UW match a trip home for Doody

Two years ago, as a junior soccer player at Neuqua Valley High School in Wisconsin, Patrick Doody hoped he would one day play college ball under Todd Yeagley.

But he didn’t dream it would have been for Indiana.

In December 2008, after six years on the sidelines in Bloomington as an assistant coach, current IU Coach Yeagley took the head coaching position at Wisconsin. He coached the Badgers for one season before eventually returning to IU.

When he returned, several players with their sights set on playing for him in Madison, Wis., followed him to Bloomington, including Doody.

“I loved Wisconsin,” Doody said. “It’s an incredible school, and a lot of my friends play on Wisconsin’s team. And it definitely would have been an option for me had Coach stayed. I was fortunate enough that when Coach took the job here, he was still interested in me.”

As Yeagley settled back into Bloomington and began to build the Hoosier team that he’d lived around for much of his life, Doody was one player he hoped he could land.

“Patrick was one I had my eye on when I was at Wisconsin and felt like he would be a big-time contributor, and as soon as I was here, that feeling didn’t change,” Yeagley said. “He’s doing a really nice job as a freshman contributing in a few different roles with his work ethic, his pace and his willingness to learn.”

When the Hoosiers travel to Wisconsin on Sunday afternoon for IU’s second Big Ten contest of the season, both Doody and Yeagley will return to some familiar faces.
For Doody, those will be his parents and cousins who live in Naperville, Ill., where he grew up, only two and a half hours away from Wisconsin’s campus.

For Yeagley, those will be the players, coaches and staff members he recruited and worked with for his single season as a Badger — people whom he knew only briefly, but with whom he made lasting relationships.

“It’ll have some emotions to it, knowing I invested a lot of time and energy and created relationships with the players and staff,” Yeagley said. “But in our sport, like any sport, you’ve got a job to go in and get a result. It’ll be nice to go back and visit Madison, but certainly we want to perform well and
get results.”

With Doody and the rest of his players on the No. 6 team in the country, Yeagley said he is confident this weekend’s game will simply be another testament to the hungry, determined team he now calls his own.

“The game is going to be won between the white lines, and our preparation has been very good,” Yeagley said. “It’s going to be a confident team going in and a hungry team, and when we play with that passion and fight, we’re a pretty effective team at this point.”