Fuller needs to recruit for Men's Soccer

New Penn men's soccer coach Brian "Rudy" Fuller will need to convince players quickly to join his program. The Athletic Department's announcement yesterday of Brian "Rudy" Fuller's hiring as the new men's soccer coach completes its primary role in the improvement of the men's program, but Fuller's job is just beginning. Although he was officially hired Monday, Fuller has known since last Friday that he was the committee's selection. The former Georgetown player and five-year assistant coach will begin as soon as he can finish his responsibilities at Georgetown. Search committee chairperson and Senior Associate Athletic Director Carolyn Schlie Femovich said she was "very pleased with the outcome of the search." "He came very highly recommended," Femovich said. "I was struck immediately when I met Rudy by his maturity, and I think coaching philosophies showed him to be someone who was mature for his years." Neither Femovich nor Baker expressed concern over Fuller's lack of college head coaching experience or his relatively young age, 26. Advertisements for the position only required that applicants have three to five years experience as a college coach, not necessarily head coach. Applicants were generally head coaches from schools in weaker conferences and assistants coaches such as Fuller, who were serving at current national powers. Georgetown reached the final 16 at last year's NCAA tournament. "At every juncture there has to be a time for assistants to break out and become a head coach, and he kind of fits that build," Baker said. "I don't see any disadvantage with his age because even though [Penn] is a long standing program, I think [the program] needs a big time injection of a youthful coach." There is little time for Fuller to acclimate to his new environs at Penn. He will need to restart the recruiting process quickly and work to convince players who applied while George O'Neill was the coach that he can build a successful program. Femovich expects Fuller's recruiting success at Georgetown will translate well to Penn because both schools are non-scholarship, urban schools with high academic standards. Recruiting was one of the main issues during the search for a new coach. Despite bringing in a high quality freshman class two season ago, former coach O'Neill was less aggressive than women's counterpart Patrick Baker in flying in multiple prospective students from around the country. "This whole thing centers around someone's ability to recruit," Baker said. "If you don't have the horses to run the race, you are going to finish last." Robert Koonce, who oversees athletic admissions, will provide Fuller's introduction to Penn's current recruiting situation. Patrick Baker will also work with Fuller on devising a plan to attract players to a program with a long history but few recent encounters with success. While going over the current applicant pool during the interview process, Fuller was already familiar with many of the names on the list, in part due to the crossover in Penn and Georgetown's recruiting strengths, and in part due to his familiarity with the players from the Maryland area. Baker will play a key role in getting Fuller adjusted to Penn soccer, but surprisingly he was not present for either of Fuller's two interviews. "We were playing a serious game of phone tag and just never really linked up," Baker said. "I was informed of his selection as coach an hour before I met him in person at the Adidas party at the coaches convention this past Friday night in Cincinnati." Recruiting is not the only issue Baker and Fuller will collaborate on. The need to find a strong fundraiser was another area which the search committee addressed, and Fuller was well prepared to present himself as a candidate who would be a successful fundraiser. He said that he built strong relations with the alumni and helped raised donations to the Georgetown program to five times the level they had been before he arrived. The recruiting and the fundraising will hopefully serve to quickly bring the men's program up to level of the women's team, which shattered school records for league wins this season. Meanwhile, Femovich will turn her attention to filling the open position in women's volleyball. Margaret Feeney, last year's coach, resigned just before the end of the fall semester. Femovich said she hopes to wrap up that search by the end of February.

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