Building from bottom up

Staff photo by Ed Wozniak Daniel Webster College women’s soccer coach Tom McGuinness speaks with player Sarah Shea at a recent practice.

NASHUA – Sonja Crowder was a freshman doing lab work when she heard the news: Women’s soccer at Daniel Webster College was finished for the 2003 season – before it had even started.

It was a tough decision, but DWC athletic director John Griffith had no choice. It was evident from the first few days of practices that the program simply didn’t have enough players to field a competitive team, and the plug had to be pulled.

“I heard from one of my friends (on the team),” said Crowder, now a junior, who was considering playing for the team before news broke.

“Some of the upperclassmen decided they didn’t want to continue, and didn’t want to go knocking on doors,” Griffith said. “When two or three players decide not to play at a small school, that’s devastating. We made a decision as an institution that we had to regroup.

“When you make a decision like that, you’re looking at the impact two, three, four years down the road . . . even though the moment is more on your mind than the future. That’s hard.”

“They were lucky to attract a kid like Corey Morrison a few years back,” McGuinness said. “Unfortunately, they didn’t seem to get the structure around her to kind of make it self-sustaining.”

“It was disappointing,” said former Eagles coach Corey Hughes, who gave up the soccer job to concentrate on other sports before the ill-fated 2003 season. “Most disappointing for the returners. . . . I know those kids did everything they could.

“But, I think we’ve made the best move possible in getting Tom in. You’ve got a guy who knows his job, has a lot of experience and is a soccer guy. By taking the position and not having people double up coaching, it’s going to be a savior for us. I don’t want too much pressure on Tom – I think every coach who comes in here gets a tremendous amount of pressure to get kids in – but I do believe he’s going to be the solution to the problem for the program.”

Staff photo by Ed Wozniak Clockwise from left, Daniel Webster College’s Steph Zubricki, Sarah Shea, Danielle Carkin and Katie Zahn work on a heading drill during Friday’s women’s soccer practice.

And, as McGuinness says, “I like problem-solving. I enjoyed math. If you’ve got a problem, I’ll come and try to help you solve it.”

New beginnings

A month ago, McGuinness welcomed only a handful of players to the first practice. He had 13 players for the season-opening 3-0 loss to Rivier.

McGuinness’ goal is a simple one: “Two years from now, knowing that first day of practice, knowing there’s 18 committed players here.”

Shea said she was on a varsity team of about 20 players at Quincy High School.

“Coming to a team with not even 10, 11 girls is very different,” she said. “Last year was very different because it’s the college level and you figure you’d at least have enough girls to play, and there’s not even enough girls to play. It’s frustrating, but we have a lot more girls now. It’s better.”

Thanks in part to Shea, who knew some freshman recruits for basketball and asked them to help out.

“I told them, ‘Get as many girls as you can,’ ” she said. “Just through knowing people, you get people to come.”

But, as Hughes noted, it’s not like you have a cafeteria full of women at DWC to pick from.

“It’s a totally different situation,” she said. “Those girls that you get (through on-campus recruiting), they don’t exist here. There’s only a handful of women on campus that are athletes. . . . It’s not like being at a Keene or someplace like that where there’s a lot of women and you can say ‘Hey, do you want to play?’

“I probably know 90 percent of the women on the campus. That’s a problem. The women’s numbers are increasing, and that’s going to help the situation, and having someone like Tom is obviously going to help the situation.”

Griffith also made the decision, talking to other small college administrators, that soccer needed a one-sport coach. Many coaches at this level will double up, but the Eagles decided not to do that in this case.

“We need to get the program stabilized,” McGuinness said. “Retain the players here that want to work and want to play, and bring in the new players that hopefully will help things out.

Blessings from above

One thing Griffith needed in his effort to rebuild the program was the approval of the NCAA so the school wouldn’t lose its status in the organization.

“They were very supportive,” he said. “They understood the problems caused with the small women’s population here, and that we were making a legitimate effort, that we had a plan.”

The first step was getting back on the field, which the Eagles did last year, playing a half-dozen games under interim coach Mya Yates, who is no longer at the school.

The second step was hiring McGuinness, who has plenty of plans. He wants his players to compete in a couple of indoor tournaments allowed by the NCAA over the winter. The Bay State Games in Massachusetts offers 6-on-6 tournaments that players can compete in.

He’s been on the road and will continue to be on the road five nights a week.

“I was brought up to believe (if) you work hard, you get the reward,” he said. “It would be great. Hopefully in four years, you’d be hosting a GNAC playoff game. It may be the first round, but you got to that level where you can host a game. That’s the reward. . . . You see it in your players’ faces.”

It would be a far different look than was in their predecessors’ eyes a couple of years ago.

“Our coach is really enthusiastic about getting the team established,” Crowder said. “He wants us to continue with the team, and get support. . . . It’s really good to see.”