Former IU soccer teammates set to coach against each other

Before IU coach Todd Yeagley led the Hoosiers and Akron coach Caleb Porter led the Zips, they assisted on the sidelines at Indiana.

Before they assisted together, they played together on Jerry Yeagley Field, wearing a three-star IU soccer logo. While they played together, they lived together, when Yeagley was a senior and Porter was a redshirt freshman.

Now the former assistant coaches, the former teammates and the former roommates will meet for the first time in the postseason when IU travels to Akron for a 4 p.m. Sunday third-round NCAA Tournament game.

“We go back a ways,” Yeagley said, laughing, when talking about Porter.

In Ohio, the two men will set aside all of their formers. For 90 minutes, Yeagley will only be the head of a team that is trying to get to its first quarterfinal match since 2008.

"As you start to get older you start to see guys you had some pretty good relationships with on other sidelines,” Yeagley said. "It’s part of the game. Caleb and I get along real well and we’ll always have that relationship."

While Yeagley and his No. 14-seeded Hoosiers are, for now, only looking as far as the Elite Eight, the No. 3-seeded Zips have been a tournament favorite with - what some people claim - a paved road to the Final Four.

Senior Daniel Kelly attributes Akron’s high seed and their 19-1-1 record to an intense mentality Porter brings to the program that runs through the entire team, as well as having a solid roster.

“Overall if you look on paper, their back four plus their defensive mid, they’re all on the U-20 national team,” Kelly said. “So give them credit there and overall, they just play soccer.”

Since Kelly and his senior teammates joined this IU squad, the team has gone 0-1-1 against the Zips, with no match against them during their freshman year. As a head coach, Yeagley only faced Porter in a preseason match during the one year Yeagley spent as head coach at Wisconsin.

IU does have a 6-2-1 record in Sunday matches this season, but what the team has done doesn’t matter to Yeagley.

"All we’re looking at is a chance to play in the final eight, which very few players get that opportunity in their career over a four-year span,” Yeagley said. “There’s a lot of motivation for our players to go in there and leave everything on the field and put our best foot forward.”

Last Sunday in Bloomington, IU beat Tulsa, 5-1. While Yeagley was pleased with his team’s performance, he said he knows it is a difficult one to duplicate.

“It’s hard to think that you’ll see a score line like last Sunday,” Yeagley said. “We just need to be extremely disciplined and focused for this match to be able to match some of the talent that Akron has.”

Yeagley and Porter will take what they learned from the legendary IU soccer coach and will add their own personalities to the mix when they bark commands from the sideline on Sunday.

When the 90 minutes are over, one roommate will win and one roommate will end his season.

All the formers will remain and new titles will be added to the relationship, but one thing will always remain.

"If you were a player here, family is always really big,” Kelly said. “We’re facing an IU family member, so it’s kind of that family rivalry, that brother rivalry."