Q&A with Golden Eagle soccer coach Steve Springthorpe
With the Women's World Cup taking center stage these days, it's a good time to look back at an interview with Tennessee Tech soccer coach Steve Springthorpe. The interview by Dylan Vazzano first appeared in the March/April edition of Tech's unlimited magazine.
By Dylan Vazzano, TTU Sports Information Coordinator
COOKEVILLE, Tenn. -- With the Women's World Cup taking center stage these days, it's a good time to look back at an interview with Tennessee Tech soccer coach Steve Springthorpe. The interview by Dylan Vazzano first appeared in the March/April edition of Tech's unlimited magazine.
Q: Where did you grow up?
A: I was born in Miami and grew up there until I was 12. We then moved to a place called Ball Ground, Georgia which is north of Atlanta by about an hour, and I was there from sixth grade through high school.
Q: How did you get interested in soccer?
A: Living in Ball Ground during the late '70s, early '80s, there wasn't any soccer. It all about baseball, football and basketball, and frankly I never had an interest in soccer. I ended up playing football and made the freshman team as a receiver, but after one year, I just didn't enjoy it that much so I stopped playing. That summer I was back in my old elementary school gym and the new basketball coach for the girl's team, which my sister was actually going to be playing on, was also the new soccer coach for the high school. He saw me playing basketball one day and told me I was a pretty good athlete and said, "So what do you think about trying out for the soccer team?" I said, "Yeah sure why not," and ended up playing goalkeeper, because although I couldn't kick that well, I had pretty good hands.
Q: Initially, what was that experience like?
A: Well soccer was actually considered the "un-cool" thing to do at the time. You either played football or basketball, so we weren't too well liked.
The interview with Steve Springhtorpe first appeared in the March-April issue of unlimited magazine (click magazine to view) |
Q: How quickly did you to take to soccer?
A: I knew soccer from watching it on TV, but from the actual playing perspective, I loved goal keeper. I watched it on TV and enjoyed seeing those guys flying around and making great saves. At the time, I didn't care about the other aspects of the game too much.
Q: How did you learn to play goalkeeper?
A: I just worked really hard at it. Once I decided to do it, and the coach saw that I wasn't afraid to throw my body around, I pretty much just learned on my own. I didn't have an individual trainer or a goalkeeper coach, but I did a number of other things. I checked out every soccer book I possibly could at the library and found a way to watch it on TV. We didn't have ESPN so it made it kind of tough, but I remember there being one PBS channel that aired Soccer Made in Germany, and if you ask anyone around my age who was in to soccer at that time, that's what you watched. My coach also told me two things about playing the position. He said, "I didn't know a lot about goalkeeping, but I know your job is to keep the ball out of the back of the net, and if you don't let anyone score we will never lose a game." To this day, I still tell that to my players.
Q: At what point did you realize you could play at the collegiate level?
A: It happened really late for me. There were no club teams in the area, so recruiting was a lot different back then. I remember my last season in high school, my coach handed me a brochure from a college and he suggested that I contact the coach over there. I ended up talking to the coach at Methodist University, a Division III school, and he convinced me to go on a visit there. Tt was late in the process though, so we all decided that I would take a year off and then come back in the fall. During the year off, I got involved with a club team in the Atlanta area where I was by far the youngest guy out there. It was an adult men's team and I was a kid just out of high school.
Q: How did your game develop in college to the point where you were a three-time All-Conference selection?
A: Well I showed up never really having any formal training in goalkeeping, and in fact at Methodist, the coach that trained me wasn't even a "goalkeeper coach." I was successful in it but I would say that most of that was because of athleticism. As a goalkeeper I had a lot of bad habits because I was never really trained correctly, but ultimately because of desire and work ethic, I was able to be successful.
Q: Was college the last level of soccer you played?
A: No, I actually played after college. After finishing my collegiate career I stayed in the North Carolina area and was pretty 
well connected with other college players from our conference, especially with UNC Greensboro. They had just won the Division III National Championship, and a lot their players were starting an amateur team in Greensboro that I was able to join. Considering they had just won a national championship, we were good enough to quickly transition into semi-pro team, which at the time was part of the United States Interregional Soccer League (USISL). It was the highest level of soccer because there was no MLS and the North American Soccer League (NASL) was defunct. I played professionally for two years and our team actually won its own national championship. Overall, it was a great experience.
Q: During your playing career is there a moment or match that sticks out to you?
A: We actually had the chance to play the U.S National Team when I was with Greensboro. We scrimmaged them in Winston-Salem, which of course was quite the thrill.
Q: How did you get into coaching?
A: It started in college. I was a little bit behind in school so I needed to go in for an extra semester, and they had just started a women's team a few years prior. The head coach of the team was one that had coached me in college, and he suggested that I become an assistant coach for him. I did that for the semester, and after I graduated, he told me that if I still wanted to come back and coach that I could. I ended up there for nine more years and we went to a few Final Fours during that time.
Q: How did you end up at the University of Florida?
A: Becky Burleigh was a player that we coached at Methodist, and she ended up getting the job as head coach at Florida. They had just won the National Championship in the fall of 1998, and in the spring of 1999 they had a coaching position over there, so she called me up and asked if I wanted to be on the staff. I was there for five years, and it was a great experience where I learned a lot. We ended up winning three SEC championships and went to an NCAA Division I Final four. The team had a lot of great players on it as well, including Abby Wambach.
Q: Wait you coached Abby Wambach, what was that like?
A: As a freshman, her team had won the national championship the year before I got there. Her competiveness was what stood out most to me, and to be honest, she did things out there that no one was doing at the college game during that time. I mean she still is regarded as one of the best players in the world.
Q: What was the next step after Florida?
A: I wanted to be a head coach and got the opportunity to go out to California and take over as head coach at Fresno State. The people there were fantastic and we were the only thing around for about two hours, so Fresno State is a big deal in that community. Soccer is also a pretty big deal in California, so we had a lot of support throughout my five years. It was a good experience and I enjoyed my time there.
Q: You went from Fresno State to head coach at NC State, what was coaching in the ACC like?
A: Yeah...that's a different thing. When you thrust yourself into the best conference in the country, it can come with a higher level of responsibility. I found though that wherever you go, you are always learning. I was learning at Fresno and then you move somewhere else where the level is higher and you have to do things differently, but you still continue to learn. It was a lot different than Fresno, but overall it was a good four years at NC State.
Q: What role have all of your previous coaching experiences played, now that you are at Tech?
A: Well I've had a lot of different experiences, both positive and negative. Like I said earlier, you are always learning and developing as a coach, and are constantly gaining an understanding of what works and what doesn't. You often go through times that are great, which causes you to learn from positive experiences, but then sometimes you can go through negative ones. The important thing to remember is if you only focus on the negative ones and always see things as negative, you really aren't growing. Sometimes negative experiences may be better and you can look back on it and say that's going to help me in the future.
Q: What's your favorite thing about being a coach?
A: I do get a lot of joy and satisfaction out of seeing players excel, and to see the joy on their face when they accomplish a particular goal is always a big thing for me. Coaches try to put things in place and build teams, but in the end, it's about the players getting the opportunity to experience things that they may have never before. We are going to work hard and see if we can make that happen here and get to a point where we can win a conference championship at Tech, and to see the excitement on all of the players' faces if we can accomplish that goal.
