Was played at TU on Saturday night. Talk about 2 outstanding HS teams in Jenks and Union. Jenks had 2 excellent players...1 was Will Edwards of Jenks who was named a HS All America and will be headed to TU. Kid has great feet and an exquisite touch. Jenks also had a kid who played RMF and was sprinter fast. Routinely beat the Union left back who I regard as a tremendous player (and I know well). Union controlled the possession for most of the game (65% is my guess) and generated a lot of chances but only cashed in on one on a spilled ball from the Jenks keeper. Jenks tied it in the 2nd when the Union keeper slipped on the wet field. Game ultimately went to PKs and Jenks somehow solved the Union GK who is one of the best I've ever seen versus PKs. It went 11 PK rounds! Jenks is ranked in the top 10 in the nation by MaxPreps/USA Today...and Union's only losses in-state were to Jenks, 2-1 1st game of the season and 2-1 (pks). The quality of soccer in OK, and specifically eastern OK is excellent.
6A State HS Soccer Championship
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The men are fine and Tom is really able to pull talent from just about anywhere now. Tom has built TU into a known NCAA brand in terms of soccer. Tom has always been frustrated by the lack of consistent effort he gets as they will go on the road and beat the #1 team in the country and then drop points to a team they should handle easily.
The women have trouble recruiting the great local talent for a couple of reasons:
1) There are a lot more NCAA D1 women's soccer teams vying for the great players
2) It is extremely rare that a soccer play (men or women) is offered a full scholarship which means that TU has to make up some of the remaining cost balance with add'l aid sources. This hurts TU because of the high cost of tuition vs in-state competitors like OU and OSU and even Arkansas since Arkansas offers everyone in the (918) area code in-state tuition. Damon is getting good players to come to TU but half of Union's national championship team 3 years ago went to Arkansas including 1 all-american and another player that has since been invited to the US WNT U20 camp (whose father played basketball at TU).
BTW, any soccer fans out there, TU just announced a fund raising campaign to replace the playing surface at the Hurricane Soccer and Track & Field Complex to a new bermuda hybrid that is drought resistant and survives through the winter. $30 will by you 1 sq yd. Anyone who has walked on the grass there knows it is the best playing surface in the entire state for soccer already and this will push it further ahead of everyone.
The men's program has been strong but the last two years have been frustrating.
The women's program seems to historically be more up and down. I realize there are some hurdles to get Olympic sports partial scholarship players. However I think a strong woman's program can hold enough attention locally to get us our share of talent and look forward to it, realizing of course its a process.
The women's program seems to historically be more up and down. I realize there are some hurdles to get Olympic sports partial scholarship players. However I think a strong woman's program can hold enough attention locally to get us our share of talent and look forward to it, realizing of course its a process.
We have done a poor job recruiting women’s soccer players from the Tulsa area. Okla State, Arkansas and OU have all out recruited us locally imo. We only had one area girl on the roster this past season and will only have one this coming season. All the other area programs have multiple Tulsa area girls despite not being located here.
The men’s program has six area players for reference.
The men’s program has six area players for reference.
We depend on the girls to pull weight in the classroom and frankly a lot of the local girls can’t hack it. Which hacks off some of the local coaches for not taking girls anyway that they think are talented. But our girls team has to hit the books. We depend on them for the school APR and they need to be able to qualify for academic financial aid to go to school for free so they need to be competitive against other TU freshman — and a lot, not all, but most, of the local girls you are thinking of just don’t have the brains (or speed) to play for TU. Both girls that graduated this year are going to the graduate schools of their choice and they are prestigious choices in their fields. We are doing girls soccer the right way right now. They are winning on and off the pitch. If Holland Hall doesn’t like it, or some parent out in Broken Arrow has trouble with TU because her precious Mikaela or whoever smokes pot daily and makes Cs in gen ed courses and thinks it’s sexist we don’t take female academic waivers, so be it.
Couple of questions.
1). Why are the boys able to sign local players who can cut academics? Shouldn’t the financial and APR equation be the same? Do we take male waivers in soccer and not female ?
2). If a girl is good enough to play at OSU. OU or Arky she should be good enough to play at TU.
1. My statements above also apply to the boys, though I admit we’ve taken a few marginal ones over the years. One of the two I know about graduated with a finance degree.
2. Disagree. Those programs, as a whole, aren’t looking to be in the bottom half of the Top 25, or higher, each year like TU. We’ve slacked a bit lately, but we should be signing players better than those programs while out performing them in the classroom too. We’ve been doing that off and on for ten years now. Of all things I can complain about Tulsa sports, girls soccer is probably at the bottom of the list. If there is legit criticism of girls soccer is that it is essentially upper middle class welfare for girls who’s parents can pay full freight at a state school but that’s a different thread.
If OSU doesn’t have those type of aspirations after building their $20M women’s facility then they’ve wasted a lot of money.
Arkansas has made the NCAA’s 4 of the last 6 years. Reached the round of 32 three of those and the round of 16 once during that time. Not great but certainly respectable.
Guess you believe that TU women will have more success than both those programs over the next 5 to 10 years ?
Since 2007 I show TU is 0-4-1 against OSU. Can’t find a record against Arkansas.
Arkansas has made the NCAA’s 4 of the last 6 years. Reached the round of 32 three of those and the round of 16 once during that time. Not great but certainly respectable.
Guess you believe that TU women will have more success than both those programs over the next 5 to 10 years ?
Since 2007 I show TU is 0-4-1 against OSU. Can’t find a record against Arkansas.
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Title IX requires the construction of comparable facilities. You know that. They had to build that facility to expand and update Lewis. Surprised at the lack of success against OSU. Would be curious what years those were played. And yes, I reasonably expect that the program will solidify its national reputation over the next decade
OSU soccer was built this past year solely from a large donation (along with a few small ones) earmarked for that purpose. Are you suggesting OSU was forced to build a new soccer complex this past year because of the update to the football stadium in 2008? I’ve never heard that idea floated. There are no comparables on the women’s side to football facilities at any SEC or Big12 schools
Yes. I don’t have direct evidence but it would be consistent with current law, policy, and enforcement activity.
Interesting. Can you point me to an article regarding OSU. Would love to read about the decision. I haven’t seen anything at the likes of OU which have been built on the women’s side that come anywhere near what has gone on with the football over the past ten years. Title IV spending has always been one of those gray areas to me.
Nothing specific about OSU that I know about. But the comparable facility standard is explained very well in a pdf put out by the NCAA. Basically you can’t build a palace for the boys without a comparable facilities for the girls. They don’t have to be the same or cost the same, just comparable and there’s formulas for how that’s determined. Alabama just got gigged for it by the feds as I recall so Alabama announced boocoo uogrades. So I’d be willing to bet throughout the Obama administration someone from DOE Title IX was sending Dear Colleague letters to OSU saying “no really, we actually do mean it this time. You can’t spend all this money on football while the girls soccer facility lags behind. They probably got spooked by recent enforcement and the possibility of bad press and finally made it a fundraising priority.
The ID camp was a few days ago. Call Coach Cussen I’m sure he will tell you the main camp days.
Here's the link to Mac's Soccer School. They tag team the camps to make them worthwhile and keep costs down between the two. And they do a great job with the kids. My son has gone the last 3 years and this year he is doing the advanced college ID camp.
Thanks...as fate would have it there is a TU men's soccer player working at my daughter's ortho. They struck up a soccer conversation today because she was wearing a soccer shirt and he invited her to several upcoming TU events. Very nice kid and a great representative of TU.
