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UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN SOCCER MEDIA CONFERENCESeptember 21, 2015John TraskMadison, Wisconsin THE MODERATOR: The men's Soccer Team Head Coach John Trask is here. We will have opening comments and then take questions. COACH TRASK: First of all, thank you. It's going to be a fantastic week for us. Looking forward to an excellent match against SIUE an NCAA tournament team that I'm sure will be ready to come to McClimon tomorrow night and put on a great performance. And then we follow that up with Maryland at home in a nationally televised game on the Big Ten Network, "PAC the MAC," but more importantly we are going to have quite a few members of the 1995 National Championship team back in town along with other alumni for a great celebration of that championship from 20 years ago. It will be great to see those guys. I had to coach against them, and it was a tremendous team performance and won them a National Championship many years ago. In terms of our team, we have really challenged these guys, they say adversity makes you stronger. I think put more miles on our players going to the west coast and then back-to-back weekends going to the east coast, to New York City, playing our first Big Ten game against Rutgers and following it up this past weekend against St. John's. Had a couple of home games, looking forward to being back at McClimon but I think these guys have gotten hardened a little bit more. I know a lot of coaches speak about process, and I don't utilize that word very often, to me it's not about process, it's about becoming a damn good soccer team. I think we are well on our way. I like this team. I think there is a great personality, and I think there is an electric athleticism to them and a strength to them, and while still relatively young, we are looking forward to the challenges in front of us, and the Rutgers win on the road in the 109th, 59th minute, literally a buzzer beater, which you rarely if ever see in soccer, and then to turn around and go out and play a storied program like St. John's. I have a great respect for that team and beat them 2-1 on the road. I was kidding the guys I was saying they are going to have to rename Studio 54 "Badgers 54" for what we did on the east coast in New York City, and I know our guys loved going to Time Square after the big win. I will open it up for questions. Q. You alluded to it, but that was a big win for y'all at Rutgers, and do you think there was something that clicked in the guys' heads? Did you notice something different after you got back from training, saying, hey, we can do this? COACH TRASK: I think that's part of it, winning on the road in the Big Ten is difficult, and I heard what Paula Wilkins was saying regarding her young team. We've got some excellent older leadership, but we are still a relatively young team. We have a lot of redshirt freshman and true sophomores starting in very important roles, and learning how to win is not easy. You can call it a process. As I say it's about becoming a damn good sports team. Really proud of the effort put in, and I think when you look at Rutgers turning around beating Indiana at Indiana 4-1, I think people are starting to realize that the performance at Rutgers to get that win was big. St. John's, regardless of their results up to this point, everybody knows it's a difficult place to play, and our guys went in and got the job done so congrats to the players. Q. Do you see a spot where those two wins especially on the road is going to give this team that is, like you said, young in certain spots, a needed boost of confidence? COACH TRASK: No question, confidence is a big part of the development of a group of players, and you've gotta score some goals and you gotta taste the victory. We had moments even in the St. John's game where we felt maybe we could have put it away, gotten a third goal and these guys have never been up on the road. We won three games last year, we started the season 0-4, missing a key player who was off with the New Zealand National Team in Sam Brotherton, not to make excuses but we have only had this team intact for four games, and in my mind we're 2-2 on the season in terms of having a full complement of players so, yeah, the confidence level is high, they know they can win, and now hopefully we can continue with our three games at home this week or through next week, before we have to go to Michigan, so three games at McClimon, and we are looking forward to getting back in the comfy confines. Q. You talked about the young guys on the team. Obviously you can yell stuff from the sidelines and you can yell stuff during practice and try to get through to them, but how much does Drew Conner work almost as an extension of yourself out on the field. He probably shares the leadership role in getting young guys in line? COACH TRASK: Yeah, not just Drew, Carl Schneider is a 5th year senior, one of our captains, Adam Lauko is a 4th year senior, and we've got some other experienced older guys on the team, but Drew is huge. In fact, I said to Drew yesterday, after we got back from New York, that I feel for him in a way. He was on the 2013 team when we had an excellent team, and he's helped progress these young players. He's probably not going to get all of it, even though I challenged that we have bout two-thirds of our regular season in front of us and then the Big Ten and then hopefully NCAA, but Drew is very important and he's a guiding light for these young players, both for his personality and how he deals with the coaching staff. And he knows us best. He's been in more big moments with us than any of the younger players, and they're starting to realize we're tough, we're tough on players in practice so hopefully on game day, you know, they can adjust to the situation and get the results that they want to get. It's a player-driven sport; it's not a coaches-driven sport. We don't get to substitute on the fly, we don't get to call time outs, so what we do in training is critically important to their performance on game day. Q. John, where were you 20 years ago? How good was that '95 Badgers squad? COACH TRASK: They were phenomenal. I was at the Final Four as a member of the Indiana coaching staff, had to deal with them the previous couple of years. They kind of knocked Indiana off the pedestal in '91, or '92 was their first Big Ten Championship, first time Indiana hadn't won it. They broke, I believe, a 64-game unbeaten streak by Indiana in the Big Ten, that group of players that eventually won the National Championship, and I remember the weekend vividly. They host a large party at the Final Four and everybody was saying the winner of the Duke/Virginia game, the winner of the Duke/Virginia game, and Wisconsin was an underdog and they played Portland and had a good, solid win, and I remember everybody saying, "Oh, Duke is going to kill them, Duke is 20-times -- they're the ACC. This team is no good." And I said, "This will be a walk in the park; it will be men against the boys tomorrow." That Wisconsin team was so solid, big, strong, knew each other, and I think about some of the names, seeing Mike Gentile going to the Hall of Fame, Scott Lamphear already in the UW Hall of Fame, and there is a host of other guys that probably deserve it in the future. It was a tremendous team, they didn't give up a goal the whole NCAA Tournament, and I think that's only happened twice in the past 25 or 30 years. So Coach Launder and that staff and that team, what they did to win that National Championship, and it's always interesting, I think in the Big Ten we take it for granted, we compete at each other, but when it comes to those moments like that in a Final Four, I think there were a lot of people pulling for the Badgers on the basketball court, and we at Indiana or any of the coaches in the Big Ten were pulling for Wisconsin to win that championship in 1995. They were the best team. There was no question. That was no fluke. They were the best team. They passed the ball extremely well. They were very disciplined, and it's going to be great to see them. I'm sure a few of them have gotten grayer, lost hair in the process, just like myself, but it will be nice to see those guys. And I didn't really know them, other than having to compete against them in a way as another coach at another university, but it's going to be fun to share in their moment of, I think the 20 years, the most important one. I think it puts life in perspective a little bit, these guys are in their 40s, now. What they accomplished for this university was amazing. Q. You mentioned when you were at Indiana you could see them coming, knocking off Indiana, and then winning the National Championship. Now that you're a coach, 20 years later, when you coach young guys what do you think the biggest aspect -- character straight or whatever it is, what do you think it is that gives team the ability to -- okay, like they made one step, and then complete the leap by the end of the run? COACH TRASK: You know, there is no magic formula in soccer or in any sport. You've got to be put in those situations like I'm sure Coach Ryan would talk about Kaminsky and those guys over the course of their career, the more moments they get, the more high-profile, same with the volleyball program and obviously our football program here. The more high-profile moments where the chips are on the line, that's how student-athletes improve, and I don't think people realize all the time what college athletics provides these kids. What my guys went through with three weeks on the road, the adversity, we had vans breaking down in California, we couldn't train. That's a big part of the student-athlete experience, because it's real life. Not everything goes according to plan, and I think the guys from 20 years ago would say they learned valuable lessons from that run to win a National Championship and I know our guys are valuing the lessons they are learning as well right now, and I think we will start to see more and more "W's" with this group. It's a fun group to coach. Q. I think one guy that doesn't get a lot of pub, newer to the team is Sam Brotherton, from New Zealand, a talented kid. Can you tell us about his story and how he came here? COACH TRASK: Yeah, Sam through some agent friends of mine around the world, he committed to coming here. I went and met his family in Auckland, and he went on -- he was on their Under-20 National Team. He's also been with their Olympic group over the summer and has been in two camps with their full national team, prior to entering the University of Wisconsin, and to put that in context, Jerry Yeagley, the legendary coach at Indiana and I were speaking a couple of weeks ago and we could not recollect any player who has ever been in with their full national team prior to getting to school. Jordan Morris at Stanford right now is a member of our U.S. Men's National Team. He's actually going in for Olympic qualifying, so we wish them luck there, but to have a kid before entering college even decide to come to university, I think that speaks volumes about Wisconsin, and his parents believe in education, and Sam's pedigree, when you look at -- I'm not talking Big Ten, I'm not talking Wisconsin, I'm talking forty years of collegiate soccer, there may be three or four other kids in the history that have played for either Haiti or Jamaica's National Team prior to getting to university, and you know the story needs to be out there. Sam Brotherton is as big of a recruit as we're probably going to have during my tenure here. He was massive in the game the other day. He was extremely good in the game against Rutgers and, you know, the characteristics are so similar in many ways to A.J. Cochran who was our All-American defender who went pro a couple of years ago. It's just great to have him with the guys, and I think he's falling in love with Madison and the University of Wisconsin already, which is exciting for us to see as well. THE MODERATOR: Anything else for Coach? Thanks, John. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports   |
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