Plakorus named new Montana soccer coach
1/28/2011 12:00:00 AM | Soccer
Jan. 28, 2011
Mark Plakorus, most recently the associate head coach at TCU, was named The University of Montana's new women's soccer coach Director of Athletics Jim O'Day announced Friday. Plakorus, who replaces former coach Neil Sedgwick, becomes the third head coach of a program that will be entering its 18th season of play this fall.
Plakorus rose to the top of the pool of candidates from a national search that attracted close to 200 applicants for the position. Five finalists were in Missoula over five days last week for on-campus interviews.
"We are extremely excited to have Mark on board to lead the charge for women's soccer at The University of Montana," O'Day said. "We had an incredible candidate pool, and at the end of the interview process, I felt Mark was the right person to lead our program.
"He is knowledgeable about our program, our university and the state of Montana. He will be a great asset for the Griz and all of women's soccer across the state."
Plakorus, who was stationed at Malmstrom Air Force Base in Great Falls, Mont., from 1994 to 1999 and has been the head coach and director of the Flathead Soccer Camp in Kalispell, Mont., since 1998, has been coaching exclusively in the collegiate ranks since 2002 when he chose to end an 11-year Air Force career to pursue a full-time coaching career.
He spent two seasons (2002-03) as an assistant at Iowa and one year at Tulsa (2004) before joining the TCU staff. He finished his sixth season with the Horned Frogs last fall.
Plakorus, who coached at the club, high school at ODP level while stationed in Montana and saw former players go on to play for the Grizzlies, was elevated to associate head coach at TCU prior to the 2009 season.
"I'm excited about the opportunity at Montana," Plakorus said this week from Fort Worth, Texas. "It's been a dream of mine for years, so to have it come true is almost overwhelming.
"Each stop in my college coaching career became a great learning experience because I was fortunate to work for some fantastic coaches who all had different - but successful - approaches to coaching.
"Each step got me closer and closer to becoming a head coach, and that culminated at TCU."
TCU had had four straight losing seasons prior to the arrival of head coach Dan Abdalla and Plakorus in 2005. By 2008 the Horned Frogs were 14-4-2, had become a nationally ranked program and set a program record with 47 goals in 20 matches, making TCU the 18th most prolific offense in the nation.
This past fall TCU led the Mountain West Conference in shots at nearly 19 per match. The Horned Frogs' 1.95 goals per game average also led the Mountain West.
"People are going to see a team that plays an entertaining form of soccer and one that plays hard and competes in everything we do," Plakorus said. "We'll be creative in the attack and organized defensively.
"I think it will be an enjoyable team to come watch play."
After graduating from Kansas in 1990 with a degree in computer science - he played club soccer and was a member of the KU ROTC - Plakorus became an officer in the Air Force.
That began a dual career for Plakorus, who would rise to the rank of Major in 11 years of service while also getting a start in coaching the game that would become his livelihood.
After a three-year (1991-94) duty rotation in Colorado Springs, Colo., Plakorus was stationed at Malmstrom Air Force Base (1994-99). It is where the seeds that would ultimately result in this week's announcement were planted.
In addition to his day job of nuclear missile flight commander/code controller, Plakorus became the director of coaching and player development for the Electric City Soccer Club, started the boys' soccer program at Great Falls High School and rose to the role of director of the Montana girls Olympic Development Program.
Those positions connected Plakorus with the Griz soccer program, which had started play under Betsy Duerksen in 1994.
Plakorus gained further ownership in Duerksen's program when a number of his former players - Wendy Stuker, Nikki Bolstad, Liz Roberts and Sara Aspinwall among them - went on to play for the Grizzlies.
"Great Falls is really where my coaching career took off," Plakorus, a native of the Electric City, said. "It's where I got the opportunity to learn what it takes to be a coach and the rewards that come with it.
"It's where my passion for coaching the game of soccer started and when my interest in the Montana soccer program and what Betsy was building began."
In 1999 Plakorus was assigned to the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs. He was an assistant coach for the Falcons while also serving as the academy's program manager for the physical education classes taught to its 4,000 cadets.
On the side he coached for the Colorado Rush Soccer Club and took on head coaching duties of the Colorado Springs Ascent 14, an expansion franchise in the Premier Development League of the United Soccer Leagues.
Plakorus was forced to make a life-changing decision in 2002.
Faced with the prospect of getting assigned to Greenland and likely seeing his career as a soccer coach come to complete standstill when it was just starting to take off, Plakorus made a bold, from-the-heart decision that went against a family tradition.
He ended his Air Force career and embarked on a coaching career that peaked this week when he accepted the challenge of taking over the program Duerksen had built into the Big Sky Conference's best.
"I was a third-generation military officer, and it was expected that I would follow in those footsteps," Plakorus said. "Both my dad and grandfather retired as military officers.
"It was not an easy decision. My mom was very instrumental in the path that I chose. She always told me to do what I want to do and follow my dreams.
"I took a big chance, and I have no regrets. I feel very blessed to be able to do what I do."
Duerksen led the program from its inception in 1994 until 2003, when she stepped down with a record of 117-69-7. She coached the Grizzlies to four Big Sky Conference regular-season championships, three Big Sky tournament titles and NCAA tournament appearances in 1999 and 2000.
Montana went 37-77-13 in seven seasons under Sedgwick and advanced to three Big Sky Conference tournaments. The Grizzlies posted just 16 wins the last four seasons and were outscored 39 to 8 this past fall.
College soccer programs do not operate in a year-to-year vacuum, with only the current players experiencing the wins and losses, the championships and the near misses.
The fabric that makes up the history of Griz soccer is woven by threads that stretch back to Duerksen's original team in 1994. Any highs and lows of the current team are felt through the bond of a shared program and history by the players of the past.
That can be especially true of the Montana players who were on the founding team and over four years built it into the Big Sky Conference's flagship program.
Lisa Oyen, who completed her first year as head coach at Arizona last fall, was a freshman on Montana's inaugural team in 1994.
She was a four-year member of Griz teams that evolved from a startup 7-8 squad in 1994 to winning the first Big Sky Conference regular-season and tournament titles in 1997, when Montana went 16-5 and a perfect 5-0 in league play.
"Being one of the first members of the program, it still feels like it's our team," Oyen said. "I'm still very close with a lot of my teammates, and we all follow the program.
"We all had such great experiences that it feels like we just left. We all still feel a deep connection to the Griz."
Oyen was excited to learn earlier this week that Plakorus, who she's known since her playing days with the Griz, had been offered and accepted the job and would be the coach leading a program that has fallen below the standard that those early teams created.
"Mark and I have talked for years about Montana soccer, and I know he feels as strongly about the program as the alumni and I do. That's the exciting part for us.
"We were really hoping someone would come in who loves the program, the department, the school and the state as much as we do, and Mark does."
Plakorus's hiring connects the current program with its successful past, something that carries added significance as the 20th anniversary of the first year of Griz soccer comes into long-range view.
What Oyen has with her original teammates from the mid 90s, a bond that neither time nor distance can fray, Plakorus hopes to recreate, beginning with his first meeting with the team in early February.
"I want every player that enters the program to have a rewarding and enjoyable experience," he said.
"Being a student-athlete is challenging, but we're going to cultivate a family environment that will create bonds between the players that go beyond just soccer and allow us to meet those daily challenges.
"When you foster that type of environment, you create a student-athlete experience that the players will remember for the rest of their lives."
From Oyen, who's attempting to do the same thing with the Wildcats in Tucson, Ariz., to former Griz who live throughout the country, the players who built the program nod in full understanding and approval.
And the patchwork that connects them all just got a little tighter.
