PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — Tom Carlin has been in charge of Villanova's men's soccer team since 2008. The head coach has led the Wildcats to four consecutive Big East tournament appearances, and just took the program to its first-ever NCAA Tournament victory, against Vermont.
Before his time at Villanova, Carlin was head coach at his alma mater, Arcadia University, from 2000 to 2005. He left for an assistant coach position at Northwestern, before returning to the region to work for Villanova in 2007.
In addition to his postseason success, Carlin also amassed the most wins in Villanova men's soccer history, breaking the previous record of 114 last month.
Carlin stopped by the KYW Newsradio original podcast "1-on-1 with Matt Leon" to talk about his history in soccer, from his origins as a player to his career as a coach. The following is a lightly edited excerpt of that conversation. You can listen to the entire episode above.
Matt Leon: Let's talk a little bit about this past season. You guys go to the NCAA tournament ... you win your first tournament game as you beat Vermont. How satisfying was 2021?
Tom Carlin: I think that the best word that we came up with was validation. You know, our upperclassmen, juniors and seniors, they've been working at this for a while, we had a '19 campaign where we didn't give up many goals, we had trouble scoring goals, but we really started to turn the program around as far as the quality and closing the gap with the top teams.
Then we went through the whole COVID season and our COVID season wasn't as successful as as we had wanted result-wise, but when you looked at it, from I continue to say closing the gap and the quality of our soccer, we really knew that that '21 with returning everybody was going to be a great season.
And then, of course, we have the little extra added motivation of being picked last in the conference [in the Big East preseason coaches' poll]. And we kind of we kind of laughed at it. Because we knew that our group was strong. And we were pretty far along in our attacking and defensive schemes. Then we went into this year and we did it. We came out to a really fast start. We stumbled a little bit in the middle had some injuries that we had to endure through. But also just, you know, kind of still figuring ourselves out. And, and then we finished strong.
I think by the end it was we validated the process, right? We validated all the hard work and the time that we had put into it. And the mindset of what we believe we can do, we achieve. So it was very nice. It was very nice for the group.
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I wanted to ask you about that preseason poll, because, as someone who's voted in many a preseason poll through the years, in my opinion, they really don't tell you much, especially in the middle of the pandemic. You said you laughed a little bit when you saw that, but knowing where your team was, you obviously saw the opportunity for something that could really be a constant motivating factor.
When that comes out, it could either be pressure or opportunity, right? It could either be something that you lose the first game, and the guys look at, "Oh, here we go, again, we got picked last and we can't do this."
Or you look at it as opportunity. That just really speaks to the strength of the group, right? Something along those lines of an outside ... noise didn't get in the way of the belief in this group to be able to accomplish what they wanted to accomplish. So we definitely use it as as fuel to our fire.
And I mentioned you won the first tournament game in program history, beating Vermont. What was that like ... for the program to kind of reach a level that you guys hadn't been able to reach before? What is that feeling of — I think you mentioned validation before but also just the feeling of accomplishment.
It's funny, when you go through the moment, you're not really thinking about you haven't done that before as a program. You're thinking about, you're getting ready for a game, right? You're thinking about you're getting ready for a game. And then as a coach, you're thinking about, really, what you did wrong, what you need to learn from, and then who are we playing next?
You hear, you see, you read stories online, or you hear people around the department say that out loud. But you're still just in the mindset of getting ready for Notre Dame and that's just, as a coach and as a player, I think, what you're trained to do.
After the season's over, then it kind of sets in a little bit, right? "Hey, you know, great job, great job, really proud of our staff, really proud of our guys, and really proud of the work that we put into this chase." I mean, it takes a lot of resilience to get here and you're just proud, and you're just feel so fortunate and thankful to work at a university like this, that allows you the opportunity, after we had success in '16, and then stumbled in '17, then had to go on this complete rebuild.
You're blessed to work at a university that didn't put pressure on you. The only pressure is more just from yourself, you know? So you start thinking about all that stuff. But to be honest, Matt, it's really after the season that that really sinks in.
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