Let's be fair, Jim Rhein has been a TU assistant coach/associate head coach with the women's side since 2008. Rachel Blankenship is a former TU player and 4 time 1st team all AAC player. And Jo Johnson was the girls head coach at Jenks last year but she's no slug either. Understand that this staff is basically on a 1 year trial. Not only do they have to do well on the field, they need to start pulling in some of the star recruits in the Tulsa area. That's where I think Johnson comes in. There is plenty of talent that comes out of Union, BA, Bixby, Jenks, Bishop Kelley, and Owasso to field a starting 11 that would compete for conference championships. TU needs to get out in front of Makenzie Malham and get her here next year (she's almost a lock to be Gatorade Player of the Year in Oklahoma). Giselle Urquiza is on campus now. She's a really good player from Bixby.
I hadn't heard that Makenzie committed yet but it doesn't surprise me it would be Arkansas. The in state tuition and SEC competition make it an attractive offer for players from the 918. It also doesn't hurt that Arkansas has become Union HS east.
Arkansas has a great relationship with the TSC upper level coaches on the girls side. Hopefully the new TU coaches are working on building a close relationship with Yolanda. TU doesn’t just need a few girls from TSC every year, they need the BEST girls from TSC.
And it shouldn't be that hard to get 2-3 of them each year. Great school, immediate playing time, league with multiple bids to the NCAAs.
I have no idea who you're talking about so obviously a while back. But it's been probably 20 years since I really followed the women's program closely. It went into free fall mode when Renae was the HC. You knew she was a disaster when she couldn't organize her own summer camps and Tom did her a favor and let her combine with his.
Jordan O’Brien and Cami Pelley were stand outs on the 2013 team. The team had a unique chemistry. They were good not great but they played for each other. You could see them having fun.
Was it Poplin that said it about the Creighton coach? Jim Rhein has been at TU for quite some time as Cussen's assistant and prior to that he was the Bixby girls coach. I felt they did an awful lot of talking about the Creighton coach last night
Tulsa has some great girls' club programs and turns out 5-6 D1 players each year. And there is some upper level talent that is getting noticed by USWNT program at the U23 and younger stages. None of those players are coming to TU. Union basically had the #1 girls program in the entire country for 3 years running. The only game they lost in that time span was a shootout to BA in game 1 of the 2018 season where BA basically kept 10 behind the ball looking to get a draw. The talent is in the area. A couple of those players end up at OSU, a couple at OU, but a lot of them are going to Arkansas. The difficult thing about soccer is there are no full scholarships (there could be but typically you don't see that). Women's soccer gets like 14.5 scholarships. If you watched the game against Creighton, Poplin mentioned TU is carrying 37 players right now (IMO, 26-28 is a good number). My guess is 26 of those are on some type of athletic scholarship. If you don't get need based grants or merit based scholarships to supplement that, then you're asking parents to make up the difference of a $40k annual bill. In Arkansas the total is closer to $20k annually with the in state rate.
Facilities are certainly not the problem. The game pitch rivals that of MLS in terms of quality....and it's natural grass vs. field turf. The practice pitch (drainage ditch next to the tennis facility) is only behind the game pitch in terms of the quality of surface in the state.
So recruit Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, El Paso, Austin, KC, and Saint Louis. We always have players from there. We don't need Tulsa. If they want to be here pick them up, we don't need an entirely local team. As someone on this board has suggested.
And one of those local ECNL girls just committed to UMKC. If she's capable of playing D1 soccer, why wasn't TU recruiting her because there are a number of girls on the team right now who are not D1 caliber. And the girls at the ECNL level here are pretty damn good.
I wondered about the caliber of some on our team because they don’t look like they belong on a college team.
Conditioning has been an issue in the recent past, not talent, skill, tactics, or speed potential. Not sure about now though.
Plus one on Giselle. She’s elite imo. TSC has one of the best technical trainers in the country imo. The players coming up through the club now should be much better on with that aspect of the game.
I saw her play at BIxby last season. Even with Makenzie Malham on the field, Giselle was the best player on the field from either team. She didn't have a ton of help around her though and that's where Union was able to get the better of Bixby.
I'm glad they are showing that improvement. But I've watched 2 of the games. This team is very tactically sound. The back line is generally well organized from what I've seen.
