Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, September 29, 1993 TAG: 9309290025
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-4 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: SCOTT BLANCHARD
DATELINE: BLACKSBURG LENGTH: Long
On Virginia Tech telling its new women's soccer coach to build a national-caliber program: "I'll do it."
On the Hokies' date with national recognition: "I believe we will be there. It won't be long."
On the 30-year-old Nigerian native's future: "I will get to the top of women's soccer."
About the only thing not heard bright and clear in a half-hour chat with Okpodu is the pronunciation of his last name - the `k' is silent, but sort of blends in with the `o' almost inaudibly and runs right into the `p' and, well, you can just call him Sam, and he'll laugh like nothing's funnier.
The laugh and the smile and the come-let-me-tell-you-about-soccer manner complement Okpodu's part-businessman, part-psychologist approach to teaching a game he played collegiately at North Carolina State; on national teams growing up in Warri, Nigeria; and, briefly, on pro teams based in London, England, and Orlando, Fla. He was the ACC's most valuable player in 1982 and a three-time All-American.
Minutes after telling a staffer to demand a discount from a rental company if the 29-seat van leaks on his team again when it rains, Okpodu is asked if he's a perfectionist.
"Correct," he says from behind his desk in Cassell Coliseum. "Every shot I take must go in. [If I miss], I want to make sure I don't do it the same way I missed it. I hate to do something twice that doesn't work. It means I'm not learning."
Rest assured Tech's players, in their first varsity season after sustaining the sport on the club level for years, have heard that lesson once or a hundred times.
And occasionally you might catch Okpodu in practice looking like a film director, creating a frame with his hands and a thin-air movie of what's wrong and right.
"One is fuzzy. One is clear. Which one would you take?" he said. "Let me show you [what you did]. Now, look at the flip side of what you could've done. Which one would you rather do?"
The Hokies might not be Emmy-winners yet, but neither are they bound for Mystery Science Theatre 3000. The Hokies are 4-4 and started the season with a four-game winning streak before losing four straight, including Saturday's 6-0 defeat at UNC-Greensboro. Tisha Truman leads Tech with 16 points (eight goals), and goalkeeper Jenny Weibel entered Saturday's game with a 1.29 goals-against average and three shutouts.
Okpodu promises his first team will be "competitive," but he knows recruiting will determine Tech's future in the sport. Okpodu has had practice, doing some player-catching at North Carolina State, which went 47-17-2 with three NCAA tournament bids in his three seasons there.
Okpodu was lured from Nigeria by the promise of education in the early 1980s, a time when U.S. schools were scouting international teams for players. He majored in history ("I want to know a little bit about everything") and embarked on a pro career that he cut short because he and his wife, Camillia, had a young child and Camillia wanted to complete her Ph.D. in plant physiology at N.C. State.
"If I can't play with my feet," Okpodu said he thought at the time, "I want to be able to teach somebody."
He said he was in the running for only one other head coaching job, at Catawba College, before getting the Tech position. Catawba, incidentally, was hiring for a new program as was Tech. Okpodu, as he does for most anything, had a plan.
An established program, he said, offers too much history, even for him.
"You hear, `This is how Bill does it, this is how Susan does it,' " he said. "It's four years fighting with the players of how somebody else used to get the job done.
"I'm putting down a foundation I think will last for a very long time. You know exactly the direction you want to go. The kids don't know, they can't hold you to the past, because they don't have a past."
Their direction, Okpodu said, is "total soccer" - every player knowing everyone else's role and responsibilities. Versatility blossoms instead of a segmented team, which he says is a theory popular these days among some in international soccer. He can remember as a player being harried so much by an opponent that "there was a loose ball two yards away and he wouldn't touch the ball because he was so concentrating on marking me."
"Why are you playing?" he asks. "Are you playing to stop me, or to have possession? I'd rather have possession."
And he'd rather have a team full of all-star recruits than a non-scholarship group that, until this year, wasn't an official Tech team. They kept themselves alive as a club, however, and that means Okpodu does have one thing he treasures.
"I know pretty much a club team will not get me up there as quick as I want to go," he said. "But in my heart, as long as a kid is willing to play, I could mold something. I believe. They've got to believe."
\ UPCOMING IN BLACKSBURG: Volleyball - Virginia Tech Tournament, Oct. 1-2 (Oct. 1: Marshall vs. East Tennessee State, 5 p.m.; Tech vs. Evansville, 7:30 p.m. Oct. 2: Evansville vs. ETSU, 11 a.m.; Tech vs. Marshall, 1:30 p.m.; Marshall vs. Evansville, 5 p.m.; Tech vs. ETSU, 7:30 p.m.); Virginia, 7 p.m. Oct. 12. Men's soccer - Georgia Southern, 4 p.m. Sept. 27; West Virginia, 4 p.m. Sept. 29; UNC-Charlotte, 4 p.m. Oct. 6. Women's soccer - Georgia Southern, 2 p.m. Sept. 27; Davidson, 4 p.m. Oct. 8. Women's tennis - ITA Regional Team Tournament, Oct. 2-3; Virginia Tech Outdoor Invitational, Oct. 8-10.
Scott Blanchard is a Roanoke Times & World-News sportswriter.
by CNB