The Landscape

Intern Takeover: Big 12 Women's Soccer Coach of the Year, Eric Bell of TCU

April 25, 2021 Naveh Eldar / Andre Carter / Eric Bell Season 2 Episode 9
The Landscape
Intern Takeover: Big 12 Women's Soccer Coach of the Year, Eric Bell of TCU
Show Notes Transcript

Andre Carter is an intern from Vanderbilt University's Next Steps Program. Andre conducted the interview, as well as did all sound mastering and editing in this episode.

Guest:
Big 12 Women's Soccer Coach of the Year, Eric Bell of TCU. Coach Bell led the TCU Horned Frogs to their first ever Big 12 championship, and they made further history by being named the overall #4 seed in the upcoming NCAA Championship.

The Landscape Podcast would like to wish the Coach Bell and the women of TCU the best of luck in the tournament and into the future.

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Naveh Eldar  0:00  
Andre Carter has been my intern from next steps at Vanderbilt this entire semester. To display his talents and newfound knowledge. The following episode is completely Andres work. Not only did he interview coach Bell, he then did all sound mastering and edited the four tracks in putting this episode together. To learn more about inclusive higher education programs, like next steps at Vanderbilt, you can listen to Episode 22 of season one. And now on to the episode.

Andre Carter  0:51  
Welcome to the Landspodcast. I'm your guest house Android Carter is currently next step student at Vanderbilt and have been interning with the landscape podcast this semester. In this episode, I got to interview big 12 women soccer coach of the year coach Eric Bale, coach, bail lead tacey, to their first ever big 12 championship, and is also leading them back to the NCAA Tournament. This episode starts with Coach Bell talking about why he enjoys coaching at TCU.

Coach Eric Bell  1:32  
What do I like about coaching at TCU? I think that probably the most important thing is that all these other things are in place here to be successful. And what I mean by that, before I came to TCU, I was at Florida State as an assistant coach. And what I loved about being there was that, you know, the administration wanted us to be good. And so they gave us a nice budget, we get nice salaries, we could go and travel and recruit and find players wherever we needed to. And so in order for me to move on, I had to have that type of situation in place here. And I think that TCU has afforded me all those things and allowed us to be successful. Other than that, I think the climate obviously is nice. It's a nice place to be and it was a great school, and it's a great, it's a great school to sell to a female student athletes. So quite happy to be here. And it's going to be here hopefully for a few more years.

Andre Carter  2:31  
Okay, that ties into my next question, what do you like or dislike about traveling?

Coach Eric Bell  2:36  
What I like about traveling is that we live in Dallas, Fort Worth area. And so getting in and out of the airport is rather easy, you know, in some of these college towns, you have to go to the local airport, then you have to connect to a major hub. Living here, the Dallas Fort Worth airport is the major hub. So you can fly direct just about anywhere in the world. And that definitely makes it a lot easier. I don't know if there's anything about travel traveling is traveling. And that probably the worst thing about it, sometimes you have to have long trips. So with this into the NCAA Tournament coming up, it's going to be in a bubble in Carolina. And we could be there probably around three weeks. So that's a long time. That's the longest I've ever been anywhere with the group. So that could be challenging, but hopefully we're there for three weeks. That's the hope.

Andre Carter  3:26  
What did you learn down to Wooster college that has helped you in your career?

Coach Eric Bell  3:32  
Okay, well, I think that it's a small liberal arts school in the middle of nowhere, Ohio. And what I learned about it, or what I learned from it were two big two key things that are, I'm able to use on a regular basis. One they had this is all the classes are small, it's about 18 1800 students that go there. And so class participation was huge, as far as a grade were concerned in many classes. And so getting out of my comfort zone, and having to share my opinion in a succinct manner was really important. And I and I use it every day. And the other thing that I learned while I was there was that I learned how to write. I don't think that my high school prepared me primarily to go into college and writing in a in a proper way. And when I used to get my I would took an English class my freshman year, and I would get them back and they would be red marks all over hearing. I can't be this bad of a writer but I was I was really bad. And so being able to write and also being able to to express my opinions and ideas has been very useful for me up into this time. And so I'm very appreciative of the education that I got, that I use every day from Western.

Andre Carter  4:50  
What type of training Did you need leading up to this?

Coach Eric Bell  4:54  
Well, I kind of paid my dues, and quote unquote minor leagues of college soccer I started back in 1997, as a graduate assistant at a Division Two school in Ohio called Ashland University. I was there for three years. And then I moved on to become a head coach at a Division Two school in Pennsylvania called Indiana University of Pennsylvania or IEP. And then I got married, and my wife was from my wife is from Minnesota. And she was like, well, we're not going to be living in the middle of nowhere, Pennsylvania, so had to pack up my bags and move back to Minnesota. And fortunately, I was able to get on the staff as an assistant coach at the University of Minnesota that was in 2001. stayed there a year. And then we moved on to the University of Illinois, where as assistant for four years, and then that pilot parlayed that success into moving on to Florida State and I was assistant coach there for six years prior to coming here. So all those different places and different teams and different opponents, and different coaching styles and has prepared me for this moment here as to be the head coach, and very fortunate and happy to be here.

Andre Carter  6:10  
Have you ever got me any interesting people like sports wise or celebrity was through your whole entire career being a coach? Yeah,

Coach Eric Bell  6:19  
there's I mean, there's been obviously you get a chance to meet some of the coaches that are at your school that you're working. So I had a chance to meet with Bobby Bowden who's a, you know, Hall of Fame football coach in college football at Florida State. I got the was at Florida State met. We recruited Chris Carter's daughter. So Chris Carter was a Hall of Fame, wide receiver for the Minnesota Vikings, but he also played at Ohio State. Here, obviously, we have Gary Patterson, who's a famous football coach here at TCU. We have Jamie Dixon, who's a very famous basketball coach here. But over the course of time, yeah, you get a chance to meet a lot of different famous people when coaches and former players that come back to the campus like met Deion Sanders when I was at Florida State I met ladainian Tomlinson while I was here. So yeah, you you get it you get exposed to a lot of different people and especially, you know, stars of today and yesterday.

Andre Carter  7:20  
Yeah, I would have would have been a little bit starstruck

Coach Eric Bell  7:25  
that to me who

Andre Carter  7:27  
led diamond Tomlinson. Okay. Okay, he's

Coach Eric Bell  7:29  
a great guy, and he's always around, he's always around.

Andre Carter  7:35  
Do you recommend your players to do more than one sport so they can be Barson touted the work they really want to go into?

Coach Eric Bell  7:43  
Um, I think as as growing up, yeah, I think that as you're trying to figure it all out, I think that playing different sports, obviously, you work on different muscle groups and whatnot, and allows you to be quote, unquote, athletic, or more athletic. So yeah, it's growing up. But there's a point in time where you have to start specializing in the things and you know, around the 1314 year old type stuff and you got to start figuring out you know, what you want to do and what you want to kind of master but up until then, I think it's awesome to play these different sports and you know, figure out what's what's the one that's, that works the best for you. And then if you can have the most fun with

Andre Carter  8:25  
Yeah, that was me a little bit because the reason why I wanted to interview yours because I'm a big soccer person.

Coach Eric Bell  8:31  
Okay.

Andre Carter  8:32  
So leading up to going through school, I did multiple sports, but the one I enjoyed the most was soccer because I got to run a lot.

Coach Eric Bell  8:40  
Okay. Is there you definitely have to run a lot. So do you have a favorite team?

Andre Carter  8:48  
Chelsea, okay. And I like watching Team USA from time to time the women or the men are both the men the men Okay, awesome.

Coach Eric Bell  8:58  
Justice. Very good team. I'm but I'm a big arsenal fan. So we were rivals.

Andre Carter  9:07  
Last question, what would your What's your favorite song past or present? Or artists?

Coach Eric Bell  9:13  
I knew this was coming. And it's a really hard question. Because I don't know if I have one particular favorite artists, you know, a big big hip hop fan and I go to as many concerts as I can to see live music actually saw DMX a couple years ago and posted something on Instagram from that concert. But I'm a big Jay Z fan. I'm a big nice fan of big J Cole fan. Black thought j to kiss people that you know, spit bars now but as far as my favorite group, it probably has to be Tribe Called Quest. Tribe Called Quest for sure.

Andre Carter  9:53  
I was like I've been to multiple thought meant multiple contexts. The one I hated Going to though, even though I was like, I got to see the artist was the 21 side of his concert because it's dorm.

Coach Eric Bell  10:10  
Gotcha. Yeah, and I can't say that I'm a big 21 savage fan, but a lot of people like him. So hats off to him.

Andre Carter  10:17  
Thank you for meeting with me. As my pleasure, man.

Coach Eric Bell  10:20  
My pleasure. I

Andre Carter  10:21  
was like, coming into it. Were not very mentioned who I was gonna get the interview and what you got to do. I was like, Yes, I'm looking forward to this. Sure.

Coach Eric Bell  10:30  
I appreciate that. I was definitely looking forward to it as well. I happy that the teacher reached out to me and helped me out with this. And you know, I'm available whenever you need. So we go way, way back and I got a lot of time for him. happy to

Andre Carter  10:45  
help. I hope you enjoyed my episode did the landscape podcast and make sure to subscribe to the podcast if you haven't already. I'd like to wish good luck to coach bale and the TCU women's soccer team at the NC double a tournament where they made go history by earning the number four seed. We'll see you next time.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai