nortx9

The college coaches focus on club and USA national team training pools moreso due to the advanced level of competition, they are playing with advanced talent teammates, and the fact players are playing year round and stay fit. More recently, many such as MTSU are aggressively recruiting international team players. They are also looking for style of play and chemistry mix of recruit vs. team. Professional club and USA team coaches teach more effectively the strategic and tactical subtleties of the game that are required at the collegiate level. Generally speaking, the high school coach is not as qualified as most club coaches, although many pull double duty and coach HS and club. Most club players do play for their HS, but the varying degrees of talent and ages typically do not produce real good teams or effective team styles of play. Coverage of High school team results and player statistics are generally more widespread available than club due to local press coverage, but the individual stats and team records must be weighed against the class level (5A v 4A) competition, district quality, and level of competition. Many players are every bit as good in club as their stats indicate in high school, but many are not as good at the club level in spite of their inflated high school stats. Club soccer division levels are determined through quaification tournaments, and team focus in club recruiting and training is to achieve a place in the highest club divisions. This provides for a higher, consistent competitive level of play and more evenly matched division level competition, and players develop more rapidly. Teams can be ranked on a National scale, and can test those ranking through National tournament competition. Provides for a much better demonstration of the players competence level, and players can be assessed throughout the year by coaches who attend the tournaments. In a more simpler sense, for those players capable of going to the collegiate level, these tournaments enable the elite players to come to the coaches, for those limited to high school only, there are fewer opportunities to impress if you are depending on the coach to travel to you. In my post yesterday regarding recruiting rankings, the criteria for determining a successful recruiting preseason ranking in soccer is primarily based on the state, national, or international recruit's player ranking and the level of play the player has maintained, such as US National pool, Regional pool, State Pool, club team ranking, conference competition level, etc. Does not mean they will play well together of course. UNT, based on a more regional recruiting selection process obviously will not attract much attention for the recruiting class quality according to the "experts", but the local and regional talent has been more than adequate enough to enable Hedlund to rank in the top 15 winningest active coaches.. I personally think style of play in conference, player style and skill level, and how well they fit into offensive and defensive schemes with the returning players will determine the success of the team, more so than the introduction of players of higher reputation. But, those higher reputation players obviously can help your future recruiting effort. Winning, and NCAA appearances does too, and that is why I'm encouraged for this team, and I believe the 2006 class will prove to be much better over time than many of those ranked ahead of UNT in the preseason recruiting rankings.

Soccer Buzz recruiting rankings for 2006 class signings- UNT ranked third in conference for quality of recruiting class landed, Sunbelt Conference ranked 22 out of 32 that were ranked, in Central region UNT recruiting ranked 26 out of 30 ranked (ahead of Houston, TEXAS, Tulsa and SMU, in that order 27-30). If you assume these guys know what they are doing (and I don't), UNT recruiting did not make the top 100 out of 310 D-1 teams ranked.......hogwash. See em all in the first round! Sun Belt 1. Florida Atlantic 2. Middle Tenn St 3. North Texas 4. W Kentucky 5. Denver 6. La-Monroe 7. South Alabama 8. Arkansas-LR 9. Arkansas St 10. La-Lafayette 11. Troy N/A Florida Int A THREE WAY TIE? FAU WINS OUT This is no regular season game so no ties allowed. In a three-way deadheat, league newcomer FAU gets the nod for best class in the Sun Belt. The state of Florida proved lucky for FAU which got five great preps in-state. Aleisha Peterson, Nicole Farrell and Kendall Kravec all earned all-state honors in the Sunshine State. Peterson played with the Hillsborough County club team and will be joined by two of her club teammates, Jayne Wabeke and Tessa McGarrity. From club Challenge in Houston, Sonia Richards heads to FAU and brings her experience on the South Texas ODP state team with her. Devon Romak is a solid defender out of Canada and the London Gryphons club. Notre Dame transfer Jannica Tjeder may be as big a signee as any if her injury days are over as the Finnish midfielder once played with her youth national teams. Who's Hot, Who's Not: MTSU has had two great back-to-back classes. North Texas keeps plucking some of the best talent in Texas. But it's Western Kentucky that is sneaking in with two solid years of recruiting which should allow the Hilltoppers to move near the top of the league. Our bottom pick has Troy missing the bullseye for the second year in a row.

Thanks. This is a new development. Recently Kevin Smith resigned as training coach for Womens Soccer, tough loss he was very good, but word has just surfaced in last 48 hours or so that a new asst coach may be named, rumored to be a lady candidate. Hedlund and Zakel remain as current coaches, this will be a third coach. Hoping someone had the inside skinny on the new hire.

No, this is a new one to replace Kevin Smith. Brand new......

Apparently a new assistant hire is due to be announced soon, no info yet on name or background profile, anyone else have that info yet? more to come.........

Are the players from Solar for 2007? What club is the oral commit from? ←

Confirmed, details vague at this time.......

Thanks Harry. However, I have more details I did not feel were appropriate to post at the time that would indicate it may in fact be true. The website was changed during the time period supported by the sources I have. I am hoping it was not true, he's a very good coach and recruiting info conduit at the club level, and was I hoping to get insight from anyone close to the program who can confirm or deny. Hope I'm wrong and it is simply as you say a matter of coincidence , and rumor.

It appears Kevin Smith has been removed from the soccer website as a coach for 2006 season. Can anyone confirm or dispel what appears to be a change in the coaching ranks for the Mean Green ladies soccer team??

Are the players from Solar for 2007? What club is the oral commit from? ←

Like a tennis match too...... serve, volley, extended rally......waiting for match point.......

What a great post, I'm dying right now, dude The popcorn bag knocked me on the floor! Awesome..........

Actually, the physical requirements are much different, allowing for pitchers to pitch with less recovery time. The original point was about changing the field to offset the domination of top pitchers. My point is that they will dominate anyway,regardless of the sport, based on their physical abilities, and will adapt to field or rule changes. Once you begin making changes to the sport to offset dominant talent, the identity of the game changes, while the dominant seem to remain dominant.

Agreed, and in this case, as dominant as Osterman is, she is really not a classic power pitcher, it is all about change of speed, movement and spin. (By the way a good article on her today in DMN). As a hitter, the adjustment is to stay back and go with the pitch. Easier said than done, particlularly when the spin and dive control makes your FB look like 120 mph. But again, that is a function of mastery of the game, not pitching distance or field dimensions. Expand the field and she would find a way to be better at the new distance. Can't back Roger Clements up to 65 feet either, even though he would probably still excel over the average thrower.

UNT awarded conference events 11:38 PM CDT on Wednesday, May 31, 2006 DENTON – UNT will host the Sun Belt Conference soccer tournament and track meet in 2008 and the league's softball tournament in 2009, the league announced Wednesday following its annual meeting in Destin, Fla. UNT athletic director Rick Villarreal was named chairman of the league's athletic directors. Brett Vito Nice for these programs. RV is In Charge!

Please do! This is a very exciting team, very fast, very good skills. Last year's games were very entertaining, I think this year will be even better, even against a tougher non-conf sched. Would be really great to get a bunch of first-timers such as yourself to come out and enjoy and spread the word. Hoping the pre-game tailgaters will build a pre-game BBQ tradition, or somesuch comraderie for the inaugural year at the new stadium. See you there for the OU-bashing in August! We clocked 'em good in the fall season, and I personally think our 2006 recruits are better than what OU pulled in.

I would agree, this is fantastic news. Increased pay will ward off potential suitors, particularly if you have a recruiting hotbed in your back yard. Who would want to leave? This sustains itself if we are able to promote this team through the student body, faculty and alumni and show the support in the stands. I have mentioned this before in a previous post, I do not see why this team and this school cannot begin to build a reputation very much like A & M- Tough place to play on the road, tough home crowd, tough team with good annual recruiting (better facility=better schedules to play=better recruiting), and an annual NCAA qualifier. Players are now here, coach is here, facility is here, time is now to ramp the reputation, and support at home. Marking off the days until OU !!!! Rumor mill is they have landed another premier local club player on oral commit for 2007. And there are several others looking at UNT very hard. The returning players and the quality of the 2006 recruiting class from this year are playing a big role in the credilbility of future teams for potential 2007 and 2008 recruits. I look for this team to get better, and for recruiting to be very strong for 2007 and 2008 freshman classes.

I'm new enough to the blog I couldn't say, but from some of the posts I've seen in past few months, there is a lot of smoke (or something) to blow through.... but, in that smoke there is some pretty good insight and theory, and some pretty accurate speculation-turned-fact. I would like to think they do follow the pulse of the board, it is just one more information tool that is out there.....several of us appear to be very close to the subjects we write about.

Well, in case this happens to have flown under RV's radar , you got an inside channel to give them all heads up? Never know until he is asked.........

Well, I saw this too, and what jumped out was the Texas (Baylor), and Okla. roots, as well as his desire to pursue MBA in Sports Management, which I happen to think is a pretty good program at UNT. Your point is well taken on men vs. women, however. Seems to have spent career in men program.

I saw yesterday that U of Colorado terminated the men's program for lack of funding. Had to raise 1mm to cover next 3 years by deadline, only able to raise 500k, and only 100k paid in to date. Now there's another candidate that is available, and players too. Don't know if either would work out here, but it is a big conference school playing big competition.........does someone need to be on a plane to check it out face to face?

Local honor for our soccer leader..... check out the all-time win percentage among active coaches!.... ************************************************************************************************************************ DENTON – For the second consecutive year North Texas women’s soccer head coach John Hedlund was named the 2005-06 North Texas Coach of the Year by the Greater Denton Sports Commission. Hedlund received the honor once again after leading the Mean Green soccer team to its second straight Sun Belt Conference Championship and NCAA Tournament berth. During Hedlund’s tenure at North Texas he has won 151 games and currently ranks 14th all-time in the NCAA in winning percentage (71 percent) among active coaches in the NCAA. He has compiled an overall record of 151-59-11 in 11 winning seasons. Hedlund has been named the conference coach of the year the last two years. During his 11 years as the head coach of the Mean Green, Hedlund has seen 39 players selected to the all-conference team, 11 players named all-region, and the Mean Green has never had a losing season in the program’s history. Under Hedlund’s leadership North Texas has captured three Sun Belt Conference regular season championships and two Sun Belt Conference Tournament titles. Hedlund will be honored on Monday, May 15 at the Greater Denton Sports Commission Banquet at the UNT Gateway Center. The guest speaker at the banquet will be ESPN commentator and North Texas alum Dave Barnett. The banquet begins at 7 p.m. and there will be a silent auction starting at 6 p.m.

"The NCAA announced that it has recertified the UNT athletic department. The department will be required to provide anyone involved with athletics a notice emphasizing the importance of following NCAA rules and regulations." -By BRETT VITO / Denton Record-Chronicle Good news, we have been recertified....... no sweat, eh?.........

I think I took the opportunity to soothe a raw nerve, Grand Green post was an opportunity to segue into a general complaint I have about HS soccer perceptions, and my DMN All Area team ranting is an outgrowth from that. Not only do they not cover secondary sports well, they do it at their discretion and convenience. Little concern is given to best practice journalism, or accuracy. (By the way, same for UNT coverage in the DMN, it is very hard to find much about UNT that they do not pull off of another competing wire service, they do not see the benefit of reporting on this college, and when they do, it is typically not thoroughly investigated or creative journalism). To Gran Green's point however, it is correct to suggest that UIL should spend more time developing the process, whereby greater respect would be given for those coaches nominations if the judging criteria were standardized and uniform. This should also probably help the integrity of other superlative awards, such as the All-Area team ......one would like to think.

Gonna push back a little on this... I agree a few districts did get a little carried away. Here's the thinking- A soccer "team" would normally carry 18-22 kids, not just starters, so the "team" numbers are not that unreasonable for most of the districts. They do not all follow the same methodology as indicated by the numbers per team and the superlative awards. However, there are now more kids involved in this sport and Districts are getting larger and so are teams and headcounts per District as compared to a few years back, so the percentage of kids being honored in this sport are small and are very representative of the top percentage of talent vs. total participation. I don't think it too accurate or fair to suggest that it no longer means much. In fact, if one were to cross check these All-District rosters against the local club rosters, and I'm gonna swag here 'cause I have not done it, but I'll bet that most are on LHGCL D-I or D-II club rosters, and many of these are players who are underclassmen that are already being recruited for college programs as Jrs. and Srs. I do agree the UIL needs to provide some structure to the nomination process. While it is hard to begrudge any of the All Area players their place on this team, they are all very good, I'm more perplexed by this annual award of confusion than the All-District teams. Since we are talking UNT, lets use Juett as a good example... 28 goals and 16 assists, forward position, (total point value 72- 2 per goal and 1 per asst). There are two forwards on this team, Nimtz and May whose point totals were inferior to Juett's. Nimtz had 14 goals and 6 assists (34 pts) and May had 19 goals and 30 assists (68 pts). In fact, I believe there are three forwards on second team whose point totals are superior to those two players. Combine with that with the fact that there are 3- 4A players on the First Team (they are deserving and good players!, but typically there is a greater disparity among 4A District teams than 5A, and numbers can tend to get inflated against weaker average teams), and it is very difficult to see how this team was selected. Nimtz(Allen HS) and May (Coppell) prematurely exited the 5A playoffs in the Area round earlier than projected, while Juett lead team to State finals, scored 4 playoff goals and had two playoff game-winners along the way. What is clear is that all of the major growth readership zones for the DMN are represented on this team (Frisco, Allen, Flower Mound Marcus, Wylie, McKinney), or teams with storied history (Colleyville, Allen, Coppell, Marcus) or recent post season success (Marcus, Mck North). Two players, Bennett and Colony's keeper may have been the best pure player choices. If anything, I think this award voted on by the staffwriters may be the most questionable in value and meaning regardless of the splash, and makes the coaches choices for All District appear calculated and most deserving. And I do agree... poor (popular) selection methods do "downgrade the honor for those who really deserve it", and this is exactly where this award is right now for all Metroplex sports. I hope one day the All Area selections can simply be as defined as All-District currently is, no matter how weak that may be. But hey, it is all good PR now for the MEAANNNNN Greeeeeenn.......we'll take it! Looks good for Hedlund, and when they start playing, the team will look good too.