by Claire Kramer ’18
The life of a coach is rarely straightforward.
New cities, new teams, even new countries are not merely a possibility, but an expectation for coaches and their families, and Bobby Clark was no exception.
From playing in the Scottish League to coaching in Zimbabwe and crossing the Atlantic to enter the NCAA coaching ranks, Clark has collected wins, trophies and stats. But, at every stop, he collected something else.
A family.
His wife, Bette, and their children were there for every step. But, along the way, Clark’s teachers, coaches, players and staff began to form one of the most elaborate coaching trees in collegiate soccer. It was a tree built around Clark’s distinctive style of guiding those around him to be their best — not by telling them how, but by allowing his players to get to the answer themselves.
Creating independent, smart players and coaches who thought critically about the game, it’s no surprise that the NCAA is peppered with Clark products, and this season is special. The top four seeds in the 2021 NCAA Tournament are all led in part by a member of Clark’s tree and have advanced to the quarterfinals.
Notre Dame is coached by Chad Riley, a former Irish player under Clark, and Clark’s immediate successor upon his retirement in 2017. Georgetown’s head coach Brian Wiese played for Clark at Dartmouth before joining his staff both at Stanford and Notre Dame. Clark’s son Jamie is the head coach at Washington, and BJ Craig, associate head coach for No. 1-overall Oregon State, served on Clark’s Notre Dame staff for ten years, including the 2013 season which saw the program win its first NCAA title in school history.
“You are a teacher.”
Clark played professionally for 20 years; he would train in the morning, and serve as a physical education teacher in the afternoon. While he taught multiple sports, soccer was his first love, and would often find himself with the soccer kids.
“One of the great things is that the game is the teacher, and you have to remember that,” Clark noted.
Once he became a coach on the professional and collegiate levels, the mindset of being a teacher did not fade. In fact, Clark still refers to his role as “teaching” the game of soccer, not merely “coaching.” And, as any teacher might, taking on that responsibility involved thoughtful planning and instructions to prepare his players to find the answers on their own.
“We really always planned our sessions very well, and there was always a reason behind everything we did,” Clark continued. “You pick good practices in such a way that they actually teach the players. You don’t want to be stopping and talking a lot. You can certainly teach them that way, but one of the great things is putting them in a position and asking them questions.”
This approach was ingrained in players during training, and in the middle of matches, it became second nature.
“At halftime, we’d usually meet as a staff and we’d discuss what we thought we’d been doing well, what we needed to improve on,” Clark remembered. “Then when you go in to see the team, I wouldn’t just tell them. I’d usually say, ‘What did we struggle with? What was giving us problems?’
“I would say nine times out of 10, the players always came up with the answer. And if they didn’t come up with the answer, you try to tease it out of them in another way. So, they really coached themselves.”
Calling it “the discovery method” of teaching, Clark says that this method doesn’t merely convey to players what to do in a certain situation – it teaches them how to play. By thinking critically and repeating the style of play, players could understand how to apply those principles to every aspect of the game.
Many of Clark’s mentors and influences were his schoolteachers and early coaches, where the discovery method first was introduced to him. As he went on to the professional ranks, Clark played for Eddie Turnbull at Queen’s Park, before both signed with Aberdeen.
“He certainly changed the way I looked at football.”
At the time, most teams were playing a “WM” system, and Turnbull played a 4-4. In training, when most clubs spent time running on a track and training on stairs, Turnbull sent his players straight to the practice pitch, where there was a ball for every player, at the time a novel concept.
“Everything was suddenly with a ball,” Clark noted. “You’re working actually much harder, but everything was with the ball, and everything was for a reason.
“The whole team was working in a whole different plane.”
Also at Aberdeen, Clark spent time with the famed Sir Alex Ferguson, the club’s manager from 1978-86. The two worked with the club’s youth program, in which Aberdeen players coached top youth talent. On Thursday nights, the Aberdeen youth team would scrimmage a local team on a gravel field, not unlike a parking lot. And, even after a day when Ferguson got to the office in the early hours of the morning, he’d come out that evening to watch the youth team play with Clark.
“It was great just to listen to him, because he had won everything he had won with Aberdeen, and then he went to Manchester United and was with Manchester United for 26 years, so I was very lucky,” Clark remembered.
With the wisdom from professors at Jordanhill College, experience playing 20 years in the Scottish League with three World Cup campaigns and knowledge from coaching in the Zimbabwean Super League and for the New Zealand National Team, Clark began his 31-year collegiate coaching career in the United States, and thus began to write a new chapter.
Throughout his stops at Dartmouth, Stanford and Notre Dame, his commitment to teaching was evident, and it began to rub off on his players, beginning with the one closest to him – his son, Jamie. After growing up watching soccer at every turn, and even moving continents twice, he saw the nuances of coaching from a young age.
“Jamie was a ball boy for Dartmouth, so he knew his football inside out at that time, and he knew the way I liked my teams to play,” Clark said.
Because of this knowledge, Clark said, it allowed Jamie to be a leader when he played under his father at Stanford. Clark expected his seniors to be extensions of the coaching staff on the field, because they knew better than any other players the system and the goals. And, Jamie also spent time coaching on Clark’s staff at Notre Dame before moving on to Harvard, where he became the head coach, later moving to Creighton as the head coach and then to Washington.
Chad Riley exemplified the onfield “teacher” role in his own right, as one of the more enthusiastic players Clark has coached, even through the time his official career was finished.
Clark often gave his current seniors the option to attend spring practices following their final fall season, as the team was in-season only through the fall. Some came to a few, some focused on being a full-time student.
Riley never missed a single practice.
“That’s what made me think that he really wants to be a coach, and will be a good coach,” Clark shared.
Riley went on to coach at Oberlin College and St. John’s before returning to Notre Dame as an assistant. From there, he moved to Dartmouth, becoming the head coach in 2013 before returning to Notre Dame as Clark’s successor in 2018.
“When I left, I had nothing to do with the final selection, but I asked them, ‘Please look at my coaching tree,’” Clark shared. “That’s what Jack Swarbrick and [men’s soccer administrator] Beth Hunter focused their attention on.”
Clark gave Brian Wiese his first goalkeeper lesson at age 12 in New Mexico. Wiese later played for Clark at Dartmouth and was an engineering major. When looking at graduate school options, Clark was making a move to Stanford, and told Wiese that if he wanted a volunteer assistant role with the soccer team, he had one.
After graduating, and given the option to choose soccer or engineering, Wiese transitioned to a full-time assistant, and then moving with Clark to the Notre Dame staff. Wiese, an associate head coach for the Irish, earned the head coaching role at Georgetown in 2006.
While Clark did not coach BJ Craig as a player, the two were introduced when Craig would assist with Notre Dame’s soccer camps. Craig was then the head coach at St. Francis, and when Louisville head coach Ken Lolla called Clark to ask for recommendations for an assistant coach, Craig came to mind.
A year later, when a spot opened on the Irish coaching staff, Clark called Louisville for permission to interview Craig for the role, and Craig began his 10-season stint on Notre Dame’s staff. In 2018, he joined the Oregon State staff as associate head coach.
With so many connections in the mix, Clark would love to see all four teams make the semifinals, and with all four in the quarterfinals this week, each would need just one more win to make it so.
“The big thing is, every team that makes it to the tournament has had a good season somewhere along the way, and certainly, any of the top 16 seeds could win it — but hopefully, hopefully it’s one of my tree.” Clark said.
Time will tell which team earns a title in 2021, but Clark’s years of teaching the game and letting the game teach him, his coaches and his players will continue to shape collegiate soccer in the years to come.