Yeagley follows in footsteps of famous father in IU soccer

Todd Yeagley enters his second season as the Hoosiers’ men’s soccer coach with high expectations to lead his team back to the promised land.

After all, it is in his blood.

For 31 years, Yeagley’s father molded Indiana into a soccer powerhouse, winning six national championships and becoming the sport’s all-time wins leader and a 1989 National Soccer Hall of Fame inductee.

The Yeagley family is the past, present and future of the Indiana soccer program.
Todd starred for the Hoosiers under his father’s tutelage from 1991 to 1994, garnering All-American honors all four years.

The Hoosiers have won only one national championship since Jerry Yeagley’s retirement in 2003 after his sixth and final championship, which came the following year with Mike Freitag as coach. Despite the long championship drought, Todd said he still sees high expectations surrounding Indiana as he tries to craft his own legacy with the Hoosiers.

“Maybe this isn’t a team that’s a defending national champion or a team that made a College Cup, but people expect IU,” Todd said. “We have had targets on our backs for over 30 years as Indiana.”

The 2011 version has seen some new faces, most notably transfers A.J. Corrado and Jamie Vollmer, who will make Indiana a more balanced group than in years past.
The Hoosiers lost junior forward Will Bruin to the Houston Dynamo of the MLS. Bruin scored 18 goals and a team-high 41 points in the 2010 season, which ended with a Sweet 16 loss to eventual national champion Akron.

With the newcomers on the roster, senior Chris Estridge said it is very important everybody meshes well together on the field, and that starts with the upperclassmen, himself included.

“We have a lot of good players that have come in this year. It is important for the older guys to keep the team together,” Estridge said.

Ranked at No. 17 in the preseason, Todd said he sees one specific way to get the results he and the team want: talented players suiting up in the cream and crimson.
“We have to make sure we have the talent. That’s first and foremost,” Todd said. “I think we’re getting better in spots. We have difference-makers in key areas of the field.”

Todd said he often draws on his experience as a player. The Hoosiers lost to
Virginia in the national championship in his final college match, and Todd explains to his team the kind of intensity and focus that is necessary to be successful on this level.
“The teams that have made deep runs have had a confidence and a swagger to them,” Todd said. “We’re going to make the other team really have to be at their best to ever get a result against us.”

Todd consistently preaches to the team that they need to have a confidence about them each and every game, a message that has resonated with junior goalkeeper Luis Soffner.

“We are trying to develop that type of mentality right now, when teams play us they need to know that Indiana is not a team to be taken lightly,” Soffner said.

Despite being expected by his fellow coaches to win the Big Ten for the eighth time in nine years, Todd said he believes all that talk doesn’t mean anything right now. As far as his players, he thinks time will tell whether or not they are deserving of the accolades and if they are heading in the right direction.

“Whether that’s premature expectations based on the name or reality, that’s certainly to be determined these first three or four weeks to see how we’re doing,” Todd said.