AD hires a home run coach for Women's soccer
- Thread starter Gregpitt
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Odd fact: He will be coaching at PittsburgH and he also coached at Pittsburg (no H) State in Kansas. Doubt anyone else can make that claim of coaching both Pittsburgh and Pittsburg.
Funny that soccer has gone from collectively the worst program in Pitt's stable to arguably, based on coaching talent, the very top.
Lyke very impressive with this hire.
i just saw the email and thought "holy crap! how did they get this guy?"
we have soccer coaches who have both won national championships and coaches of the year. looks like waldrum tried the pro route and wants to come back to college, just like widowich.
both probably could've gone almost anywhere they wanted. do we have a secret soccer booster or something? good on lyke for getting this done.
i know i'm not amongst the mongoloid fans so i'll say that lyke isn't screwing around. she seems to have a plan and a vision (which she tweets about) and is executing. obviously PG is bought in and there has to be funds allocated for this. maybe we're actually turning things around.
we have soccer coaches who have both won national championships and coaches of the year. looks like waldrum tried the pro route and wants to come back to college, just like widowich.
both probably could've gone almost anywhere they wanted. do we have a secret soccer booster or something? good on lyke for getting this done.
i know i'm not amongst the mongoloid fans so i'll say that lyke isn't screwing around. she seems to have a plan and a vision (which she tweets about) and is executing. obviously PG is bought in and there has to be funds allocated for this. maybe we're actually turning things around.
For this year he really doesn't. Unless he's going to go the international route like Vidovich did, there are very, very few good players available in the current class.
Women's soccer is a little different than most sports. Most of the best players in the country make their verbal commitments by the end of their sophomore year of high school. That doesn't mean that he can't flip players, but it's a hard ship to get turned around.
Isn't that pretty much where the men were too when the hired Vidovich? It's obviously not going to turn around overnight, but having a great coach is more than half of the battle.
Several people have told me that part of the problem was that he thought local girls should be willing to take less scholarship money just so they could play for Pitt. For some reason, almost none of them agreed with him. Imagine that.
I was literally just texting with the Dad of one of the top 5 players to come out of here in the last 5 years. Miller offered her 40% scholarship. And Pitt doesn't have the academic money to add to it. She committed instead to a national power for a much better package. And is/will be an integral part of the team.
I think he overvalued Canadians and players from other states...thus leaving less $ for locals.
I obviously can't verify the numbers, but some people who were talking about this said that he offered a certain player who is heading to a school in a high level conference a package that was even worse than the 40% you are talking about. Not surprisingly, she (and probably as importantly, her family) didn't give Pitt much consideration.
Quick question for JoePantherFan or fk (or anyone that can help). I'm trying to understand how the scholarships work for the Olympic sports since you guys were talking about them here.
My understanding is in the past, these sports weren't fully funded (ie. Pitt didn't max out the scholarship limits for these sports), correct? Are these sports fully funded now?
Also, I'm guessing the limits are less than the number of players, so that is why some players are getting X% of a scholarship, correct?
Just trying to get a better understanding. Thanks for all the insight you guys put in these threads! I really do enjoy reading.
My understanding is in the past, these sports weren't fully funded (ie. Pitt didn't max out the scholarship limits for these sports), correct? Are these sports fully funded now?
Also, I'm guessing the limits are less than the number of players, so that is why some players are getting X% of a scholarship, correct?
Just trying to get a better understanding. Thanks for all the insight you guys put in these threads! I really do enjoy reading.
my guess is pitt has 14 fully funded scholarships available for women's soccer. Some schools may not be fully funded and don't have that kind of money available. The staff break up that money and give some players full scholarship, some partial and some nothing at all. Due to title IX, the NCAA sets the number of scholarships for sports and genders. For example, Womens soccer is 14. Men's soccer only has either 9 or 11 scholarships at their disposal. All sports are different though.
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Keep in mind that teams carry 25-35 players and divvy up the 14 scholarships as they choose.
There probably aren't that many players in the NCAA that get a full soccer scholarship. Someone like Mallory Pugh when she was at UCLA, and some other top level players. But given the scholarship limitations I can't imagine many women, and even fewer men, get full scholarships. And I can't believe that any current Pitt players were well thought of enough of out high school to warrant an offer like that.
All sports at Pitt are now fully funded to the max allowable scholarships by the NCAA.
There are 2 types of sports: head count sports and equivalency sports.
Head count sports means that sport is restricted by the number of students that are on athletic scholarships. You can't divide the scholarships in order to give them to more players. You could, in theory, give a half scholarship I believe, but the total number of students receiving any athletic scholarship, full or partial, is capped. There are only a few head count sports and they only exist in D1: Football (85 for FBS); men's (13) and women's (15) basketball, women's volleyball (12), women's gymnastics (12), and women's tennis (8). So for instance, you can only have 8 athletes on scholarship for women's tennis, whether they get a full or partial scholarship. But in all of these head count sports, these students would almost always likely get full scholarships.
Equivalency sports means that athletic scholarships can be divided into any number that you want and that there is, in theory, an unlimited number of athletes that can be on a full or partial scholarship. However, the total number of "full" scholarships is capped. So, for instance, women's soccer has 14 equivalency scholarships in D1. You can split those 14 up 14 ways, or 114 ways...it is up to the coach. But obviously, you need to be competitive with your financial offers with what you recruiting rivals are offering, so it often depends on how special your recruit is and how you are building your program and plugging holes. So with equivalency sports, which is obviously most sports in the NCAA, there can be more of a financial package bidding war aspect to recruiting.
Hope that helps. If interested, scholarship limits can be viewed here: http://www.scholarshipstats.com/ncaalimits.html
There are some sports such as baseball where you can give 11.7 scholarships equivalencies but they can't be divided to more then 27 student athletes (counters) in any one year and the minimum you can give any one athlete is 25% of a full scholarship (there are rare exceptions) ...... similarly another example, in ice hockey there is an annual limit of 18 total scholarship equivalents that can't be divided to more then 30 athletes annually.
Many kids can get most of their tuition paid for. Many don't. Case in point. My daughter plays soccer currently at a mid major. There's plenty of money floating around. Most soccer players are good students so the soccer program can foot the bill for 1/2 and academic scholarships can often make up the rest. I know several girls who have played at Duquesne or have been offered by Duquesne, and they are going to school for free or close to it. I don't think that's the case at Pitt because they don't have the academic money to throw around. I have heard that WVU usually offers girls 5000/yr but they have more academic money available. So girls can go to a national power like WVU and pay less than what they would at Pitt.
There’s no doubt that Randy Waldrum is a great hire for Pitt. His resume is as good as any coach that Pitt could realistically attract given their place in the women’s soccer pecking order, which is a bottom ACC program.
I follow women’s soccer closely, both college and international, and can tell you that his arrow has pointed down since winning at Notre Dame. He went to Texas as one of the highest paid coaches in the country — perhaps even more than Anson Dorrance at UNC and Mark Krikorian at FSU — but had little success and was let go. With Houston in the NWSL the last few years, he didn’t get it done despite having the best player in the world on his roster (Carli Lloyd) and host of other USWNT players, including Pittsburgh’s Megan Klingenberg. He was fired after last season. Nonetheless, strong hire and a great profile to build a program at Pitt that has been non-existent.
This will not be a quick fix. Women’s soccer recruiting is done VERY early. The top schools already have their 2020 classes done and are now working on 2021. Pitt probably trails slightly behind anyway, but still Waldrum won’t have HIS kids for at least 3 years. That means he will have to get aggressive on the transfer market. In women’s soccer, players do not need to sit out a year. They are eligible the next season so I would assume he is working this route hard.
The challenges are obvious. There is virtually no club structure in the Pittsburgh area compared to most other metro areas, at least on the ECNL or DA (Development Academy) level. Cincinnati has a strong presence, so do several areas in Eastern PA, but Pittsburgh does not. Top college programs recruit 100% from clubs. They do not look at high school soccer. Again, the reason is because top D-1 players need to be identified by the time they are 13 or 14, which is before high school. Sure, there are diamonds in the rough, but they are few and far between.
Pitt will never be Penn State, UNC, Stanford or UVA in terms of attracting national talent, but WVU has built a hell of a program with no local talent base so it can be done, but they have a huge Canadian pipeline. Waldrum’s best case short term is to try and make the best of the current roster and commits for the next 3 years and sprinkle in some transfers with the hope of finishing around 8-10 in the ACC. That could be good enough for a bid as long as the non-conference scheduling is strong enough. Long term, we will see. I hope he is around long enough to be able to see a plan through. It takes a while in women’s soccer.
I follow women’s soccer closely, both college and international, and can tell you that his arrow has pointed down since winning at Notre Dame. He went to Texas as one of the highest paid coaches in the country — perhaps even more than Anson Dorrance at UNC and Mark Krikorian at FSU — but had little success and was let go. With Houston in the NWSL the last few years, he didn’t get it done despite having the best player in the world on his roster (Carli Lloyd) and host of other USWNT players, including Pittsburgh’s Megan Klingenberg. He was fired after last season. Nonetheless, strong hire and a great profile to build a program at Pitt that has been non-existent.
This will not be a quick fix. Women’s soccer recruiting is done VERY early. The top schools already have their 2020 classes done and are now working on 2021. Pitt probably trails slightly behind anyway, but still Waldrum won’t have HIS kids for at least 3 years. That means he will have to get aggressive on the transfer market. In women’s soccer, players do not need to sit out a year. They are eligible the next season so I would assume he is working this route hard.
The challenges are obvious. There is virtually no club structure in the Pittsburgh area compared to most other metro areas, at least on the ECNL or DA (Development Academy) level. Cincinnati has a strong presence, so do several areas in Eastern PA, but Pittsburgh does not. Top college programs recruit 100% from clubs. They do not look at high school soccer. Again, the reason is because top D-1 players need to be identified by the time they are 13 or 14, which is before high school. Sure, there are diamonds in the rough, but they are few and far between.
Pitt will never be Penn State, UNC, Stanford or UVA in terms of attracting national talent, but WVU has built a hell of a program with no local talent base so it can be done, but they have a huge Canadian pipeline. Waldrum’s best case short term is to try and make the best of the current roster and commits for the next 3 years and sprinkle in some transfers with the hope of finishing around 8-10 in the ACC. That could be good enough for a bid as long as the non-conference scheduling is strong enough. Long term, we will see. I hope he is around long enough to be able to see a plan through. It takes a while in women’s soccer.
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Right, I was talking strictly about soccer scholarships, which is what the NCAA limits. Kids in all the sports that don't have full scholarships all try to get scholarship money elsewhere to make up the difference. But the NCAA doesn't have anything to do with that money.
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