With the fall semester underway many fall sports have started their practices. For the women’s soccer team they will be starting this season with a new head coach who isn’t new to the program.

“I am 30 years old and grew up in Bend but played club soccer in Portland growing up, actually on the same youth team as Dom Doty the old coach,” Cole McCool said in an email. “ I went to University of Nevada Las Vegas where I played soccer for four years and graduated in 2007.”

Coach McCool isn’t new to teaching soccer. In fact he has taught youth club soccer back in his home town of Bend, Oregon.

“I originally started coaching at Linfield because Dom got the Women’s head coaching job and I had just graduated and had been coaching youth club soccer back home in Bend,” McCool said. “Dom offered me a job as his assistant. We were very good friends and teammates growing up so it was an easy choice to make the move and jump into college coaching with a good buddy that had similar soccer ideas.”

McCool has been at Linfield helping build the women’s program for some time now. Though he is now the full time coach for the Wildcats he still manages to help teach the youth.

“I am also a director of coaching for a youth club the Beaverton area,” McCool said.

Since Coach McCool has been able to see the women’s program grow since he arrived here and now holds the position as head coach, he looks forward to setting goals for this year’s team.

“As far as plans that we have for the team this year, the plan is pretty similar to the past in that our main goal is to win a conference title,” McCool said.  “We have finished second the past three years and everyone is very motivated and ready to get over the hump and win.”

With the women’s team playing in California this weekend, McCool looks forward to making his team a conference winning machine.

“We are actually meeting with our team psychologist this weekend in California to go over goal setting but on a team level we want to be fitter, sharper, and more dominant than ever and have been putting in a lot of extra work to be physically ready,” McCool said.  “We have also talked a lot about having a very clearly defined style of play, or brand of soccer, which includes being very comfortable with the ball and dominant in possession, while committing players forward every chance we can to be proactive and attack minded. “

McCool has also set some personal goals that he wants to see the team accomplish this season.

“Personally on a smaller scale, a goal of mine is to make training very fast paced and engaging every day so that the speed of the game is something that we are really comfortable with and we are able to push the pace,” McCool said.  “It also makes training more fun and hopefully keeps players motivated to train all season as the grind of training five days a week wears on. We want the environment to be really positive, really active, and really enjoyable.”

With the women’s soccer team ready for back-to-back non-conference games this weekend against Cal Lutheran and UC-Santa Cruz, it’ll shine a light on just how dominant they will be against their first conference game on Sept. 13 against Pacific.

The Wildcats first conference game is against former NWC reigning champions Pacific.

The Women’s soccer should get some match play in California and translate that into a victory against Pacific.

The women’s soccer team will be a team to watch this year with the potential to grab the NWC championship and possibly even more.

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