Field of Dreams
June 22, 2004 12:45 PM | General
June 22, 2004
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – Nikki Izzo-Brown can still remember like it was yesterday her first day on the job as West Virginia University’s first women’s soccer coach back in 1995. Her main goal then was to simply find a decent place to work.
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| Izzo-Brown | Seabolt |
“When I first came here they didn’t have an office for me,” she said recently. “They were going to put me in the Shell Building but that wasn’t going to work. Then I moved in with (former men’s tennis coach) Ed Dickson.
“I was against the wall and he was looking straight out into the hallway.”
Izzo-Brown’s temporary office situation ended up lasting three years, her team and coaches sometimes crammed into a converted medical closet in the WVU Coliseum to watch game tape.
“It was a nightmare,” she recalled.
Today, Izzo-Brown can look back and smile because now just outside her Shell Building office a brand new 1,600-seat soccer facility is nearing completion. The tentative plans are to dedicate Dick Dlesk Soccer Stadium on Sunday, Sept. 5, when the women play host to Virginia and 2 pm and the men take on Mt. St. Mary’s at 4:30 pm.
“It’s something where you have to pinch yourself and say, ‘I can’t believe this is finally happening,’” she said.
Izzo-Brown has spent nearly the past decade building a program based on dreams. She always told recruits not to picture what was here now, but rather what things could be like in the future.
“We were trying to sell where we were going,” she said. “If you believe in this program then we’re going to get the stadium and we’re going to get the playing surface, but that’s not the focus: the focus is winning and trying to be the best you can be.”
In Izzo-Brown’s eight seasons at WVU she has never had a losing campaign. The last four years the Mountaineers have made the NCAA tournament and in 2003 West Virginia faced Florida State in the Sweet 16. The women’s soccer program was able to accomplish all of this without the benefit of having a first-rate soccer facility.
“We had special kids that believed in us,” said Izzo-Brown.
Even though extensive plans for a stadium had been in the works for at least two years, it wasn’t until Izzo-Brown found out that the bond went through that she was certain the stadium was going to be constructed.
“It was probably last December when I really felt this thing was going to happen,” she said. “The bond went through and (Deputy Director of Athletics) Mike Parsons presented to me the fact that it was going to happen.”
In the meantime, Mountaineer men’s coach Mike Seabolt was just being promoted from interim to full-time coach when he heard the news.
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| Dick Dlesk Stadium, scheduled to be completed in August, will be one of the finest of its kind in the country. (Submitted photo) |
“I was super excited,” he said. “I’ve only been here a short time so I’m the beneficiary of a lot of hard work people have done before I got here. Since I’ve been here (the facility) has been our No. 1 priority and the university has been great getting it done.”
Unlike the women’s program, men’s soccer at WVU has had a so-so recent history after John C. McGrath retired following the 1995 season. The Mountaineers have had just two winning seasons since then and haven’t won more than five matches in a year since 1999.
Seabolt says having a first-rate facility will help him attract much better players.
“When recruits come here they want to see that soccer is a priority,” he said. “It’s my job and my assistant’s job to first and foremost, sell that. If you don’t have the support of the school to make what you’re saying believable then it’s not going to happen. Seeing the stadium, seeing the game field, and seeing the practice field, all these things make it a lot easier to recruit.”
Izzo-Brown agrees with Seabolt though she believes that having a top-notch facility isn’t the end-all. “That’s just part of it,” she said. “Now we’re getting into an area where I can go after the real blue chip kids. I couldn’t go up against Santa Clara but now I can.
“Will I win the battle? I don’t know but at least I can say okay here are all of the tools,” she added. “I always said for West Virginia to win a national championship one main ingredient that was missing was the facility. Now we’ve got the facility so now I’ve got to get it done. There are no more excuses.”
Seabolt’s men’s program isn’t quite at that point yet, but he does believe the Mountaineers can make a steady climb in the Big East: considered one of the nation’s top soccer conferences.
“We’ve got better players but they’re young,” he said. “St. John’s lost in the national final and in the second to last game of the season we lost to them 2-1 starting nine freshmen. So we’ve got a good, young group of guys. Now this year’s group is even better but we’re still going to be very young.”
And while the stadium will undoubtedly reap benefits on the recruiting trails, Seabolt believes an even bigger impact will come in scheduling. Last year the men’s team played just six home matches and five of those were conference games.
This year the men’s team will play 10 home matches. “You want to be able to have home matches,” Seabolt said. “Your conference schedule forces you to have some but it’s very difficult to go get non-conference teams here without a soccer facility.”
| “I think our stadium and game field
will be right up there; it’s elite. I find it very hard to find a better
situation than what we have here as far as a soccer facility.” -- Izzo-Brown |
Izzo-Brown says West Virginia’s new soccer facility will be as good as there is anywhere in the country.
“I think our stadium and game field will be right up there; it’s elite,” said Izzo-Brown. “I find it very hard to find a better situation than what we have here as far as a soccer facility.”
The coach admits her women’s program is in transition right now after losing a senior class that included two All-Americans and an all-conference player that accumulated a 65-18-4 four-year record.
“What they paved and what they taught is always going to be here, though,” she said. “This team is intelligent enough to learn from that and grow.”
Izzo-Brown also realizes that West Virginia has put a giant bull’s-eye on its chest after being nationally ranked for 20 consecutive weeks dating back to September of 2002.
“Everybody wants to beat West Virginia now,” she said. “It was so much fun being the underdog. Every game you’ve got to play your best and if you don’t then somebody is going to sneak up on you and beat you.”
Seabolt has charted a course for his men’s program that he hopes will one day put him on the same level with the women.
“I think our path was set regardless (of whether or not the stadium was built) and the goals don’t really change,” he said. “You just find other ways if the stadium wasn’t there. Now that we have a stadium we can move on to what else we need to do to achieve our goals.”
Izzo-Brown and Seabolt both agree that a project of this magnitude couldn’t have been done without a lot of local support.
“A lot of people in the community did step up and help us and then when the bond went through there were certain individuals who did more,” said Izzo-Brown.
“There are a lot of good people in the community trying to develop soccer here,” said Seabolt. “The challenge in this state is that soccer is so new. The high schools are just getting to the point where they are becoming competitive. But there are a lot of good people here developing it.”
Seabolt can envision a day in the not-so-distant future when his team plays a terrific match and beats UConn 2-1 before more than 2,000 fans inside the stadium.
“And in that crowd there will be a bunch of eight-year-olds who will want to someday play soccer at WVU,” he said.
