get if you're not in this profession.
1:30:44
SPEAKER_00: And so I see it.
1:30:45
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I had I had guys, you know, three, four years ago that started talking about like, I want to get off the field.
1:30:48
SPEAKER_00: I'm like, what?
1:30:49
SPEAKER_00: How's that gonna find?
1:30:50
SPEAKER_00: You're crazy.
1:30:51
SPEAKER_00: Oh, we love it.
1:30:52
SPEAKER_00: I can't, I don't ever want to leave the field.
1:30:53
SPEAKER_00: And I was like, I can see myself not not being on the field anymore, and it didn't take that long to get there.
1:30:59
SPEAKER_00: I was at the expo that the Jags puts on.
1:31:02
SPEAKER_00: Well, I guess it's separate from the Jags now, but they and that's what was the first time that's really when I started thinking about moving back to Michigan.
1:31:12
SPEAKER_00: Um because seeing all those guys and whatnot.
1:31:16
SPEAKER_00: But uh I was amazed by how many people were saying, I'm trying to get off the field.
1:31:20
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I'm trying to get off the field.
1:31:22
SPEAKER_00: It's like they've been doing it for 30, 40 years, and it's it's crazy, it's a lifestyle.
1:31:30
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it takes a lot of energy to be up and good at that job.
1:31:34
SPEAKER_00: One of my best friends, he comp he complains about parents all the time.
1:31:40
SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, dude, get off the field.
1:31:42
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, just do the do high school because high school is can be more fun for coaches.
1:31:48
SPEAKER_00: Sure, sure, you know, and and he's always wanted to start his own side technical stuff.
1:31:54
SPEAKER_00: And it's like, dude, just do that and do high school and just have fun again, right?
1:31:58
SPEAKER_00: Because you know, I mean, we only live once, right, and you know, he uh he's the ECNL coach and he's does all the travel and everything, you know, and but man, why girls?
1:32:14
SPEAKER_00: I always ask this to almost every single guest that's either one side or the other.
1:32:19
SPEAKER_00: Why girls?
1:32:20
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean, I think it's it's just such a boys and girls are such they're different animals.
1:32:25
SPEAKER_00: I mean, they're completely different animals, right?
1:32:27
SPEAKER_00: Like in almost every aspect of life.
1:32:30
SPEAKER_00: And I think, you know, I was coaching and very early on in my career, I was coaching boys and girls at the same time.
1:32:35
SPEAKER_00: And I always felt like with boys, like you have to put so much energy into being the alpha every day.
1:32:40
SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah, right?
1:32:41
SPEAKER_00: You have to be there to dominate.
1:32:43
SPEAKER_00: With girls, they're just they're more willing to respect your opinion, they're more willing to follow rules, they're not trying to get away with stuff behind your back.
1:32:52
SPEAKER_00: Like, so even from the perspective of volume, it was just so much easier to coach a bunch of girls' teams than a bunch of boys' teams.
1:33:01
SPEAKER_00: It's just, I mean, boys, it's like it's it's you know, you're trying to corral them all the time.
1:33:05
SPEAKER_00: There's always somebody trying to get away with something.
1:33:08
SPEAKER_00: I was that kid.
1:33:08
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I understand it, you know, it's just how we are built, you know, where I think girls, girls, girls want to be a part of a process and part of a team.
1:33:17
SPEAKER_00: I think every boy knows everything about everything.
1:33:20
SPEAKER_00: Yep, you know, so you do.
1:33:21
SPEAKER_00: It's just it's just such a different thing.
1:33:23
SPEAKER_00: And I think, you know, having you know, the relationships that I've had over the years with my teams, um I don't know if I could have done that volume with a with a bunch of boys' teams.
1:33:34
SPEAKER_00: I just don't know if I'm gonna survive that.
1:33:36
SPEAKER_00: And uh do you think okay in the future do you think more clubs are going to steer towards the girls?
1:33:46
SPEAKER_00: Because one well, because of the college recruitment process.
1:33:53
SPEAKER_00: And if at the end the goal for a lot of these girls or play or boys too, is to play college.
1:33:59
SPEAKER_00: It is it is so hard, and it's almost heartbreaking to see all these boys uh commit and sacrifice, they sacrifice playing high school to play in the homegrown or whatever, and they barely get a look.
1:34:18
SPEAKER_00: Right, they could they don't play a college soccer, and it's like they put so much into this, and they are such a good player, and right it's not there for them.
1:34:27
SPEAKER_00: Then I see what the Flash is able to do in the ECNL, and I'm like, she's going to North Carolina, she's going to Wisconsin, she's going to Florida State.
1:34:36
SPEAKER_00: And it's like, wait a minute, it's the same town, right?
1:34:40
SPEAKER_00: Right.
1:34:40
SPEAKER_00: It's the same, it's the same amount of kids, it's the same amount of kids playing.
1:34:45
SPEAKER_00: Why is it so different?
1:34:46
SPEAKER_00: And then it's well, there's less programs for boys that than girls, and all of that, and and then the internationals and all the coaches and the transfer portal and everything.
1:34:57
SPEAKER_00: It's like, if I was starting a club today, I it would be girls only, or it would be girls heavy, right?
1:35:03
SPEAKER_00: You know what I mean?
1:35:04
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and which I understand why you did that.
1:35:08
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:35:08
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I think girls, so I have a friend from Germany literally just sent me the Landon Donovan clip, or Landon Donovan wants to restructure club soccer.
1:35:15
SPEAKER_00: Rich Eisen, you know, it's it's why we're not successful.
1:35:17
SPEAKER_00: I'm like, so he sent me that clip.
1:35:19
SPEAKER_00: He's like, What are your thoughts?
1:35:20
SPEAKER_00: I'm like, Well, we are successful on the girl side.
1:35:23
SPEAKER_00: I mean, the girls play soccer too.
1:35:25
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and so they have the same club structure and the same club system.
1:35:30
SPEAKER_00: And the reality is same coaches, yeah, same coaching.
1:35:32
SPEAKER_00: Lots of same.
1:35:33
SPEAKER_00: Oh, but but our coaching is is crap.
1:35:35
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I am so sick of that excuse.
1:35:38
SPEAKER_00: No, our coaching is good.
1:35:40
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's it's it's I mean, somewhere is it, some places it's bad, right?
1:35:43
SPEAKER_00: Some places it's great.
1:35:44
SPEAKER_00: Like you can't you can't blame that.
1:35:46
SPEAKER_00: So, you know, I said to them, I'm like, I think you look at girls, girl soccer is supreme in the United States.
1:35:53
SPEAKER_00: Like, girl soccer is it's the number one choice, I think.
1:35:56
SPEAKER_00: Correct.
1:35:57
SPEAKER_00: Correct.
1:35:58
SPEAKER_00: And I'm a little worried about flag football.
1:36:00
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean, that's coming on.
1:36:01
SPEAKER_00: Like girls' hockey is coming on, and we've had some success there.
1:36:04
SPEAKER_00: But I mean, I don't think soccer is going to go away, but there's certainly some challengers now, and I don't think boys' soccer has got plenty of challengers, and that might be a bigger problem for Landon Donovan and his friends than the club structure.
1:36:19
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:36:19
SPEAKER_00: Club structure, there's definitely things that could be fixed and be done better.
1:36:22
SPEAKER_00: Like nothing is of course, I'm not saying it's the best of the of the world, but I really do think that it's just not it's not the first choice for a lot of kids to play soccer on the boys' side.
1:36:33
SPEAKER_00: Landon said, Oh, I played three World Cups.
1:36:35
SPEAKER_00: I was like, because you don't have that much competition from our country because the best athletes are playing football and basketball and baseball.
1:36:41
SPEAKER_00: And he was on the U17 national team, he was at Bradenton and like dude, it's a different world.
1:36:46
SPEAKER_00: We don't even do Bradenton anymore.
1:36:49
SPEAKER_00: So I don't know.
1:36:50
SPEAKER_00: I don't know that the club structure is is the issue.
1:36:54
SPEAKER_00: The issue.
1:36:55
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I think it's you know how do you get boys to fall in love with that?
1:36:58
SPEAKER_00: And you know, if you can play in the NFL or you can play in the MLS, a lot of people are gonna pick the NFL.
1:37:04
SPEAKER_00: Do you think that the pay to play is a big factor?
1:37:09
SPEAKER_00: Now, obviously, I'm not I didn't live in Germany.
1:37:11
SPEAKER_00: I didn't I'm sick of being compared to the European model.
1:37:15
SPEAKER_00: Sure.
1:37:15
SPEAKER_00: I'm getting burnt out of constantly having this conversation about pay-to-play, like, why is it free in Europe?
1:37:22
SPEAKER_00: Their pro structure is a big part of that, and also their communities get way more involved, and it's one of the only sports.
1:37:31
SPEAKER_00: Yes, they play other sports, but it's the number one sport.
1:37:33
SPEAKER_00: Right.
1:37:34
SPEAKER_00: How do you guys combat or talk about pay-to-play with your parents or whatever, or like give opportunities to maybe somebody that can't afford it, or scholarships and stuff like that?
1:37:45
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you guys.
1:37:46
SPEAKER_00: We do scholarships.
1:37:47
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I I will tell you that the money piece has been the hardest piece for me.
1:37:54
SPEAKER_00: Um, because we're in a community where the fees that other people charge would just never work here.
1:38:01
SPEAKER_00: You know, we go an hour north up the road, and those fees are double plus what we charge.
1:38:08
SPEAKER_00: Yep.
1:38:08
SPEAKER_00: But we have to produce the same product.
1:38:10
SPEAKER_00: So the fees have always been the thing to me because I can't charge more, or I could charge a little bit more, but what can I squeeze out of it?
1:38:18
SPEAKER_00: And I don't want to squeeze out of it because I'm also asking you to fly to Texas and fly to, you know, wherever, Arizona, we're flying to California, we're flying to Florida.
1:38:25
SPEAKER_00: Like, so it's the money piece is hard.
1:38:28
SPEAKER_00: You know, where's the balance between what we're providing you and what we're charging you?
1:38:32
SPEAKER_00: That's always a really hard thing.
1:38:33
SPEAKER_00: And people will say, hey, it's really expensive to play club soccer.
1:38:35
SPEAKER_00: I'm like, I know.
1:38:37
SPEAKER_00: Go an hour up the road or an hour and a half east and find out how much they charge because you've got it really good.
1:38:45
SPEAKER_00: But I don't know what the solution to that is.
1:38:47
SPEAKER_00: Like, I mean, again, you it's pay to play or it's don't play at all.
1:38:51
SPEAKER_00: And you're in Toledo, Ohio.
1:38:53
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you need an indoor space to be able to train.
1:38:56
SPEAKER_00: Right.
1:38:57
SPEAKER_00: And that I don't know what this place costs, but where uh where the Jag Showcases,$725 an hour or something like that.
1:39:08
SPEAKER_00: Right.
1:39:08
SPEAKER_00: There's a new one going in that they're charging.
1:39:10
SPEAKER_00: No, Oakland University, they're bubble, charging a thousand dollars an hour for a bubble, right?
1:39:16
SPEAKER_00: For for you know, a dome.
1:39:18
SPEAKER_00: Right.
1:39:18
SPEAKER_00: It's like, and you want this to be free?
1:39:22
SPEAKER_01: How?
1:39:22
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:39:23
SPEAKER_00: Oh, go get sponsorships, right?
1:39:25
SPEAKER_00: Okay, right.
1:39:26
SPEAKER_00: No sponsor wants to give me more than a thousand dollars.
1:39:29
SPEAKER_00: Well, no, oh, fundraise.
1:39:31
SPEAKER_00: Okay, here's 75 bucks.
1:39:33
SPEAKER_00: Right.
1:39:34
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:39:35
SPEAKER_00: You can't get anybody to participate in the fundraising, right?
1:39:37
SPEAKER_00: It's like, oh, I got a great idea for fundraising.
1:39:39
SPEAKER_00: Oh, we're not selling that, or we're not doing that.
1:39:41
SPEAKER_00: We don't.
1:39:41
SPEAKER_00: I don't want to do that.
1:39:42
SPEAKER_00: Can I just write you a check?
1:39:43
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's like, weren't we there five minutes ago?
1:39:46
SPEAKER_00: It's like, oh my God.
1:39:48
SPEAKER_00: But you know what?
1:39:49
SPEAKER_00: We can pay for the lights just out of thin air.
1:39:52
SPEAKER_00: Right, right.
1:39:53
SPEAKER_00: You know, they they cost money.
1:39:54
SPEAKER_00: Heat, if you want to put it that's heated, you you gotta pay.
1:39:59
SPEAKER_00: You know, what do you guys do for fuels?
1:40:01
SPEAKER_00: I mean, outside of this dome, what do you this is almost exclusively what you guys expect?
1:40:06
SPEAKER_00: Exclusively what we use at the Toledo campus.
1:40:09
SPEAKER_00: There's a little bit of grass out back, but yeah, so we we train small.
1:40:14
SPEAKER_00: It's another thing that we've got to address.
1:40:16
SPEAKER_00: We train small.
1:40:17
SPEAKER_00: How many how many teams do you put on at one if it's an hour and a half session?
1:40:24
SPEAKER_00: How many teams are usually on your 11v11?
1:40:26
SPEAKER_00: So, like the ECNL teams will get a quarter of a field.
1:40:29
SPEAKER_00: That's the biggest that we ever go.
1:40:30
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
1:40:31
SPEAKER_00: Um, the youth teams, um, some of the smaller teams will train on a sixth of a field.
1:40:38
SPEAKER_00: So we'll have sometimes six teams out there.
1:40:40
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we have a training field right here that will get a couple of little 4v4 teams.
1:40:43
SPEAKER_00: I like that little training field.
1:40:44
SPEAKER_00: And then the training field a little bit.
1:40:46
SPEAKER_00: So that's actually where Sagility is now.
1:40:47
SPEAKER_00: So yeah, so we'll usually have a team or two over there.
1:40:50
SPEAKER_00: Who runs that?
1:40:51
SPEAKER_00: Uh Paul Gate.
1:40:52
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:40:53
SPEAKER_00: Is that is that a chain?
1:40:55
SPEAKER_00: That's obviously a chain.
1:40:56
SPEAKER_00: It is a chain, right?
1:40:57
SPEAKER_00: And because like Josie Altador is like behind it, right?
1:41:00
SPEAKER_00: Or like investors or something like that.
1:41:02
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so maybe it started in like Indianapolis or something out there.
1:41:05
SPEAKER_00: Okay, and then I don't know if that's true or not, but I that's the first time I saw it.
1:41:09
SPEAKER_00: Um, it came down from Michigan to here, and I think they have one out like in the international building.
1:41:16
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
1:41:16
SPEAKER_00: Uh in Cleveland, there's one for sure.
1:41:18
SPEAKER_00: So and it's all interactive, right?
1:41:20
SPEAKER_00: Like lights, flashes, lights and like the machine shooting balls.
1:41:24
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
1:41:25
SPEAKER_00: So and then you add that on to, or that's one of your three days?
1:41:30
SPEAKER_00: That's one of our three days, yeah.
1:41:31
SPEAKER_00: So they'll do that, they'll do film or they'll do fitness.
1:41:34
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:41:34
SPEAKER_00: Um, we're trying to incorporate that into we're next year, we'll do it with some weightlifting.
1:41:39
SPEAKER_00: There's actually gonna they're gonna put in a little weight room there and good.
1:41:42
SPEAKER_00: Uh D1, who I think you saw the the banner, maybe you saw the banner.
1:41:46
SPEAKER_00: Oh, there's a D1.
1:41:47
SPEAKER_00: D1, there's a D1 here.
1:41:48
SPEAKER_00: So they're gonna partner with Sagility and good.
1:41:51
SPEAKER_00: So we'll have that as well.
1:41:52
SPEAKER_00: Do you guys own this facility or we do not own it like it?
1:41:54
SPEAKER_00: It's not just some.
1:41:55
SPEAKER_00: We rented so private owner, and then okay.
1:41:59
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:42:00
SPEAKER_00: So and then all of your training.
1:42:02
SPEAKER_00: Year round.
1:42:03
SPEAKER_00: Year round.
1:42:04
SPEAKER_00: All of our games.
1:42:06
SPEAKER_00: Yep.
1:42:07
SPEAKER_00: And you how hot does it get in here in the summer?
1:42:10
SPEAKER_00: It's not bad in the summer.
1:42:11
SPEAKER_00: It gets cold in the winter, but it's not bad in the summer.
1:42:13
SPEAKER_00: It does it's it, there's a couple days where it has to be hot for a really long time, and then at the end of that, it'll be toasty in here.
1:42:20
SPEAKER_00: But it takes a while to heat up.
1:42:22
unknown: Got it.
1:42:23
SPEAKER_00: So what's the youngest that you guys start at?
1:42:25
SPEAKER_00: Like what's your youth academy?
1:42:27
SPEAKER_00: So we have we have uh what we call our IDL, which is our impact development league, which is three and the three and up.
1:42:33
SPEAKER_00: I like it.
1:42:33
SPEAKER_00: Little biddies come out here, and it's all current players that coach.
1:42:38
SPEAKER_00: Um little oversight.
1:42:40
SPEAKER_00: So, you know, watching those kids get out here and mess around with kids, and that's usually about 70 kids, 75 kids a session.
1:42:47
SPEAKER_00: We do five of those five sessions throughout the year.
1:42:50
SPEAKER_00: Throughout the year, yeah.
1:42:51
SPEAKER_00: So we do this week or eight weeks.
1:42:53
SPEAKER_00: We do one in the fall, two in the winter, two in the spring.
1:42:55
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:42:56
SPEAKER_00: So and what do you offer?
1:42:58
SPEAKER_00: Just one day of training?
1:42:59
SPEAKER_00: They just do one day of training, then they have some some Sunday game days.
1:43:01
SPEAKER_00: They have three game days over uh seven or eight.
1:43:04
SPEAKER_00: It's like three v three and and multiple games throughout the day, like two or three games.
1:43:08
SPEAKER_00: Perfect.
1:43:09
SPEAKER_00: Yep, I love it.
1:43:11
SPEAKER_00: Somebody somebody asked me recently.
1:43:14
SPEAKER_00: Uh he's starting a club or he's in year two or three of a club, and he's like, Okay, what's your advice for a young club starting that?
1:43:24
SPEAKER_00: And I said, Youth Academy, start start start hitting the three to six year olds, three to eight year olds, and then facilitate that.
1:43:32
SPEAKER_00: If you take care of that, everything is good because staff comes and goes.
1:43:37
SPEAKER_00: Yep.
1:43:38
SPEAKER_00: Just focus on those two things because sometimes when your staff leaves, they take the players with them, right?
1:43:45
SPEAKER_00: And you need players to replace them, right?
1:43:47
SPEAKER_00: And just make sense.
1:43:50
SPEAKER_00: Yep.
1:43:51
SPEAKER_00: Man, thanks for letting me do this.
1:43:53
SPEAKER_00: Of course, it was awesome talking to you.
1:43:55
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, man.
1:43:55
SPEAKER_00: We could have probably done it in Michigan, but I don't have a studio yet.
1:43:59
SPEAKER_00: You need a studio.
1:44:00
SPEAKER_00: I need a studio, but I'm enjoying hitting all these different places and seeing the different facilities.
1:44:06
SPEAKER_00: Like, I've already seen this place, but like been getting to go to Grand Rapids and seeing that.
1:44:12
SPEAKER_00: I have a big one coming up uh in like two weeks.
1:44:15
SPEAKER_00: I'll tell you about that off air.
1:44:17
SPEAKER_00: And then like I I'm enjoying it, but then at the same time, I do wish like in that Nova area, that hotbed area, it's like I need an office there, and just people can come to me.
1:44:31
SPEAKER_00: But I mean, I'm gonna grow.
1:44:34
SPEAKER_00: I'm going to Chicago in a couple weeks or like in a month, so we'll see.
1:44:40
SPEAKER_00: I enjoy the podcast.
1:44:41
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I was I you'll catch it on Instagram, I catch little clips.
1:44:44
SPEAKER_00: I was like, does this guy really hate soccer?
1:44:46
SPEAKER_00: It was like, that's all actually that actually probably the first time I watched it was like, I kind of hate soccer right now.
1:44:50
SPEAKER_00: I want to hear what he has to say.
1:44:52
SPEAKER_00: And then it was like, no, he doesn't hate soccer.
1:44:55
SPEAKER_00: Like, I don't hate soccer either.
1:44:56
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:44:57
SPEAKER_00: I went to a fest, MLS Next Fest.
1:45:00
SPEAKER_00: They got me out there, and kids would walk by.
1:45:04
SPEAKER_00: I was like, You shouldn't be here if you hate soccer.
1:45:07
SPEAKER_00: Like, I don't hate well, you just watch the show, right?
1:45:12
SPEAKER_00: Just follow me, right?
1:45:13
SPEAKER_00: Subscribe, right?
1:45:14
SPEAKER_00: Then be like, dude, I love soccer.
1:45:16
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and I love talking about soccer, and I like finding out how everybody does it.
1:45:21
SPEAKER_00: And everybody, everybody, there's a thousand ways to skin a cat, we're always told, right?
1:45:27
SPEAKER_00: And just hearing what different clubs are offering and the different platforms.
1:45:32
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean, you taught me about how like how the RL to ECNL process worked, and it's like it's crazy.
1:45:39
SPEAKER_00: Somebody else explain to me how the GA works because that's new to me.
1:45:43
SPEAKER_00: I still don't know what the E64 is.
1:45:45
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, well, I mean it's coming gone, so you you missed it.
1:45:49
SPEAKER_00: GLA, where are you?
1:45:50
SPEAKER_00: Like, yeah.
1:45:51
SPEAKER_00: But man, appreciate you.
1:45:53
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it was fun talking.
1:45:54
SPEAKER_00: Thanks, man.
1:45:55
SPEAKER_00: Can't wait for the next one.
1:45:56
SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
1:45:57
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, absolutely.
1:45:59
SPEAKER_00: I hate soccer.
1:46:03
SPEAKER_00: How long does it take your players to send out an email to a college coach?
1:46:09
SPEAKER_00: How long would it take to send out a hundred?
1:46:11
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1:46:14
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1:46:23
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