Excerpt from the Dayton Daily News
Despite having few veterans to lean on as a first-year coach last year, Jake Slemker led the Wright State men’s soccer team to unprecedented heights.
The Raiders won the Horizon League regular-season title for only the second time in school history and climbed as high as No. 11 in the TopDrawSoccer.com national poll.
They returned five players who earned all-conference honors last year and nine of 11 who started at least 13 games. But as Slemker discovered, having virtually a pat hand can present its own set of challenges.
“Expectations are extremely high — especially after last year’s success. I think that could be a good thing, but going through some tough times and pushing the team to get to a different level, it can be hard in the beginning,” he said.
After going 13-3-3 in 2018, the Raiders, who were picked as the preseason conference favorite, went 0-1-1 in their exhibition matches and then dropped two of their first three regular-season games.
What Slemker saw during the subpar start was some complacency seeping in.
“That’s what we’re dealing with right now. That’s why we put this schedule together,” said Slemker, whose team will face five schools that reached the NCAA tournament last year.
“We’re not going to get any easy games. We’ve seen that already. When we go play teams, we’re going to get their best game. Our guys have to learn it’s not going to be good enough just to show up and have our talent get us a good result. We’re going to have to work a lot harder this year.”
