Hope he's not through after two

Darren Ambrose says he is here to stay. He says he's here for the long haul. He says he's fully committed to doing whatever it takes to return the Penn women's soccer program to prominence.

"My goal is to make this program competitive in the Ivies on a consistent basis," said Ambrose, now going into his second year as the Quakers' head coach. "We've moved back two squares now, so we've got to start again. I feel I need to be here for a good period of time [to accomplish that goal]."

Strong words. Now see what the two previous Penn women's soccer coaches had to say after leaving Penn to take head coaching jobs elsewhere.

Patrick Baker: "I honestly wasn't looking to leave Penn... but we asked for the moon, and they gave it to us."

Andy Nelson: "To be honest, I did expect to be [at Penn] for a minimum of five years. But sometimes when opportunities come up, you can't really time them the way you'd like to time them."

Let's just hope Ambrose is true to his word.

In the last three years, a merry-go-round of head coaches has visited the Penn women's soccer team.

Three seasons. Three different head coaches.

This is the first year since 1998 that a coach has returned for a second season, which means that practically every player on this year's squad was recruited by a different coach. Don't tell me that's good for team chemistry.

When Patrick Baker bolted for Florida State in '98 after five successful seasons at the helm of the Red and Blue, he left behind a team that was blossoming.

Since its inception in 1991, the Penn women's soccer team had made nothing but forward strides and, toward the end of Baker's tenure, the Quakers became one of the region's top soccer teams.

Enter Andy Nelson.

In 1999, Nelson led Penn to six Ivy League wins, a 13-3-1 overall record, the program's first-ever NCAA berth and the best season in the team's short history.

A few months later, Nelson traveled across the country to take the head coaching job at Pac-10 power Stanford.

He came, he conquered and then he left.

So when Darren Ambrose arrived at Penn last year, he had a big pair of shoes to fill.

Hey, Nelson was able to do it in one year. Nelson didn't know the recruits, he hardly knew the players, he didn't fully understand what Ivy League soccer was all about. And he still led the Quakers to their best season in history.

So Ambrose should be able to do the same, right?

Well, that's simply unfair.

What Nelson did in just one season at Rhodes Field was spectacular, if not miraculous. Traditionally, coaches need time to work with their team. They need time to understand their players' strengths and weakness, time to develop long-term goals, time to bring in their own recruits.

Dean Smith, the winningest coach in college basketball history, lost more games than he won in his first season at North Carolina. Coach K, arguably the best coach in the nation right now, was a measly 38-47 his first three seasons at Duke.

Simply put, you cannot throw a first-year coach into the fire and expect results. Time must be allowed for a foundation to be built.

Andy Nelson was an exception.

Ambrose was not able to achieve the same success as his predecessor last season, and that's understandable. The Quakers were just 2-5 in Ivy League play, and came nowhere close to qualifying for their second straight NCAA Tournament. An ECAC championship was a good way to close out the season, but the Quakers were still, for the most part, disappointed with the way things panned out.

This season, too, should be tough. Three juniors -- Heidi Nichols, Leigh Castergine and Melissa Mandler -- quit the team in the offseason, leaving Penn with just four upperclassmen on its roster.

But with a solid bunch of sophomores and an excellent recruiting class, the future is bright for the Penn women's soccer team.

A strong foundation was built. And then it was destroyed by coaching turnovers.

Ambrose is ready to rebuild that winning foundation, through the ups and downs and the bumps and bruises.

And he's here to stay.

We hope.

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