Mentality and Competitiveness: How Baylor Soccer is Looking to Turn the Corner
With three days until the season opener, Michelle Lenard is aiming to take Baylor soccer to a place it has not been since 2018: The NCAA tournament.
Coming off of a 9-7-3 season that showed marked improvement over Coach Lenard’s first year in 2022, there are plenty of questions left to be answered.
The Baylor soccer head coach took the time to offer insight on her 2024 squad and possibly answer those questions with SicEm365 a little over a week ago.
Roster Turnover
2023 was the last season at Baylor for forwards Jenna Patterson, Reneta Vargas and Annika Fredell, midfielder Micah Beasley, defender Georgia Mulholland and goalkeepers Mackenzie Short and Madison Martin. That is seven departures.
On the flip side, senior goalkeeper Azul Alvarez transferred in from TCU, and graduate midfielder Kai Hayes joined the Bears from North Carolina. Those two were joined last spring by early freshmen enrollees Alysiah Lockette (forward) and Paisley Mabra (defender). A surprise return to college soccer by graduate defender Marissa Gray helps four more freshmen who joined for the fall semester to make nine total additions.
Another Tough Schedule
This year’s Baylor soccer team must deal with what Coach Lenard considers to be one of the tougher schedules in the nation. With a trip to beautiful but distant Hawaii and a stretch of six games in 22 days, including against four teams that made the NCAA tournament last season, the challenge level before the squad is daunting.
This is what Michelle Lenard had to say on the matter:
“We have a tough schedule. Our [Big 12] draw, in particular, was really challenging. I think we have one of the top 15 to 20 schedules in the country right now. So we're happy with that. We feel much more equipped to play a schedule like this than we were two years ago when we had a schedule like this. So It is difficult, but this is a tough schedule that if you can get a good jump on it early on, that gets you into the NCAA tournament. And that's where we want to be.”
Health, Depth and Experience
A large part of managing a schedule packed with good teams is rotating players and spreading minutes out to manage fatigue. The regular season is 19 games in about 75 days. Injuries are almost a certainty in the sport. Case in point: senior defender Blythe Obar will be out with a torn ACL for the year.
This is where Marissa Gray's return and Paisley Mabra's early enrollment are significant to 2024’s success. Without those actions, Baylor would have a solid back line, but they would likely rely on five players to take all the minutes across the four defensive spots, which is a tiring, if not risky proposition.
Now, at least six defenders look to be competing for the bulk of playing time, with more options further down the bench.
Similarly, freshman forward Alysiah Lockette joins a growing host of talented underclassmen attackers that will look to be sparks off the bench as they push for starting spots.
Furthermore, UNC transfer Kai Hayes, at worst, bolsters the quality depth in the midfield.
This is how Coach Lenard summed it up:
“We have more options. That's hugely important. We've got depth that we can rotate and trust, which will help us manage bodies… really doesn't matter what your potential is if you're broken down by the time you get there [the postseason]. So our goal is to get there and to be feeling good and peaking right at the right time.”
With the goal of the NCAA tournament in mind, the team's mentality is the last question here. With health and depth, how do the Bears start to win the bigger games necessary for selection to the NCAAs?
The answer likely lies in experience.
Last year, Baylor lost 4-0 to No. 16 Texas, 4-0 to No. 6 BYU and 2-0 to eventual Big 12 Champions Texas Tech, all in a four-game stretch at home.
Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face.
But once you get punched in the face enough, competitors figure out how to respond. And this is a team of competitors.
After that stretch they rattled off five games and were unbeaten, securing a spot in the Big 12 Tournament and a winning season. Then, in the spring, the Bears drew 2-2 with defending SEC champions Arkansas. Take the obligatory grain of salt with the following statement, but hanging tough with a top-level program from a good conference with a reputation for physicality was a statement.
The Bears are not backing down from or looking to get around their shortcomings from the last two seasons.
Coach Lenard put it this way:
“I think, finally, we have a more experienced team. We’re not as young as we’ve been in the last couple of years… We have a really clear identity in how we want to play. I don't think there's any confusion in that… The emotion of the game can kind of take you off track on occasion, and I think that our maturity and experience should help us to recognize that and manage those moments a little bit better than in the past.”
So Is Baylor Soccer Turning a Corner?
After the Arkansas game this spring, I said “The Bears have raised the bar. They can’t go back to being bullied, being outpaced, or being overwhelmed. They are better than that and they have shown it as a team.”
So, in one sense, I believe that Baylor soccer has rounded that corner. But there is more to a program shutting the door and turning the key on losing seasons and missing conference tournaments. The on-field product can appear in flashes, but consistency formed by culture and culture formed by coaching, community and recruitment are the foundation of that kind of progress.
So, what steps have been taken since that 2-2 draw in Frisco this past April?
Summer Playing Time
For starters, the majority of Baylor’s roster played competitive soccer this summer according to Coach Lenard.
“It's really important for our players [to play in the summer] unless they're recovering from an injury or needing to just physically recover. We try to get them opportunities to go and play… most of our players played in some sort of summer competitive league… No matter how hard you train. If you're not playing soccer, it's hard to be game-fit. And I think that might be the most important piece.”
Specifically, defenders Hallie and Hannah Augustyn joined Kai Hayes to play for a team in North Carolina that was competitive nationally. Junior forward Tyler Isgrig played for the California Storm, another team with plenty of high-level players. Hannah Boughton and Skylar Zinnecker were playing out in Seattle, while many others played closer to their hometowns.
So overall the roster came back to Waco not just healthy but in great shape to jump into training tactics and patterns of play rather than building up fitness.
Best Players Stepping Up
With collective fitness in a good place, leadership and ability become the next focuses.
Has each player found ways to improve over the offseason? Have the most productive players found another level or improved deficiencies? Who will step up and be more vocal with their teammates?
Well, Michelle Lenard was highly complementary of her entire roster in this regard, but she specifically highlighted junior midfielder Skye Leach as an improving vocal leader. She also mentioned how Isgrig has worked really hard to become a more multi-dimensional player.
These are definitely not the only two to take notable steps forward this offseason, but they are good examples of how the roster is not remaining stagnant nor waiting to be forced into new positions. One great sign of this progression is competitiveness.
Competitiveness
The competitiveness on the Bears’ 2024 roster is at a high level. Coach Lenard spoke about that by offering a story of the third practice this fall. She said teams will typically start getting tired of training and even a little tired of each other by the end of that third day. That’s normal. That’s how sports can be at this level.
But at the end of day three, the Bears asked for more reps of the last drill. The players wanted another chance to improve, and they were happy to stay around each other and push each other.
“I think we have more players that don't just want to succeed now,” said Coach Lenard, “but that love soccer, love to compete, have long-term aspirations of playing after college and that just changes the feeling around the team. So they're very competitive… They're very supportive of each other. It's fun, but nobody likes to lose out there. So it gets a little chippy at times, but in a way that we all really enjoy.”
Culture and Momentum
If that statement doesn’t speak to the culture Michelle Lenard has fostered since arriving in Waco, then perhaps her response to the question of whether the culture starts to run itself will speak for itself.
“Some parts of this slowly start to run itself… now we're starting to attract the type of players that are similar in their mindset to [us] which is really helpful in narrowing our search.”
The coaching staff is confident in their team's ability to be more hands-off in one area or another, so that energy has been reallocated to other areas, like recruiting.
“Our recruiting has taken a huge step forward; we've got several really quality 2025s committed… We've got a lot of top 2026s on the radar. They're coming on visits in August and September, national team caliber players.”
So it now seems that Baylor soccer needs to win in those bigger moments both on the trail and on the field. That’s what they have not done in Lenard’s tenure, and she knows it. The players she has already brought in look to be good enough to get the job done so what’s left other than producing the wins?
“Our mentality in those [big] moments is going to be different. And I feel like that'll be palpable when you're out watching the team.”
Coach Lenard later added, “We genuinely feel like we can beat anyone in the country. We don't have to be the best team in the country. But we can beat anyone in the country. And that's a mentality shift from even just last year.
“If you're out around the team at all… you should see a difference. It'll be visible in the way we carry ourselves and the way we interact, the confidence that we have when we're on the field.”
Perhaps they will carry themselves all the way to the NCAA Tournament this year. For certain they will be a team worth watching all year.