They’ll be a new group of athletes showing up on the Connors State College campus this fall as the school launches a new men’s and women’s soccer program. The teams will be coached by Adam Skolnick who has a heart for small towns and soccer.
“I grew up outside Tampa Bay where the only things there were soccer fields and strawberry fields so you either played soccer or worked the fields. I played all through school and a year in college until I was injured, and so I started coaching when I was 18.”
Skolnick spent the years coaching in small colleges and club teams as well as in the MISL with the Florida Tropics.
“I like small towns and that was one thing that appealed to me about coming to Warner. It’s a place where I can walk my dog and strangers will come up and say Hi and pet the dog and it’s just real welcoming. This is the only school I’ve coached at where the president of the school might just drop by to have a cup of coffee with you,” said the new coach.
Starting a program from scratch has a lot of challenges according to Skolnick.
“You’ve got to find facilities, get equipment, work within the tight budget constraints you often find at smaller schools, and, of course, recruit players, and convince them that we’ll be competitive and relevant from the start,” stated Skolnick. “I got here in February and a lot of schools in this part of the country play soccer in the fall so many of those players had already made decisions. On the men’s team I had to rely a lot on my coaching contacts to find players and so 20 of our 24 players are international coming from places like Brazil, England, Scotland, Spain and Barbados. On the women’s side I was able to recruit more locally and so 13 of the 18 players we have are from Oklahoma including Emily Christensen, Evelyn Vazquez, Rheagan Summerhill and Sahra Khajavi from Muskogee.”
The schedule will include many of the teams that Connors plays in baseball and basketball including the Seminole State women’s team which is generally one of the best in the country. The teams have a practice facility on campus and will play their home games at Hatbox Field in Muskogee with the season starting August 24.
“Ideally it would be nice to win a conference title in the first year but that’s probably not realistic. So my goal this year is to be competitive and make the first round of playoffs which consists of the top four men’s teams and top six women’s teams. I’d also like our teams to qualify for Academic All-America honors which means having a team GPA of 3.0 or better.”
