Couch: How MSU's women's soccer program so quickly changed course and became Big Ten champions

EAST LANSING – Every 15 minutes. That’s how often Michigan State’s women’s soccer assistant coaches Gabe Romo and Megan Link hit refresh on the transfer portal screen last fall.

A lot went into MSU becoming Big Ten champions so quickly — the outright title clinched Thursday night with a 1-0 win at 17th-ranked Ohio State, the program’s first ever official conference championship, just 16 months after head coach Jeff Hosler took the reins.

The origins of this rapid rise and the story of this season are all over the Spartans’ roster — transfers, freshmen, determined holdovers — a team that realized just how good it could be somewhere between early practices and a late-September win at then-No. 6 Penn State.

“I remember a specific practice early on in the preseason,” senior goalkeeper Lauren Kozal said. “We were probably just doing some small-sided or 11 vs. 11 scrimmage and I just remember thinking, standing in goal, 'We can be the real deal.' ”

There’s no doubt about that any longer. Ask the rest of the Big Ten, against which the Spartans have stormed to an 8-0-1 record heading into Sunday’s finale, a 2 p.m. match against 14th-ranked Rutgers at DeMartin Stadium. The game will also be televised on Big Ten Network.

What separates this group from others?

“Our grit,” said MSU senior and leading scorer Lauren DeBeau, whose nine goals include the only score in Thursday night’s win over the Buckeyes.

“Overall talent, technical abilities and obviously shooting and all those things — we have that and I think most of the teams in the Big Ten have that. … But the toughness, the want for the ball. Sometimes games come down to just who wants it more and who can win more in the air and who can really fight for that ball. Some teams don't like fighting and doing the dirty work. I think this team actually loves it.”

DeBeau’s story is one of many that give this roster variety and make its coming together interesting. She transferred from Central Michigan, where she had been on the MAC’s All-Freshman team in 2019 before COVID disrupted her sophomore year. She was frustrated with the direction of things and wanted a fresh start. Hosler knew her well. He had recruited her to play at Grand Valley, his previous stop.

With most transfers, though, the relationship begins by refreshing the portal screen.

“Our eyes were red, not just from our own game prep week to week (last year), but from watching film in the transfer portal,” Hosler said. “If you’re not first (to contact players), you’re going to have a hard time. In the transfer portal, you have their email. Kids don’t check emails. So we’d email them and then simultaneously hunt them down on social media and slide into their DMs (direct messages).

“We had to be creative. Because if you’re going to turn around a program quickly, you have to be open-minded to the idea of the transfer portal.”

Roster construction is a dance made more complex by having to divide up 14 scholarships over 32 players, which is done however the staff sees fit.

Eight of MSU’s players are transfers, several of them mainstays in the 11.

Like DeBeau, Justina Gaynor and Celia Gaynor transferred from Butler before the 2021 season. Mia Hanson had played for Hosler at Grand Valley State, winning a Division II national championship there a year ago before deciding she wanted a new challenge. Ranya Senhaji left South Carolina looking for a starting role and a different style of play. Defender Rubi Diodati, who leads the Spartans in assists, transferred after four years at Colgate, where she was an All-Patriot League player, taking advantage of her extra year of eligibility thanks to the pandemic. She wants to be a pro and wanted to play at a power-five program. The staff at Colgate encouraged her move to MSU.

The pandemic not only aided this team in creating some extra years of eligibility — as it has everywhere — but it helped in recruiting high school players who were somewhat undiscovered because their seasons had been disrupted or they had been hurt and then unseen. Hosler and his staff, for example, found freshman Courtney Koehler in Texas as late as last December, 18 months after she was available to be recruited.

“We had to get kids that wanted to prove themselves,” Hosler said. “Like Kelly Severini, she was freshman of the year in her conference and a first-team all-conference player as a freshman at Hartford, wanting to prove herself, wanting to be a pro, (giving) examples of how she wanted to develop daily.”

There was also some considerable talent already on the roster, including four-year starter Kozal in goal, “a wall,” as her teammates describe her. She the was the Big Ten’s goalie of the year in 2021, allowing just .70 goals per game. Her .438 goals-against average this season is dominating the conference. She also leads the Big Ten in saves (47) and save percentage (.870). Kozal could return for an extra year next season, if she chooses to. She hasn't decided yet.

Fifth-year senior Camryn Evans has six goals. Junior Zivana Labovic’s second goal this season gave MSU a 1-0 win over Indiana. Defender Samantha White, a graduate student who started 18 games for MSU all the way back in 2018, was named the Big Ten’s top defender after the win over the Hoosiers and fifth-ranked Northwestern.

Sophomore Jordyn Wickes — part of MSU's final recruiting class just before longtime coach Tom Saxton retired in April of 2021 — has five goals, while coming off the bench in 13 of 17 games. .

Hosler, 42, who starred at East Lansing High School in soccer and basketball in the mid-1990s, took over a program whose only regular-season conference championship, in 1994, came when the league only recognized the Big Ten tournament winner as its champion. It had been while since the Spartans were competing at that level.

The speed in which he’s changed the program's course is surprising. That it happened is less so, given that Hosler won three Division II national championships in seven seasons at Grand Valley and, before that, led his alma mater, Alma, to its first Division III NCAA tournament appearance.

“Jeff is a competitive guy. He loves to win more than anyone I've probably ever met,” Kozal said. “So he really brings in that spirit and has instilled it in everything he does at practice, during the games, just everyday talk, he's always been competitive. I think that has really impacted the culture of our team, along with our player mindset and what we're trying to do and what we know now that we're capable of.”

While Kozal saw the makings of something special as she stood in goal during an August practice. DeBeau realized it while watching her teammates beat then-No. 6 Penn State, 2-1, on the road on Sept. 29. She had picked up a red card in the previous game and couldn’t play.

“When we won against Penn State, I was like, ‘OK, let's do this.’ Like, we're getting it,” DeBeau said. “I was on the sideline and just watching that, fully understanding that, like, everyone on this team is good. And we were coming in as kind of underdogs in that game. And then understanding that now everyone's kind of fearing us is a great feeling.”

Hosler will tell you it was the next game, a 4-0 win at Maryland, a game a good team should win, that told him his squad had the right mindset to make this run.

“It really showed our professionalism with that Maryland win,” Kozal said. “We could have come into that Maryland game with a little bit too much confidence and played down to their level, but we really stepped it up and rose to the challenge to show everyone looking at those scores who Michigan State soccer is.”

At this point, who the Spartans are is 13-1-3 overall, the top seed in the Big Ten tournament, surely heading to the NCAA tournament they missed out on a year ago. Then, even with 10 wins and five in conference, their schedule wasn’t strong enough outside of the league, which made sense for a program building confidence. But last season's competitiveness — even as they changed lineups and formations regularly just to survive against more talented opponents — set in motion this season. Now they can play how they want to, force teams to adjust to them.

“We want to play when there's snow on the ground,” DeBeau said. “We want to play, you know, as long as we can. So that’s process-driven. We keep harping on it, but it really is, and to keep going would be incredible. That's our goal — not only make the NCAA tournament, but to go far in it and keep going and keep winning.”

Contact Graham Couch at gcouch@lsj.com. Follow him on Twitter @Graham_Couch.

This article originally appeared on Lansing State Journal: Michigan State women's soccer: How MSU quickly became Big Ten champs