'Who do you want to be?'
October 28, 2015 | Women's Soccer, Andy Baggot
Long before she built this year's Big Ten champs, Paula Wilkins was building a culture at Wisconsin
Long before she built the team that broke Wisconsin's two-decade title drought by securing the latest Big Ten trophy, Paula Wilkins was hard at work building a culture that conditioned the Badgers to believe they could compete for championships. | From Varsity Magazine
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BY ANDY BAGGOT
UWBadgers.com Insider
MADISON, Wis. -- Long before Paula Wilkins became the Wisconsin women's soccer coach she was innately preparing for the role.
It's a job that requires adaptability. When Wilkins was 7, she and her family evacuated their home in Middletown, Pennsylvania, and spent a month at a relative's house following the infamous nuclear accident at nearby Three Mile Island.
It's a job that demands an ability to formulate tactics. When Wilkins was an All-America defender at Massachusetts in the early 1990s, she was revered by teammates for her instinctive ability to read the play and seamlessly fuse defense to offense.
It's a job that puts a premium on caring and communication. When Wilkins was a senior and in her third tour as captain at UMass, she once stayed up all night writing notes of encouragement to teammates before a series of pivotal matches.
It's a job that insists you know how to plot a course. Wilkins' father, Richard, worked as a topographer, providing aerial maps of areas throughout Pennsylvania.
It's a job that requires a passion for teaching. Wilkins' mother, Sondra, instructed special needs children and Wilkins, who has master's degree in physiology, once fancied herself as a college professor.
That Wilkins wound up at Wisconsin in 2007, this after six extraordinary seasons at Penn State, caught at least one former teammate by surprise.
Briana Scurry was an All-America goaltender at UMass in 1993 that went on to enduring fame as a World Cup champion in 1999 and two-time Olympic gold medalist for Team USA in 1996 and 2004. She thought Wilkins was destined for a CEO's corner office.
"So many of my teammates have gone on to coaching in college soccer and they're all wonderful," Scurry said. "But Wilks? I didn't think she'd go that route.
"Not that she couldn't do it. I knew she had a coaching mind and I knew she had a very, very high-level grasp of the game. I just thought she would go do something else. Go lead a company one day.
"It didn't surprise me that she didn't, though. She was the kind of person I thought would kill it regardless of what she was doing."
That description seems to fit what Wilkins is doing right now in her ninth season at Wisconsin.
A year after guiding the Badgers to the Big Ten Conference tournament title -- their first since 2005 -- she's coaxed a veteran-laden club to the school's first regular-season championship since 1994.
This is the same program that had two winning seasons in league play from 2000 to '06 and required some rebuilding when Wilkins came onboard in '07. Her first two teams were a combined 15-20-2 overall. The last two are a cumulative 30-7-5 heading into the Big Ten regular-season finale vs. Northwestern at the McClimon Complex.
The Badgers have won 10 or more matches overall for seven straight seasons – a program high – and are 83-39-22 (.653) during that stretch.
It's not quite the level of dominance Wilkins orchestrated at Penn State from 2001 to '06 – the Nittany Lions were 119-19-11 (.836) and won the Big Ten regular-season crown all six seasons – but the foundation here appears quite sturdy.
What makes Wilkins, who said she left Happy Valley and her home state seeking a new challenge, a good coach?
"She has a lot of confidence in her players," said Cara Walls, a standout senior forward last season who most recently played professionally for the NWSL's Chicago Red Stars and is currently serving as a UW volunteer assistant coach during the pro club's offseason. "She never gets super negative or anything like that. She always takes a bad situation and turns it into a positive one. Even when things are rough … she trusts you and believes in you.
"She's very smart and knows the game of soccer very well. She knows how to make it so people can understand and what they have to do to be successful."
The traits that enabled Wilkins to stand out as a player have seemingly carried over to her role as coach.
There's being a leader.
Scurry remembers arriving in Amherst, Massachusetts, in 1991 with a bunch of elite recruits and having a fellow freshman set the tone. Little did Scurry know that the two of them would wind up in the UMass Athletic Hall of Fame.
"Wilks just took the reins in terms of leadership for the class and I felt comfortable with her doing that," Scurry said. "She also, as a freshman, took a leadership role on the team.
"A lot of players wouldn't do that and I've learned that over the years. Not many people try to make their mark and grab hold of situations when they first arrive on the team."
There's being a tactician.
Scurry said Wilkins is a student of the game whose recall and instincts remind her of legendary NFL quarterback Peyton Manning.
"She was very much aware of the game," Scurry said. "She understood the movements. She had an ability to connect the defense to the attack, and very few players have that."
Scurry said Wilkins "had a defensive role, but an attacking mind" that set her apart from the competition.
"She was brilliant at starting an attack because she could see runs that others don't see," Scurry said. "She wasn't the fastest afoot running, but she was very quick in her mind. I can think of a handful of players that I've played with that were of that quality in how they thought the game."
There's being an intense advocate for the cause.
Scurry remembers Wilkins as "one of those people that doesn't pussyfoot around" at anything.
"Wilks is one of the few people that I know that was as intense and as serious as I was," Scurry said. "She's been a winner ever since I've known her."
Wilkins has been known to intimidate some people on the periphery of her team.
"I know that I have that image," she said. "I think the people that know me well, they know that I'm passionate for the people that play for me or work for me. Everything I do – sometimes out of concern, stupidity, whatever – is to be an advocate for them. So I tend to speak my mind."
But Wilkins listens, too. She deflected a recent post-practice interview request so she could give freshman midfielder Victoria Pickett a ride to class. Wilkins said she wanted to hear how things were going with Pickett, but to also make a point.
In two days the Badgers would play at Maryland with an opportunity to clinch a share of the Big Ten regular-season title.
"You can do something special," Wilkins told Pickett.
Wisconsin promptly got a late goal from junior midfielder Micaela Powers, and sophomore goalkeeper Caitlyn Clem and the Badgers' defense worked their ninth shutout of the year en route to a 1-0 victory.
Wilkins and her players will tell you the latest Big Ten title means more than the tournament trophy they secured last November. Not only does the latest one define excellence over the long haul, it illustrates what can happen when players confront adversity and unite.
The Badgers began the season 3-4-3 overall and were walloped 4-0 in their Big Ten opener at Penn State. At that point, Wilkins asked her players – including six seniors and five juniors – a question that stung.
"Who do you want to be?" she said. "How do you want to go down?"
The answer can be found in a nine-match unbeaten streak (8-0-1) since that disaster at Penn State.
"We had a bad start to the season," Wilkins said. "We could have cashed it in. There's a lot of pride on that team – a lot of pride. We have a lot of kids who've put in a lot of hard work."
Senior midfielder and captain McKenna Meuer said Wisconsin crammed the three best games of the year into one weekend to claim the Big Ten tournament last season.
In order to win the Big Ten regular-season championship, that level of intensity and precision had to be maintained over two-plus months.
"I can honestly say it was much harder winning the league than it was the tournament simply based on how long it takes and how much you have to bring every single day," Meuer said. "It's a little bit daunting to think about it sometimes, but that makes it even more sweet."
The regular-season trophy emerged from the rubble of an embarrassing start to the Big Ten season. The loss to Penn State gave way to a lackluster scoreless draw at Ohio State.
Why did the Badgers rally when other teams might have shrunk?
"It was definitely a wakeup call and it was good for the team because they had a new fire, a new drive," Walls said.
"I think we have a really good group of seniors – upperclassmen for that matter – who want to leave behind a legacy," Meuer said. "When Paula put it in those terms, it was pretty black and white. 'What kind of team do you want to be?' I can't speak for everyone, but that really resonated with me."
Wilkins, 43, said winning is important, but the emotions that come from achievement are priceless. She pointed to a picture on her office wall at Kellner Hall that captured her players' euphoria after they won the 2014 Big Ten Tournament title with a 1-0 overtime victory over Iowa.
"That means more than the actual championship right there," she said of the framed photo. "If I want to give you anything, it's that emotion right there. That's the essence of what I want the program to be."
Wilkins has come a long way since her family was abruptly displaced by Three Mile Island. The worst accident in U.S. commercial nuclear power plant history took place in 1979, forced approximately 140,000 to evacuate the area around Dauphin County and resulted in $2.4 billion in property damage.
She remembers passing the time playing with her cousins while her father, a member of the volunteer fire department in Middletown, helped civic leaders manage the crisis.
Adaptability is one of the many traits Wilkins has acquired in her life and brought to this moment.
"At the end of the day, you know she cares a lot about you as a person," Meuer said of her coach. "She's really good at never getting complacent. She always wants more. She always wants to be better."
