Club soccer provides local coaching opportunities

He caught "lightning in a bottle."\nAt a practice in the middle of the spring season, lightening halted play for Kiki Wallace's Bloomington Cutters under-15 team. The team had to take shelter and the meeting that took place transformed the way Wallace coached soccer.\nWallace's team had struggled for the first half of its spring season, losing games Wallace said the team should have won. There was no team cohesiveness and Wallace said the little things -- such as unnecessary yellow cards and swearing -- took away from the teams' potential.\nThe IU sophomore realized he had let the team get away from him and he needed stricter discipline for their actions, which the 20-year-old previously saw as a tough task because of the closeness of age to the players.\nHe told his team the second half marked the beginning of a new season. The squad finished the second half with six wins, one loss and three ties, in what Wallace called a "remarkable turnaround."\n"I've seen teams with young coaches before and I've been on those teams," Wallace said. "I want to make sure my message gets through to my players, even though they might be saying bad things about me under their breathe as they run to the far tree and back."\nWallace is not your average IU student. The Bloomington native walked on to the IU men's soccer team last fall and was redshirted by IU men's soccer coach Mike Freitag along with the rest of the 2008 class. While Wallace knows playing opportunities on the team are tough, he knows he has coaching to fall back on.\nWallace's life parallels the life of an IU student residing about a 100 miles away from Bloomington that happened three years before. Playing soccer every year since the age of four, 21-year-old senior Lauren Martz found her previous goals for college would not work out as she had planned.\nThe Louisville, Ky., native knew by her junior year of high school she wanted to play for the IU women's soccer team as a walk-on. However, Martz was burnt out by the end of high school, mainly because of her coach "belittling her experience" during her senior season, causing her to give up the desire to try to walk on at IU.\nMartz played for the IU women's club team her first three years at IU, but continually became dissatisfied with playing and became more interested in coaching. Martz said her club coach from the Louisville Soccer Alliance Dave Griffiths was the only positive coach she had in her career. From Martz's experiences with negative coaches, she learned what not to do and was able to focus her desire on becoming a better role model for kids and to be the coach she always wanted.\n"She's like one of us. She's part of the group," said Jessie Eberle, a 17-year-old goalkeeper from Bloomington High School North on Martz's U-18 team. "Wherever we go, coach is there, she's laughing with us. We know that she's older and we know she has a say and directs us very well, but she's just part of the group. Everyone respects her very well."\nAfter working at a summer day and overnight camps since middle school, Martz said her ability to work well with children and teenagers propelled her to coach in the Cutters program. In spring 2004, she was an assistant coach with the U-18 girls and named the head coach for the 2005 season. She will also be on the girls' soccer coaching staff at Bloomington High School North in the fall and will also coach the Cutters U-12 girls.\n"Having never played (varsity) in college and being surrounded by these other coaches in Bloomington who have ties to the soccer programs at IU is a humbling experience," Martz said. "For me it's, 'Hey, I'm Lauren Martz and I play on the (IU Women's) club team.' ... I don't think you need the college experience to be a coach. It makes you work harder as a coach because you need to prove to everyone else that I know just as much about soccer." \nWallace held the same position with North in 2003 when he took the 2003-2004 school year off to re-establish residency in Indiana so he could attend IU. After his sophomore year at North, Wallace's family moved to Connecticut because his dad -- a former IU professor -- took a job at the University of Connecticut.\nIt was during this year off Wallace learned the bulk of his new soccer trade. He was an assistant coach with the Cutters U-10 boys in spring 2004, the U-13 boys' assistant in fall 2004, and most recently the head coach of the U-15 boys this spring. Wallace even moonlighted as the head coach for the Cutters U-13 girls last weekend at a tournament in Center Grove because the team's main coach could not make the tournament.\nWallace said his coaching influences range from Freitag to former IU coach Jerry Yeagley and also IU assistant coaches Caleb Porter, Todd Yeagley, and former Director of Coaching for the Cutters Sean Phillips.\n"Coach Freitag is always pushing me and directing me in my coaching," Wallace said. "He wants to make sure I am on the right path with earning my different coaching licenses and I know he is an invaluable resource."\nWith both of their seasons recently completed, Martz and Wallace are involved in the IU soccer day camp this week for ages four to 13 at Karst Farm Park. \nThey both agreed removing themselves from being total friends with their players is the toughest part of the job, yet they do not want to be a dictator walking the sidelines. However, they also both agreed the results of the team working together and achieving its potential makes it worth the time and sacrificing the life of a normal college student.\n"I was just telling my mom, of any place to be at and to figure out my passion for coaching," Martz said. "Bloomington is an amazing place to begin"