Over the past nine days, the Star has examined the state of several of the UAβs menβs and womenβs sports on campus, reflecting on the prior season and looking ahead to the 2021-22 slate.
Rounding out our project in checking in with Arizona soccer, led by new head coach Becca Moros, who was hired in June. This is part two of the conversation with Moros about her defining qualities as a coach and what her biggest asset will be for Arizona.
How has your playing career both in college at Duke and professionally for several organizations helped you in becoming a coach?
A: βI definitely think the last 14 years of experiences are going to be more current to what soccer in this country looks like now. Every year as a pro, you have the next generation of top players coming out of college soccer and joining you on your professional teams.
βI feel like those experiences, every year kind of watching players come out, go through that process is probably the most current to what the current level or top level of college soccer in this country is. As a coach, I was working with a bunch of those players that we drafted and also youβre playing against those people on other teams as well.
βCollege soccer was different when I played than it is now, like very different. The game has changed in this country for the better. I think womenβs soccer is exploding right now.β
In what ways are you going to challenge the group of women youβre going to be coaching at Arizona and develop your sense of culture?
A: βThe big thing with them is that the challenges and things that weβre going to put out there in practice are going to be really different than things theyβve experienced before. For me, as Iβve watched them and have watched Arizona play in the past, it makes me confident that I have a group of really talented women but I donβt know who is going to respond to the challenges in what ways.
βAs a coach thatβs always been my philosophy is that you put the challenge out, but you donβt choose who rises to it, right? They choose that. Itβs going to be about me challenging them each day and then continuing to challenge them based on where they are and how they respond to challenges.
βAnd then we move the bar. Each time you reach the bar, Iβm going to push it higher so that weβre always striving to get better.β
What type of identity do you want Arizona to have on the field in terms of the style of soccer being played?
A: βI think some of that stuff is gonna build over time, because you canβt just throw out what the team did well before. You have to build on what theyβve already been successful at and itβll be a marriage of that and what we grow into becoming.
βWhat we will be becoming from Day 1 when we start on the field is a positional possession team, meaning we want to take aggressive positions on the field. Weβre moving the ball quicker than the other team can respond, weβre going to create numerical advantages to create dominant goalscoring situations. Everything we do in training is about speed of decision-making.
βI encourage a lot of autonomy. I try not to make a ton of rules and restrict players to how they can make decisions because itβs just you making those decisions in a game, there isnβt a coach telling you this or that.β
What is the most valuable asset you will bring to Arizona?
A: βProfessional soccer in this countryβs womenβs game is some of the best in the world. I come directly out of that. I had a huge impact coaching in the pros and my very first year thereβll be a whole bunch of pros coming down to Tucson to train in the offseason.
βBut the best of what I do comes from my time in Japan. Anybody who knows the landscape of womenβs football in the world knows that the Japanese are one of the tactically most sophisticated countries in the world.
βSo I have just this completely different top class exposure to something in a culture and a way of learning thatβs just so different from what we do in America. It helped me in terms of carving out advantages, being able to read the game quicker and to think the game differently than other people.
βAnd Iβve had tremendous success sharing that with players that Iβve coached in New Jersey.β