After falling short of expectations, Rutgers women’s soccer is prepared to ‘sweep the shed’ in 2023
PISCATAWAY, N.J. — Rutgers football has ‘CHOP.,’ a mantra that the program carries that personifies their mentality of hard work and attention to detail. Now, after an offseason of introspection and self-evaluation, Rutgers women’s soccer is prepared to ‘sweep the shed.’
For Rutgers women’s soccer, it is a new mentality to get back to their old ways of winning.
Last season ended early for Rutgers, losing in the first round of the NCAA Tournament. For a team that had made the Final Four of the NCAA Tournament in 2021, it was a disappointing end to the season.
Four straight losses, including in the Big Ten Tournament and then the NCAA Tournament, marked a season where Rutgers started off strong but lost direction in the second half of the season.
A 13-5-2 season is by no means an underwhelming season, but there is no doubt that this group felt like 2022 was marked by unrealized expectations.
“100 percent. So you look at it – we feel we have done a lot of really good things in our program over the years, and it’s how you judge success and failure,” head coach Mike O’Neill told Rutgers Wire last week.
“And so for us, we felt we could have gotten more out of last year. Toward the end of the year, we kind of got lost a bit. And that was the time that we should be playing our best soccer. And we didn’t do that. I know that they were very disappointed and I know the staff was disappointed. So we’ve taken that experience and that has been our motivation for the past seven months is that we weren’t happy with the way that it ended.”
This offseason, Rutgers didn’t go heavy into the transfer portal, instead making one addition in Gia Vicari. The former Georgetown forward, three times an All-Big East selection, will be asked to bring consistency at the forward position.
O’Neill raves about Vicari’s scoring ability and the way she has integrated into the team this offseason. But he mostly recognizes that Vicari’s work ethic and mentalty fits into this program.
For O’Neill and his team, getting back on track this season is as much about doing the right things off the field as it is on the practice pitch and gameday.
This offseason, the team read the book Legacy which is about the New Zealand rugby program. New Zealand is consistently the top rugby team in the world, despite being one of the smallest countires to play the sport. Hard work and team spirit are at the core of New Zealand’s ability to develop top-flite international rugby talent.
One of the concepts deeply embedded in the book is that of “sweep the shed.”
The idea is that no one is above any role, everyone must be willing to do the little things. The ‘shed’ is slang for the locker room and the New Zealand rugby team, one of the best (if not the best) in the world takes pride in cleaning up after themselves following practice and games.
It is a mentality of humility that has resonated with the soccer program as they look to bounce back from a disappointing 2022 season.
“To me, it’s the little things- it makes me think about when you’re at a hotel, you clean up your hotel room before you leave,” midfielder Sara Brocious said.
“There are people there to clean up after you but you clean up anyway. It’s just doing the right thing all the time -picking up trash when you see it. Doesn’t have to be just cleaning up either. It’s just doing the right thing like doing your homework, for class, and taking care of whatever needs to be taken care of so that we can focus on what we need to focus on when we get here. Just being a good person.”
This Rutgers team has the potential to be very good. There is balance on the roster, with some strong veteran pieces along with some promising young talent that is ready to break through and play significant minutes.
O’Neill knows how to balance and build a team, not unlike his predecessor, Glenn Crooks.
He smiles when asked about this team, leaning into his black leather chair inside his office. He doesn’t talk about their skillset or their stats.
Instead, he peppers the conversation with the term “good people” when he describes the players on his program.
“The thing that is so important for us, is there has to be meaning in everything that we do. It’s just not soccer. It’s just not the education. It’s everything – it’s the education, it’s the soccer, it’s the people,” O’Neill said.
“It’s putting your heart on the table and asking everybody who’s involved in your program, just not the coach, just not the players, the trainers, the strength conditioning, our operations, Matt [Choquette of athletic communications] – everybody that takes care of it. So there’s got to be…you really want to be invested in what you’re doing. So we have these core values that are really important. Those core values are for life. That’s what they are – they’re for life.
“That’s what we’re here to do. You know, we have the soccer part of it but we’re supposed to prepare them. To get that piece of paper [and] they stand on their own two feet, they make their own way. Which is really important, but we prepare them for whatever they’re going to do when they leave here.”
