Behind Enemy Lines with Princeton men's soccer coach Jim Barlow

Daily Pennsylvanian: You went to Princeton and now you've coached at Princeton for nearly 20 years. How has the experience been and how has the school and the Ivy league changed over that time?

Jim Barlow: It’s always been a really strong soccer conference, the Ivy League. One of the things you can count on every year is a lot of parity, and that means there is a lot on the line in every game. You almost have to treat all seven games in the league as the Ivy League championship because you know if you drop a couple, you are out of the race when you only play each team once. And there is no Ivy League tournament, so that part has always been unique to our league.

So in terms of coaching at the school I went to, I feel lucky to be able to do that. I played here when Bob Bradley was the coach here and he went on to coach the U.S. World Cup team and is now coaching Egypt’s national team. And I feel like the environment he created at Princeton challenged us in a lot of ways, and the environment mirrored the academic environment where there is a lot of responsibility put on you to take care of all the challenges that are thrown at you. I felt fortunate to come back to that place and try and continue the kind of soccer that we had played when I was here.

Obviously the game has changed a lot over the time I’ve been here. It’s a lot faster, it’s a lot more physical now. And still, I think when you look at a game like Penn-Princeton, it’s always a game that teaches a lot of passing from both teams and a lot of connections being made by both teams and a lot of attacking from both teams. So it’s always a game we look forward to.

DP: You are a New Jersey native and have been there most of your life, did you ever want to leave the state and get out and be somewhere else?

JB: I coached for about five years at American University in DC but I was also able for a long time from 1999-2011 I coached the U15 boys national team for about half that time as an assistant coach and half as the head coach. And Penn’s coach Rudy Fuller was on my staff with that team. So with that team I was able to travel a lot to Europe a lot, to South America a lot. That part was great because it provided a great way to keep us challenged in the off season and coaching at a really high level and see some really great places around the world. For a really long time, even though I’ve spent most of my time in New Jersey, for a long time I was able to travel and coach at the same time and coach Fuller was a big part of a lot of that time as well.

DP: How is it every year to play against Penn with this big rivalry but also against a coach that you have worked with before?

JB: It’s a really healthy rivalry in that both teams get after it and want nothing more than to win but the teams also have a lot of respect for each other and certainly our coaching staff has a lot of respect for Rudy and his staff. Rudy and I were roommates when I was the assistant coach at American and he was the assistant coach at Georgetown. We became really good friends a long time ago before we came to Penn and Princeton so our relationships go back a long time. We talk a lot, we talk about the game, about the league, about college soccer, and it’s great to have a rivalry that’s so intense but with so much respect on both sides. My brother played soccer at Penn and my wife played field hockey and lacrosse at Penn so I feel like I’ve been close to the Penn athletic scene for a long time as well.

DP: In looking towards this weekend, Penn and Princeton have identical records and are so close behind Harvard, what can we expect from the game?

JB: It’s going to be a really exciting back and forth game. Penn, of all the teams we’ve played, has some of the most dangerous attacking players with their four forwards, who are all All-Ivy caliber forwards. They’ve got some really good weapons in the attack. And they will probably pose to us the biggest challenge we’ve faced in the league thus far in terms of having to deal with really creative, talented goal scorers.

Having said that, I think we are as well of creating a lot of chances and have some guys in our attack who can score as well. So we think it’s going to be an exciting game with both teams getting chances. Like every game in the Ivy League, we think it’s going to be close and come down to who’s a little bit sharper in both boxes and it should be a really good game on Saturday.

DP: What do you think will be the biggest surprise yet to come in the season?

JB: It’s at the point now where nothing really surprises us. Last year Cornell finished first and Dartmouth second and those two teams are in seventh and eighth right now. Harvard didn’t win a game last year and is in first place right now. So it’s really hard to be surprised by anything from here on out. I think both Penn and Princeton are hoping that Columbia can beat Harvard this weekend and then the winner of the Penn-Princeton game would be in first place. So we are keeping our fingers crossed for that but all we can worry about is taking care of the things that we can control and that is playing as well as we can on Saturday against Penn.