Dean Koski is the head coach of men’s soccer at Lehigh University. Lehigh University is located in Bethlehem, PA and is a NCAA Division I institution. Lehigh University is a member of the Patriot League Conference along with other schools such as Loyola University, Maryland, Naval Academy, and Lafayette College. 

Dean has been with Lehigh since 1991. Dean Koski is the 15th coach in school history and has guided the Mountain Hawks to three Patriot League Tournament Championships (2000, 2015, 2019), a pair of Patriot League regular season championships (2006, 2019) and five NCAA tournament appearances. Koski closed out the 2019 season with a career record of 246-207-67, by far the most wins of any coach in program history. Koski secured the 200th win of his career on Oct.17, 2015 in a 1-0 victory over Loyola.

Coach:

Dean Koski: Head Coach of Men’s Soccer at Lehigh University. 

Topic 1: Recruiting Tips During COVID-19: 

Dean recommends that players continue to maintain contact with coaches and schools they are interested in. He also recommends players set up a time to do a video call with coaches. His biggest tip for athletes is to be proactive and to not wait for a coach to contact you. It is also important that the athlete is the one doing the work, he reminds players that their parents should not be reaching out for them. 

Topic 3: Coaching Challenges & Rewards:

Dean tells us the most challenging part of coaching for him is recruiting, he says it's difficult to figure out what players are the best fit for Lehigh University. He says that the most rewarding part is to watch and help 17 and 18 year old boys grow into young men during their time at Lehigh. He believes in coaching the person, not just as a player. 

Topic 4: Tips on Sending Videos:

Dean says he typically enjoys highlight videos because he does not have time to watch a full game. However, due to the current pandemic, he finds himself having more time on his hands to watch full games. He recommends athletes find a way to share videos of  full games with coaches right now. He also recommends players get creative with how they can create content for coaches, even if it's just sending coaches videos of athletes doing circuits in their backyard.

Topic 5: Tips on Staying Active:

Dean recommends athletes set up a schedule for working out and strength training at least three to four days a week. He also encourages athletes to use the internet to their advantage and watch soccer to study the game. He says that during their recruiting process, coaches value an athletes soccer IQ tremendously. Lastly, Dean encourages athletes to take this time to learn something new. 

Topic 6: Success - Mental Toughness or Talent?

Dean says talent is important if you are a talented player, but if you are lazy nor mentally tough, it does not matter that you are talented. Dean says that his 2006 team was full of athletes that were physically and mentally tough, or as he likes to say “mentally durable." Due to this, they had the most successful season at Lehigh University to this date. They ranked #12 in the country and gave up the least amount of goals out of any team at the time. He says he credits all of the hard work from each players mental toughness. 

Topic 7: Mount Rushmore of Soccer Players:

Dean’s top four soccer players of all time are: Franz Beckenbauer, Lionel Messi, Diego Maradona and Pelé. Pelé is Dean's number one pick and tells a story of how he got to spend five hours with Pelé at a photoshoot. He says that he admired how humble and genuine Pelé was. 

As times are difficult during the COVID-19 pandemic, athletes and coaches continue to adapt to new ways for the recruitment process, staying physically fit, as well as studying the game with the abundance of time on our hands. 

Full Transcript: 

Jess Gregory  

Right, everybody. Thanks for sitting down and joining us today we are with Dean Koski over at Lehigh University. How we doing Dean?

Dean Koski  

Doing Great today,  How about yourself?

Jess Gregory  

Not too bad. Not too bad. The sun is shining. Looks like it's warm out there. So I'll take it. Good. Yeah. How are things with you? Are you doing lockdown? All right.

Dean Koski  

Yeah, we're in during lockdown where I live in Pennsylvania. I have four sons, three who are at Lehigh, and one who will be entering Lehigh next year. So they're all college age kids. And so they're eating us out of house and home and they're busy in taking classes. And my wife is kindergarten teacher. So she's trying to manage that. And we just got a new dog. So it's pretty busy around here.

Jess Gregory  

Oh, yeah. Sounds like things are keeping you on your toes. Yeah. In a good way. Absolutely. Awesome. Well, I appreciate you sitting down and chatting with us today and taking some time out of all that, to answer some questions for us, of course. Perfect. All right. So I would love to To hear a little bit more about how you got into coaching, where you started and how you ended up at Lehigh.

Dean Koski  

Well as a health and phys ed major at West Chester University, always played a played soccer there back back in the 70s 70s. Westchester was a division one program and I had some success there but I also knew that I was going to be a professional coach. So when I got out of Westchester, I didn't find a teaching job right away into the substitute teaching and coach record and eventually I landed a job at Morristown, friends High School, Quaker school in New Jersey, South Jersey. I coach middle school basketball and middle school baseball JV soccer and and really got got developed a passion for soccer eventually became the varsity boys coach and started taking coaching licenses around the country when over in England and took their coaching courses there and really started to form farm love of the game and wasn't tired about the first time I went over. of England at 27 to take their prelim autonomy how much I didn't know about the game and that excited me you know, I thought that you know when you graduate from college and your division one player you think you know it all and and then you start coaching and realize oh my gosh and have nothing and and so I I stayed I got a full time job at Morristown friends with, you know, teaching and coaching and was Ed there but after about seven years, I got the itch got to college. So I resigned and picked up a interim position at Bloomsburg for a year because the current coach was working on his doctorate. So coach Bloomsburg men's team for a year and top his course load, he came back. I didn't find a coaching job at that point. So I stayed up Bloomsburg and got a Master's helped with the women's team that year and then was fortunate enough to get a call from coach at Lehigh. JOHN McCloskey who coached soccer, men's soccer and lacrosse and he was going to split the programs. And he said, You know you and I take Coaching course years ago, would you be interested in taking over the soccer side and I was like, Oh my gosh, I love it. So, essentially, john hired me for a year as an assistant coach. I think I was 31 years of age. I had a master's degree, I've been coaching 10 years. I had my a license, I had my license from England and I made $7,000 a year, and I couldn't be happier. I was a college coach and I got a meal plan and collected unemployment just to make ends meet but was the best decision I made and you know, 29 years later here I am still Lehigh.

Jess Gregory  

Yeah. Oh, that's amazing. I totally hear ya. Yeah. You do it because you love it not because it you know it pays the big bucks.

Dean Koski  

Yes. Yeah, exactly.

Jess Gregory  

Exactly Nice. Now, can you talk maybe about some of the most challenging and rewarding aspects of coaching since you've had such a long awesome career.

Dean Koski  

Think the challenging parts are are recruiting you know, and I enjoy recruiting immensely, and I enjoy getting to see kids play. You know, when you get to travel around the country, and in some cases around the world to go watch soccer. It's pretty cool. But the challenging thing is kind of figuring out what are the best fit for for Lehigh? And what are the best fit for these young men, because you don't want to recruit somebody that is not going to have success in your program, academic success, social success, aka success. And you want to make sure that they're going to contribute in some way. And so that's like putting a building a puzzle, you know, without really having the pieces until you see them and I love that, but that's a challenge. The most rewarding part of it for me is this you recruit these 1718 year old boys who, you know, really know very little about the world and about themselves and about life and they think they do but it's really fun that help them grow to young men. And, and I would tell you that you know, for me, I used to coach You know, soccer players when they came to me and, and I don't think I was nearly as effective back then early on as a 31 year old coaches am today where now I don't really coach the player right coach the person. And because it's so much more important to get to understand them and know them and, and understand what makes them tick and what motivates them and what they like and what they don't like. And I think once you start coaching the person, you get to know the person better, and you know, when to graduate, move on. And just I love the fact that they stay connected to the programs they connected to me and, you know, I think those are the greatest rewards I could be offered.

Jess Gregory  

Yeah, for sure. The rewarding parts always outweigh the challenge. Right. That's why you keep doing it.

Dean Koski  

No question.

Jess Gregory  

Yeah. Now that recruiting was a challenge, but also something that even boy, can we jump into some recruiting tips for these kids that are at home now and you know, they should have some more time to get into it?

Dean Koski  

Yeah, of course. Yeah. Look at you have a lot of time. And if you're a sophomore, junior, that is just getting into it or have been into it, you just got to continue maintaining contact with, with the coach in the schools you're interested in. And I would urge all of you, if you haven't set up an opportunity to do a zoom call or a Skype call do that. So you have some FaceTime, you know, we're doing all of our recruiting right now virtually. And so rather than just going on a phone or text, we want to have face to face interaction. So take some initiative and do that. But certainly, you know, I think be proactive. Don't, don't wait for somebody to call you Because right now, we haven't seen kids play live in a month and probably want for another couple months. So we're relying upon videotapes and watching games and but I think it's really important that you're proactive. I also think it's important that you do your own work like you make you reach out to the coaches. Don't let your mom or dad reach out to coaches. Certainly you can ask club coach to call on your behalf that you do the work and take initiative and Introduce yourself if you haven't already and send them a resume via video clips in the video clip. And I'd appreciate that that word, we as college coaches are kind of stuck like you are as a player. And so we're trying to figure this out as well. And I think you'd be open and honest about that. And we will be to, then it's just going to be easier. And then and then just make sure that you're just being yourself. Like you don't have to be anybody that you're not, you know, I want to know the genuine you and most coaches to let us determine college coaches determine whether it's a right fit your level, but you have to determine whether or not it's the right place for you based on your research. And this is the time where you can do the research on a school and so take the time to the research. What you don't want to do is to one have your mom and dad take initiative to is to the first thing that you talk about as scholarships and don't worry about that if you're a candidate for scholarship, the cultural You know, and whether or not you can be recruited. Don't worry about that just get enough coach at another program to do some homework and see if you like what you're hearing because I think that becomes really important. And the lastly is don't assume that division one is the end all be all for, for he was a college prospect that there are some really good division three programs and some really good Division Two programs that can compete at the division one level just because the classification is division one doesn't mean they're not trained like division one programs behave like division one programs, when like programs so if you put all your eggs into the division one basket and no one's recruiting you and then you're left with nothing because you haven't returned the emails from those two coaches or d3 coaches that have emailed you all along, then that's Shame on you. So make sure that you're responding to every coach even if right now you're not interested. I think the best thing you can say to a coach is coach thanks for Reach out to me right now. I'm looking at these schools. So you're not on my list, but I want to I want to keep the relationship open and something changes. I certainly will circle back with you.

Jess Gregory  

Yeah. I mean, it is a relationship want to you want to build that by starting off with emails, working your way to calls and now these virtual calls. I think a lot of times kids have the misconception that they get to see you once and all of a sudden, it's a done deal. So really kind of think about what they go to and not just yeah.

Dean Koski  

Agree, Agree.

Jess Gregory  

Perfect tips there. Um, now we get a lot of questions from kids about what coaches like to see in video and obviously now, there's not going to be a lot of updated video because kids aren't on the field. Do you have any kind of tips about what you like to see? And maybe what they can do now even though they they can't play and send, send that updated video?

Dean Koski  

Yeah, you know, that's such a good question. And, you know, we typically I like highlight videos when I'm busy during during the school year, because I don't have time to watch a full game now we have a lot of time. So we're watching full games. And, you know, we can go online and get a lot of the academy games when go online and get a lot of tournament matches that they've recorded. So we can get access to a lot of film, a lot of full games in the absence of that. If you have a match that has been recorded by your mom, dad, uncle, granddad, whoever, share it with us, like you know, don't worry about it, just find a way to compress it and send it to us or put it on YouTube and we'll be more than happy to look at it to see if there's a fit but you know, it's, it's, it's a difficult space for for you guys to be in and for us to be into until we have to be as creative as we possibly can. And you have to be as creative as you possibly can look if go out in your backyard and you juggle a ball and show us how good your skills are. Okay, you know, that's at least that's something you know, you know, maybe you're gonna go you know, do some kind of circuit training that you want to videotape to see, we can see what you're doing there. But think outside the box, get us whatever you can get us because right now, while we have a pretty good idea of who our list of juniors are 2020 ones, we've only got three commitments and most schools are in that. We're still very waiting. We're still meeting kids and, and so there's still plenty of time. And let's hope that we'll get a chance to see you play by the end of the summer, or get up to matches but in the interim, you got to do your job to to try to get yourself in front of a coach in any kind of virtual setting, you

Jess Gregory  

Now since they are all kind of all stuck at home and you mentioned juggling or doing circuit training. Do you have any other tips for them and how they can stay physically active or if they haven't been doing anything the last couple weeks how they can get back into it.

Dean Koski  

Look, I'm incredibly appreciative of a young men and women today and prospects who are suddenly particularly seniors in high school, you know, they've Suddenly been told that they're not going to have school so they can't be around the classmates, or teammates, they don't have a club season. Probably not going to have problems, probably not gonna have graduation. And they haven't really been been brought into the college fold yet. So there's an audience out there a demographic of seniors that are really in limbo. And if now's the time for you this to kind of like, chill, you know, and, and kind of regroup and think about things good for you, okay. But I wouldn't take more than a week or two of doing that. And most of you have gone through that process of accepting where we are. Now. I think it's a time where you should set up a schedule, you should be working out. And I would like to see you being doing any kind of strength training, three days a week, three, four days a week. I think it's really important for juniors, younger High School players to start to get into that and you can do body strength stuff you can find a ton online, but that's three days a week for an hour. touching a ball. If you're not gonna do it with purpose. You're not Do what's at speed and you just going out in your yard to juggle for a second job, and then don't bother. But if you can go out and set up a training environment where you're doing everything at speed and everything as fast as you can, and doing it with some kind of repetition, why not take advantage of that. And lastly is, is watch some soccer, like study the game a little bit become more of a student. And it's critically important that we know we value soccer IQ when we look through the recruiting process and a lot of really talented players that don't bring that understanding of the game to level we need them to so a lot of that is just watching soccer and you know, find matches online, watch it and don't watch it for as an entertainer for entertainment. Now watch the study position or study a player and see what they're doing in in creating a little journal for yourself and things that you've learned things that jump out because you'll be able to reflect reflect back upon that. Kennedy if if I have a conversation with a kid and he's and he's saying to me like the I've watched the match a day, through the last two weeks, and I've seen all hazard matches. And these are things that I've seen. And there's the things I've learned, oh my gosh, like, that's really exciting. So take advantage of this time too. And then lastly, learn something new. Like there's so much free online. things you can do, you can get certifications, coaching, you get certifications in refereeing, you can go take college courses right now for free, you know, almost anywhere in the country. Like, go take the course learn something, take advantage of it, you know, show that you're an avid learner and an eager learner and so take advantage of this time by just signing up for something.

Jess Gregory  

Yeah, absolutely. Was there a great physical tips but also you're kind of keeping your mind up to by watching those games and kind of studying it instead of just you know, watching flex all the time. Agree. Agree. Yeah. Now I'm, I'm sure you've had some successful seasons in the past. I want you to kind of think about one of those and tell me your thoughts on whether the team successful because of the mental toughness or because of the talent

Dean Koski  

no my most all of my successful teams while while I would tell you that we need talented players, that is not the end all be all like that, you know, I certainly value time, talent, but if you're talented and lazy, you're talented to not bought in or your town and not mentally tough. It doesn't really matter. And so, my 2016 we were a group of guys, I didn't have Scott athletic scholarships back then. So, you know, here was a very academic school where everybody was on either financial aid or no need. And we had a group of guys that some were talented, but most of them were physically mentally tough. I would use Word mental, mentally durable, like they could weather moments really well. They were bought into what we were doing as a team, and we will we had our most successful season. Ever, you know, we were ranked, you know, 12th in the country, we had a first round in the NCAA Tournament. We went undefeated in league play. We only had four losses that year, we gave it the least amount of goals in the country. And we went to sweet 16 and, and that was a group of non scholarship division one players that were mentally tough and, and when we're not rattled in the most intense games we had, and that's, I don't know how that came about. But certainly that mental toughness was a huge piece to that year.

Jess Gregory  

Yeah, absolutely. I do love asking this question. Just because it it does normally come down to the mental side of the game and how strong they are, no matter how talented they are. So I do love hearing about that. Cool. Yeah. Um, now I have one more question. Coach. I love to hear your Mount Rushmore of soccer. Your players. So these are going to be your top four all time favorite players of all time. And so if you could kind of name those for us and maybe just give us a little quick reason why you picked them?

Dean Koski  

Well, I'll go backwards. I'll go four to one. So Franz Beckenbauer, for me would be in that top four position. And, you know, he was a defender. He was an attacker, he was greater. He was a leader. And he brought everything that you would want as a player in a team and certainly his successes as a player. Were just, you know, unparalleled and vice admired him and really watched him a lot growing up. I think we watch soccer made in Germany, back in their 70s and 80s. Every Sunday. Number three would be messi. You know, I think that would put in place some higher logic because he hasn't won a World Cup yet. With TNM but I think there's no denying his talent. No, denying his ability to bounce defenses and defenders, his ability to consistently score at the highest levels and biggest platforms, and he's a delight to watch, and I've always admired his play. And Diego Maradona would be, too, just because of the gifts that he had that I don't know whether you could ever teach them or not. But, you know, he was world class of the world class and, you know, winning, you know, bringing Argentina to World Cup championships and playing at the level he did, you know, his only asterisk and his careers just as his behavior off the field and his you know, and how he carried himself off the field. And that's always been a disappointment, but you can't deny his ability. You can't deny his influence and when they beat England, and I remember what the World Cup was, he was just unbelievable. That game was so fun to watch. And last would be Pele now and I have such admiration for him. As a player and what he did coming from the background he came from and there's some wonderful movies and books about his lifestyle. I was privileged to spend, you know, five hours with him in a photo photoshoot in New York City colleague of mine sold, and it was the number one distributor of combo products in the country. And they said, Well, hey, we want to thank you watching me, Pele. And, you know, we've had to sit in this very small studio invited me to go and he was such a gentleman. I mean, you think about a guy that's the most notable athlete in the world, a guy who, you know, when he went to visit two countries, the war stopped that we're having a conflict just because he arrived there. You know, somebody that my mom knows who's 91 and knew about him before she knew about any other soccer player. You know, his name everywhere, and he was so humble and so gracious. He wouldn't even let me call him Pele, he was like, please call me Decaux friend's car. Decaux and he would call me Professor Dean because I was coaching at Bloomsburg. And he insists on comic Professor Dean and we just sat around a kitchen table and he was just personable and you know, aspect family and everything and he was genuine. And, you know, I think about what I think about athletes in our country who have risen to that fan. I'm not sure they'd be as gracious as he was. And so that to me elevated him in a way that I don't think anyone will ever surpass that my mind.

Jess Gregory  

Yeah, well, that's an amazing story. How awesome that you got to spend that time with such a great player. And yeah, that's it sounds like so

Dean Koski  

yeah, it was cool.

Jess Gregory  

Very cool. Awesome. Well, that was a very solid Mount Rushmore. I did share that with everyone. Um, but again, I appreciate you sitting down with me today. I had a fun time chatting with you learn more about you. And hopefully the viewers watching get to take some solid points away from it as well.

Dean Koski  

I hope so too. Just thanks for having me and good luck to you guys.

Jess Gregory  

All right. You do

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