As Daley Stevens, Jesse Bodony and Jake Glicker reflected on the 2012 Oregon men’s club soccer season, they were dissatisfied. They saw a team that, despite a second-place league finish, had fallen short of its goals and lacked cohesiveness.
Together, the trio decided to shift the club in a completely new direction.
The soccer team is one of the approximately one-quarter of teams in the club sports department that adopts a system of primarily player-coaches. It was decided that during the fall, Stevens would take on the role of head coach, with Bodony serving as the assistant coach and Glicker assuming the title of club president.
“Because we don’t have a (traditional) coach, a lot of our success is contingent on composing ourselves and committing ourselves to working for the team,” Glicker said. “We hadn’t seen that happening in the two years that I’d been here and we were like, ‘How do we make that happen?’”
The answer?
Team chemistry.
It’s a rather simple concept but one that had been absent in previous years. Various cliques existed within the team and there was a shortage of enthusiasm among the group as a whole. Practice had become a chore and soccer simply wasn’t as enjoyable as it should be.
“There were days my first couple years playing where not only myself, but a lot of the other players, we just did not want to go to practice,” Bodony said. “It wasn’t fun. People would just yell at each other.”
But Bodony knew just the remedy. During his high school days, Bodony’s coach had built a team around a culture that discouraged individual agendas and instead focused on establishing trust among teammates and having fun both on and off the pitch.
The Oregon club team embraced the philosophy.
Teammates studied together during the week and went out on the weekends. Team dinners were held the night before big games and many of the best memories among the players were made on the van rides the following day. Soon enough, the club had fostered an inclusive family-like environment.
“We tried to make it a thing where it wasn’t just going to soccer practice and playing the games and that was it,” Bodony said.
With team energy and camaraderie at an all-time high, Stevens was determined to ensure that the team’s unity would translate into results on the field.
“You want the players to buy into the fact that yes, this is club soccer, but we want it to be at a high level,” Stevens said. “We’re having a lot of fun, but we want to win and be successful, otherwise why are we out there spending our time and money trying to do it?”
The success followed for Oregon, who went on to win its first Cascade Collegiate Soccer League championship in five years and took down perennial club powerhouse Weber State during the group stage of the Regional Championships in Salt Lake City, Utah. According to Stevens, it was the first loss Weber State had been dealt outside of the National Championship tournament in approximately a decade. @@ facts checked @@
Joe Jackson, a junior midfielder, admits that on talent alone, Weber State had the upper hand over the Ducks at nearly every position. But the advantage that Oregon did have over Weber State was symbolic of the season’s success and turnaround. @@ name checked @@
“It was the bond, the brotherhood and the chemistry on our team and the heart for playing for the guy next to us,” Jackson said. “That’s what makes our team mold and grind together. We love playing for each other.”