This past spring, recently hired head coach Chris Allen sat down with six of his players, and together, they laid out the foundations for a new era of Marquette women’s soccer. 

A seventh player was added in the summer, and that group of Golden Eagles formed the team’s first-ever leadership council. The group meets with the coaching staff biweekly to discuss any general concerns that other members of the team might have.

“We have a saying in our program that in order to lead, you must first serve,” Allen said. “In order to serve the team, you need to know the necessary needs of the group and individually, so we wanted to put the leadership group in place as a little bit of a link between the team and the coaching staff.” 

Each player on the team voted for two teammates in their grade to represent their class. Seniors Maggie Starker and Alexa Maletis, juniors Adrianna Alberts and Cate Downs, sophomores Emily Fix and Kiley McMinn and first-year Lilly Coats, who were selected later, were the seven players elected.

Fix said it felt much more special to be handpicked for this role by her own peers. 

“The team is so close together and we all want the best for each other,” Fix said. “It really just makes me feel even more inclined to just reach out and ask how everyone’s doing, make sure that they’re okay. Since I’m put in this role, I really want to make sure that what the team is feeling is voiced to the coaches.” 

First-year defender Kiara Clarke — a transfer from Arkansas State — said she appreciates the way the committee is structured compared to other schools. 

“At my previous university, it was always just two seniors (who) would do things,” Clarke said. “I’ve heard that most programs are administrated that way. I think it’s pretty cool that there’s no hierarchy between classes. Everybody’s pretty equal. Whoever works hard gets the recognition. It doesn’t matter what class you’re in.”

Allen said the group was created as a part of his initiative to identify as a “bottom-up” organization, rather than a “top-down” one. 

“Everything that we’re doing from a cultural standpoint, from a leadership standpoint is either the ideas that they came up with or we have crafted and worked together with the input of the team because it’s very important for me that they feel ownership in this and that they know that this is theirs and not simply mine,” Allen said. 

Because of that direct ownership, Starker said the team is more invested in everything they do since the messages sent and the expectations set come from within. 

“We make the standards, and we set the standards that we all agree on, so when those standards are broken, it’s like a loss of trust,” Starker said. “Instead of it just coming from the coaches, it comes from us, which is more powerful.”

Although the team has not seen ideal results on the pitch yet, Allen said he has seen glimpses of the competitive culture they are creating shine through in matches. He described one of these moments from Marquette’s 4-0 win over Mercyhurst Sept. 12.

“There’s this awesome moment where the ball goes out of bounds last night, and our entire bench and 10 of our 11 players on the field are pointing in the direction that it is our throw,” Allen said.

“It was absolutely not our throw, but because we had our entire bench all the sudden competing because every moment begins to matter, the referee is like, ‘Oh, they want it more. It’s a 50/50 call. I’m going to upset a lot of people if I don’t call it Marquette’s way.’

“And so they just gave us throw… It’s just little moments like that you see what looks to be a little bit different than the way it was in the spring.”

It may have started as Allen’s idea, but Starker said the creation of the council speaks volumes about how much the entire coaching staff values the players’ thoughts and ideas. 

“They always talk about how it’s our program and we run the program how we want it run,” Starker said. “It’s a cool collaboration between players and coaches to get our opinions across and hear from both sides how we want to move forward and make this a winning program again.” 

This story was written by Kaylynn Wright. She can be reached [email protected] or on Twitter/X @KaylynnWrightMU.