Evolution of a coach

In a world plagued by the curt answers and terse explanations of inhospitable coaches (see: Belichick, Bill), a coach willing to make time for the media is a rare commodity.

To journalists, interviews with coaches like Boston University women’s soccer coach Nancy Feldman are like a ray of sunshine on an apocalyptic day.

For those who have bore witness to Belichick’s brusqueness, Feldman’s willingness to chat with media members ‘-‘- or anybody, for that matter ‘-‘- is striking. Feldman has an uncanny ability to turn what should be a quick postgame meeting with the press into a 20-minute discussion about her players, the game and anything and everything she can find relevant in between.

The coach makes no effort to hide her passion for the game, and her exuberance is one of the most telling reasons for BU’s success since Feldman helped bump the program from club to varsity status 14 seasons ago.

Senior captain Liz Speck met Feldman while playing at a tournament in high school, and was immediately hooked by Feldman’s personality and enthusiasm for the game.

‘[Feldman] really sold me on her passion,’ Speck said. ‘When I talked to the players, they loved her. You can kind of tell about a coach from how many people quit, and on her teams, nobody quits.

‘It’s a tribute to her that people want to be here.’

BU’s success under Feldman’s tutelage not only says that soccer players want to play for her, but that good soccer players want to play for her. Under Feldman, BU has garnered five America East championships, six trips to the NCAA Tournament, 45 First-Team All-America East selections, 16 America East All-Rookie team honorees and numerous other individual accomplishments, such as America East Offensive and Defensive Player of the Year winners.

Feldman has been named the conference’s Coach of the Year a staggering six times, easily more than any other coach in America East history. She was also named the Northeast Region Coach of the Year by the NSCAA in 2001 and the NEWISA Division-I Coach of the Year in 1997.

Over the course of her 20-year coaching career, Feldman has amassed 269 wins and a .717 winning percentage, ranking 17th and 18th all-time among collegiate coaches in each category, respectively, heading into the 2008 season.

Soccer, however, hasn’t been Feldman’s only coaching forte. While coaching at Division-III Plymouth State College in the early 1990s, Feldman doubled both as the school’s women’s soccer coach and women’s basketball coach, and was twice recognized as the Little East Conference’s Women’s Basketball Coach of the Year. During her final year, Feldman’s soccer team went 15-1-2 and her basketball squad finished 21-7 ‘-‘- both teams qualified for the NCAA Tournament.

‘I actually did my better coaching job in basketball to get that program to the NCAA Tournament in the last year I was there,’ Feldman said. ‘I wasn’t a very good basketball coach when I started. I became an adequate basketball coach and I made the most of my abilities.

‘I played [basketball] in high school and I coached JV at Smith College when I was a grad student. My father was a basketball coach at the youth levels, and, I mean, I loved it. I’m a sports person and I’d watched tons of basketball so I knew basketball, but I didn’t really know basketball coaching at a high level ‘-‘- so I kind of learned on the job. But I was a quick study. I think coaching in some ways is coaching and motivating, but I was not a great Xs and Os coach.’

Though she enjoyed the double-duty coaching at PSC, Feldman said the workload ‘-‘- especially when it came to recruiting ‘-‘- was tiring to say the least. When the BU job opened up in 1995, Feldman decided the time was right to focus on soccer and made the jump to Division I.

Feldman inherited a team of what she termed ‘recreational players’ upon her arrival, and pointed out that it took a couple of years before the talent was up to snuff.

‘Well, it was a club. It was a viable club, but it was a club,’ Feldman said of the state of the BU soccer program upon her arrival. ‘There were a couple of good athletes and OK players, but I mean, our Plymouth team could have beaten that club team. That’s no disrespect to the club players, but they were recreational players.

‘When I first got here in April, we had a meeting with the club players and we said, ‘OK, this is the way it’s going to be ‘-‘- you’re more than welcome to tryout, we’re not looking to clean house.’ I thought it was going to be very important to have some stability . . . just to have a couple of mature, whether it was going to be five or 10 or whatever number, older players just to showcase the way to be a student and to be a responsible citizen.’

A handful of the club players made the commitment to the varsity level, and paired with a core of talented freshmen, BU dominated an easy out-of-conference schedule, going 11-0-0 outside America East. Unfortunately, the Terriers could only muster a humble 3-4-0 record in conference, finishing an unimpressive fifth out of eight teams.

However, that 3-4-0 record would be the last sub-.500 record the Terriers would finish with in America East, and starting with the 1997 campaign ‘-‘- not coincidentally the same year that a future All-American by the name of Deidre Enos arrived on campus ‘-‘- BU began to find itself consistently among the class of America East.

BU’s 2008 squad was arguably Feldman’s best to date, boasting nine all-conference honorees. Led by SoccerNews.net Player of the Year candidate Marisha Schumacher-Hodge, the team went 10-0-0 in conference play, including a 2-1 win over Stony Brook University in the conference championship game. In the process, BU became the first America East squad to go unbeaten and untied in conference play since Feldman’s Terriers in 2000.

BU’s season turned around during a post-game meeting following a disappointing outing at the Minnesota Gold Classic, according to Feldman. The offense was all but non-existent, and everybody involved with the team knew it was time for a change of strategy.

Feldman gathered the players and coaches for a meeting the Tuesday after their return from Minnesota and prepared a list of bullet points emphasizing the team’s strengths and weaknesses.

The team seemed eager to hear what Feldman had to say.

‘We had to take a look at ourselves and say, ‘Geez, what are we good at? And what are we not so good at?” Feldman said. ‘I prepared a list of bullet points of how we were going to be successful based on what I had learned about the team, offensively and defensively.

‘[The players] were primed to receive it. They wanted to find the answer. They were looking for the answer and they knew it, but I think [the meeting] provided clarity.’

That ability to provide clarity and criticism to her players has been Feldman’s biggest improvement as a coach at BU.

‘Five years ago or 10 years ago, when I’d get feedback from the team and I asked them questions about what I could be doing better, I heard a lot, ‘You could communicate better,” Feldman said. ‘And I used to think to myself, ‘How can I communicate better? I feel like all I’m doing is talking.’

‘But you know, it was never enough. Players want and need feedback every day. You can’t give feedback to 29 players every day, but you can start to give half the team feedback one day and the other half the next day. What you learn is that they want the truth ‘-‘- your honest opinion. They don’t want fluff, they want to hear the straight skinny.’

Speck, for one, believes Feldman can consider her mission accomplished.

‘I think it’s her ability to communicate with her players,’ Speck said when asked what has made Feldman an exemplary coach. ‘She makes sure we’re all like friends and family and are able to communicate with one another.’