The Kansas soccer program will open the 2024 season — and the Nate Lie coaching era — later today with a road game at South Dakota State.
While the focus since his hiring last December has been on the foundational steps required for any program to transition from one coach to another, several Jayhawks on Lie’s first roster already have identified what it will take to compete in his image.
“What they expect out of us is you go out there and work,” said Ohio State transfer Brooke Otto, one of 15 newcomers who will team with 15 returners on Lie’s first KU squad.
Even on the brink of the season’s first official kickoff, there are so many unknowns with this roster. How will the pieces fit together? Who will emerge as the top options on offense? Who will prove to be the most steady presence on the back line on defense?
What about chemistry, leadership, handling adversity, inevitable growing pains and building against a tough Big 12 slate?
All of that, far more than the results of each game and the season as a whole, will be the basis for how Year 1 is measured when they look back a few months from now.
But before they get to that point, the Jayhawks at least have enough of a feel for what will play — win or lose, good or bad — in the eyes of their new head coach.
“Something that’s really special is he just shows value to everyone,” graduate senior Hallie Klanke said. “It’s like, if you’re gonna show up and work, you don’t have to be a certain copy or this certain exact thing.”
That approach, Klanke said, allows everyone on the roster to strive to be the best version of themselves rather than swimming against the current in an attempt to try to fit their game into a predetermined prototype for the kind of player Lie wants to coach.
Size, skill, speed, smarts and more all go into making a soccer player. And while the athletes who have all of those skills in one package tend to be the best players on any team, there’s also room on Lie’s roster for those who excel in just one or two of those areas, even if they’re slightly weaker in the rest.
“He values creativity; the entire staff does, which I think is really special,” Klanke said. “Maybe a certain game is going to call for something else, and so it's like, if you develop all those things, it's only going to make us better. It’s awesome when you see a coach who values that and it’s just encouraging to everyone because you don’t have to look at someone and be like, ‘Oh, I want to be her.’ It’s like, ‘I want to work hard and I want to bring what I have to the table, which I think is really cool.”
Finding value in each player, Otto said, goes hand in hand with the general philosophy the team is operating under during Lie’s first season in charge.
“It’s all like, what can you control,” Otto said. “You control your effort. You can control your attitude. All those things on the field. And it's like, if you (establish those things), then they can coach us on things that we can get better at. (It’s just important to) turn up to training every day and go out there and give your best no matter how good or bad your day was.”
At his previous stop at Xavier, even with a handful of All-American-caliber players on his roster, Lie often preferred to talk about the team over the individual.
That approach has been magnified in the early going at Kansas because he’s still learning exactly what he has. And that’s why he chose not to single out any particular player when asked if there were any who best captured what the next era of Kansas soccer players would look like.
“I do think we have some players that are on the cusp of making an impact,” Lie said ahead of the season opener. “But if it's OK for this moment, I'm probably going to withhold specific names.”
Instead, he’ll continue to push the idea of growing as a team and putting down roots while building all of it around three key components.
“As we work to create our core values for this fall, we are going to play with a sense of selflessness, togetherness and unity,” Lie said.
It all starts at 7 p.m. tonight, in Brookings, South Dakota, at Fishback Soccer Park, where the Jayhawks will kick off the Lie era and their 2024 season as eager to learn and grow together as they are to play.
— For tickets to all KU athletic events, visit kuathletics.com
