Chad Jones, the head coach for Millikin University’s Men’s Soccer team, has had some ups and downs this season; or maybe just some downs. It has been a rocky start for the team, having a record of 2-7-1. No matter the record though the team will not let it break their spirits.
“The kids are getting better everyday,” Jones said. “And the boys aren’t down which is good.”
This is Jones’ third year coaching at Millikin University. He was previously employed at a Division II school before he was offered the job to come back and rebuild the program at his beloved alma mater. Jones was pretty excited to have this opportunity and referred to it as his “dream job”. One of his reasons were that he had been the assistant coach at Millikin the only year the soccer team won the CCIW conference and then had to leave to get his masters and couldn’t wait to come back.
Jones described this year as a definite rebuilding year for the boys. The team is young and only has two seniors and one junior, leaving the bulk of them sophomores and freshmen. Because of this, a great deal of them are playing key roles in this year’s season.
When Jones first came to Millikin the prior coach had quite a few kids on the roster but due to certain circumstances, most ended up quitting; leaving Jones with a fresh start to bring in two new, talented recruiting classes.
Bryan Marshall, Millikin University’s Assistant Athletic Director for Sports Information, elaborated more on why they lost so many boys that year.
“One of the things that had kind of been an issue in the past was keeping kids involved,” Marshall said. “Hopefully we can keep up with this group and have them play all four years.”
Millikin also had a hard time keeping a steady coach. Jones is the third coach since 2007. It is hard for any sports team to build its program up when their coach changes every few years. Jones hopefully brings stability to Men’s Soccer.
BJ Noble, the head coach in 2007, was a California guy who had talked like he would be here for a long time to help the program but after two seasons he was ready to head back to California. Marshall said that it was one you could have seen coming. Millikin then brought in another guy, Mark Stollsteimer. He ended up just not being the right fit for Millikin and Marshall defined it as the team lost discipline while he was here. Overall, the program wasn’t headed in the direction they wanted it to so that’s when they brought in Jones.
Since coach Jones had been a player here and an assistant coach at Millikin when the program was really good, it was exactly what was needed at the time for the team.
“He knew the program, knew the university and had that passion that could really restore the program,” Marshall said.
Non-conference games are not as important as the conference ones, but they do prepare the team for the other games so they can compete competitively in the conference. The CCIW is an extremely difficult conference; the teams that are in it are some of the top teams in the country. Millikin is hopeful that it can be competitive and play with the teams. Marshall said that they started to show they could last year so it’s not impossible for Millikin to do well this year in the conference.
“I think we’ll surprise some people and win some games people don’t think we should,” Marshall said. “I think we’ll have some success.”