In the beginning, it was a little intimidating. A 6-foot-6, athletically built, former professional soccer player with hair slicked back and a deep British accent, coming from the best women’s soccer team in the world to coach at Syracuse, a Big East program stuck in neutral.

The Syracuse players were naturally a bit nervous when they heard this past spring that Phil Wheddon would become their new head coach, right after spending a month in Beijing with the women’s national team.

‘When he came, we’re thinking ‘Oh my God, he came from the women’s national team to our practice. What does he expect?” said senior forward Amanda Arcuri.

But once the players got to know their new coach when he showed up for spring practice, they learned that his resume and stature are deceiving. They learned he’s actually one of the more laidback coaches they’ve had. A coach who quickly learned everyone’s name and was soon joking and laughing with the team.

‘At first, I guess it’s maybe a little intimidating,’ said goalkeeper Eliza Bennett-Hattan. ‘But once you get to know him, you just know that he’s here for you.’

That doesn’t take away, though, from the formidable task Wheddon has in front of him in rebuilding Syracuse women’s soccer. The team qualified for the NCAA Tournament just two years after its inception, in 1998. They did it again in 2001, but have gone 35-60-17 since, the last three of those with Pat Farmer at the helm.

So instead of returning from Beijing, world title in hand, ready to take the Big East by storm, Wheddon is more taciturn when he talks about this year’s expectations. He’s looking for improvement, and hopefully a spot in the Big East tournament. His team currently sits at 1-3-1. It’s only win – an opening night 3-1 decision over Albany – came while Wheddon was still in China.

His outlook says a lot about his style as a coach – relaxed and easygoing. It’s a style he’s picked up after spending more than 15 seasons as an assistant coach, working under a plethora of different head coaches. He saw what worked. But more importantly, he saw what didn’t work, and what coaching styles drive players apart and away from a team.

‘The good, the bad, and the ugly,’ as he says.

The good? There’s plenty of that. Two national titles in his three years as an assistant at Southern Connecticut State, followed by successes with the women’s national team, under some of the world’s top head coaches.

The bad? Well there’s some of that, too. Tom Lang, head coach at SCSU – Wheddon’s first stop after receiving a degree from East Stroudsburg (Penn.) in 1994 – remembers an inconspicuous start to Wheddon’s career at SCSU.

In Wheddon’s first game as an assistant, one of his goalkeepers made a blunder, and Lang turned around and berated his new assistant on the sideline.

Wheddon wasn’t happy about it at first, Lang remembers. But when Lang approached him after the game to talk about it, Wheddon was quick to forgive, and the two forged a friendship that eventually helped Wheddon land the job at Syracuse.

‘He didn’t take it so well there sitting on the sideline during the game,’ Lang remembered, laughing. ‘But we talked about it afterwards, and I think again that this is part of Phil’s strength, that he understands the game, he understands people, and he understood at that time that it wasn’t personal, my getting on him a little bit.’

And the ugly? Wheddon doesn’t elaborate much on that, but it’s easy to trace the low point in player-coach relations Wheddon has witnessed: a much-publicized incident during the 2007 Women’s World Cup, in which Hope Solo, the starting goalkeeper, was benched in favor of backup Brianna Scurry for the semifinal game against Brazil. After Scurry gave up four goals and the U.S. was eliminated, Solo publicly criticized head coach Greg Ryan’s decision. She was suspended from the team, and Ryan was fired soon thereafter.

‘It was a decision that was made by the head coach, and unfortunately it didn’t work out,’ Wheddon said.

Through it all, Wheddon said he learned how players should be treated, and how important good relations are to having a successful team.

‘I’ve been very honest and very open with them, and that’s the way it’s going to stay,’ Wheddon said. ‘There are a lot of coaches out there that will play mind games with players, and players won’t know where they stand – ‘Do I have a chance, do I not have a chance?’ – I’m very honest with my players. We’re trying to build team chemistry.’

Throughout his time in Beijing, Wheddon kept close tabs on his new team, working through assistant coach Robyn Pepicelli. He would send frequent e-mails to his team, weaving the lessons of the national team into what he was trying to teach his Syracuse team from halfway around the globe.

And after the U.S. women’s team won the gold medal on Aug. 21, the players, who had gathered to watch the game, phoned him immediately afterward to offer their congratulations.

‘I think he has a good understanding of when to push players a little bit, and when to ease off,’ Lang said. ‘I think he has very good communication skills. He just has a good feel for players.’

And just as Wheddon doesn’t get upset with his own players, he doesn’t get upset when he recalls what could have been for himself. He doesn’t get upset when recalling how a disease formed in the tendons of his hand, requiring seven surgeries in seven years, starting at age 25. It cut short a promising career as a goalkeeper, one that led him all the way to Swindon Town, at that time, the second-highest level of English soccer.

He’s not mad at the obvious irony. The fact that he chose the one position on a soccer field that involves work with hands, only to have his hands go lame from a disease doctors told him was hereditary, even though nobody in his family had ever had it.

‘It’s just one of those unfortunate things,’ he said.

From England, he moved to the United States and went to East Stroudsburg. He had hoped to play for the team, but was ruled ineligible because of his time spent as a professional in England. The school asked him to stay on as a goalkeepers coach, which he did.

From there, it was on to SCSU, followed by stints with both the men’s and women’s national teams, Major League Soccer and the now-defunct Women’s United Soccer Association, before landing with the women’s national team.

By the time the Syracuse job came about, he was a seasoned assistant coach. So when SU men’s soccer head coach Dean Foti called his friend Lang, the SCSU coach, to ask if he knew any good prospective candidates, Lang immediately thought of Wheddon.

And it was that range of experience that made him an attractive candidate for Daryl Gross, SU’s director of athletics, last March when Wheddon was hired as SU women’s soccer’s third head coach.

Wheddon said becoming a head coach is the logical next step for his career. The next step for the imposing but mild-mannered coach who’s learning on the job.

‘People ask me, ‘What are you going to do next? What are you planning to do?” Wheddon said. ‘I haven’t really planned anything. I don’t think you can really plan this type of thing.’

kbaustin@syr.edu

Published on September 8, 2008 at 12:00 pm