By Diane Evans
Argonaut Staff
Photo/ Emet Ward / Argonaut / UI women's soccer coach Arby Busey watches his team from the sidelines during Thursday's game at Guy Wick's field in Moscow.
Arby Busey, UI women’s soccer coach, has stepped in after serving as assistant head coach for two years. He replaced Larry Foster, who went back to his hometown in Fairbanks, Alaska.
Busey grew up playing soccer at Mercer Island, just outside of Seattle. There he played high school and club soccer. He played collegiate soccer at Villanova University, outside of Philadelphia.
Before he came to Idaho, Busey had extensive coaching experience in Washington. After college Busey headed back to Mercer Island High School, where he coached both girls and boys high school soccer. He also coached various club teams there.
He worked specifically with the Washington soccer club and Washington’s Olympic Development Program (ODP). As part of the ODP, he helped identify, work with and coach the best players in the state of Washington.
Q. What brought you to Idaho?
A. “The coaching staff that was here. Steve Crum, who’s my associate head coach, he’s a good friend of mine. We’ve played together in high school and have coached together for a long time. He ended up coming here.
“The following year, the job as a second assistant opened up and he called. I jumped on board. It turned out to be a good decision.”
Q. What are some of the greatest things about being part of Vandal athletics?
A. “Probably just the department, the family atmosphere. The majority of the coaches are, like myself, a bit younger. A lot of them, this is their first head-coaching job, so we’re all kind of going through the same thing. We can kind of lean on each other, ask questions of each other and kind of feel our way through. It’s fun—everybody’s young, everybody’s energetic. Everybody wants to win. It’s a good place to be, a great place to be.”
Q. What are some plans and expectations you have for your team this year?
A. “The expectation is just that we take the field everyday and play as hard as we can. I don’t like to set specific expectations, as far as number of wins or anything like that. A lot of times we’re not necessarily in control of those things.” I think that if we go out and play as hard as we can, every day, those kinds of things will take care of themselves.
“I would expect us, or hope that, we can compete for the Big West title. That’s going to be the goal as we continue to build this program. I think the players are in place right now for us to be able to challenge for that. There’s definitely some solid competition within the conference, but we’ve, with the girls, sat down and set the bar pretty high for ourselves. That’s what their goals were and I’m writing mine with them thinking we can challenge for the Big West title and hopefully play in an NCAA tournament game or two.”
Q. What brings you the most satisfaction when you’re coaching the team?
A. “I think just watching the kids develop both on and off the field. Watching them become not only better soccer players, but better people.
“It’s easy when you start with what we start with. We try to recruit players that are good people to begin with. So that makes our job a little bit easier.
“Just being around them and watching them develop, going back to what I said in the first place. It’s just fun to see them from year to year develop to better and better players and better and better people.”
Q. What makes Idaho soccer different than any other team you’ll play this year?
A. “It’s tough to say because I’m not in the other offices that we’re playing against. What makes it special for us is all the things I just mentioned. We have a great cohesive group, they love to be around each other. When we start practice, they love to kick each other. As soon as it’s done, they love to hang out and be friends with each other. It’s a group that knows what it needs to do at different times.
“There’s a lot of times where you get a team that brings a lot of the off-field issues on the field it’s hard to separate the two. This is a group, like I said, when we get in-between the lines and start to play, we’ll kick the snot out of each other.
“Come the end of practice, they’re going to be the ones that are hanging out together and helping each other with homework. I think we have a very, very cohesive group. When you talk about trying to bring 25 different people that’s not always the case, different personalities and different attitudes. This is a group that’s come together and gelled and is very cohesive.”
Q. What are some advantages this year’s team has over last year’s team?
A. “I think experience. It’s a younger group as far as class structure. If you look at the number of seniors versus the number of seniors we had last year and that kind of thing, it wouldn’t seem that way.
“The experiences they went through last year, they have been able to draw upon and use to their benefit this year. I think we, as a team, although I would say in my opinion we underachieved last year, grew a ton. We’ve learned from what we did last year and maybe some things that didn’t work like we thought they would and have made some changes from the end of last season to the beginning of this season. That hopefully will pay off as we progress through this season.
“Basically, we learn from a lot of our past I hate to use the word mistakes but learn from some of our past decisions and have grown from it and be a better team in the future.”
Q. Who are some players you pick to watch for offense?
A. “Attacking-wise, we’re going to be looking at Emily Nelson. She’s a junior (who) didn’t have as good of season as she would have liked to have last year. Her freshman year was dynamite. (She) came in, was a first-team all-Big West player, ended up third in the conference in scoring. (She) was leading the conference up until the last weekend and a couple teams played an extra game because of the NCAA tournament, and she ended up getting passed. She looks to be in the same form she was in two years ago.
“We’ve gotten her some help out front. Adriane Kehl, a player out of Spokane, who is a freshman, came through over the weekend against Boise State with two goals. She’s another one people will have to deal with, which is great for our team to have, not only to have Emily up there, but also Adriane, because you can’t just mark one of them and hope you’re going to be okay, because the other one will punish because the other one will punish you.
“Laura Humphreys, up top, will provide some senior leadership with them. She does well creating opportunities for those two players. If she gets healthy—she’s got a bum knee right now—but we’ll get her back on the field and she’ll help us out.
“In midfield, (the) attacking person is going to be Jenny Kiebel. Again another senior, who we’re going to look for to put more points on the board for us. She’s had three great years of kind of being a player that we’ve played through in the past. Someone we get the ball to and she sets things up, and we’re going to ask her this year to not only continue to set things up but also to create chances for herself and capitalize on those chances. We’re going to need her in the scoring book to have some success.
“But those are probably the four players we’re looking at to put the goals on the board and create the goals for us.”
Q. And so, for defense?
A. “Defensively, it starts in the net with Jenell Miller, senior goalkeeper who had a great game against Boise State. (She) had five or six phenomenal saves at the end of the game to keep us in the lead and provide a lot of motivation for the players in front of her. We have a young back line, and they’re going to only get better as the season progresses.
“Katie Swajkoski is probably the one that is the leader in the back at this point. She’s only a sophomore but vocally, the way she carries herself and the way she plays, is probably the one who is leading that back line as far as the defense goes.
“We’re going to rest a lot on Jenell’s shoulders, and we have a lot of confidence in her abilities to keep the ball out of the net.”
Q. What games do you especially recommend the Vandal supporters to come and watch?
A. “Hopefully, that Cal-Poly, Santa Barbara weekend, Oct. 18 and 20. Those are two teams that are picked towards the top of the conference, and hopefully we’re playing for something at that point.
“That should be a good weekend. Those are two good teams to watch and hopefully, like I said, we continue to grow and by that time should be battling at the top of the league, with them, for bragging rights.”
Q. Is there anything else you want to add about the team or this year?
A. “I think everybody, from top to bottom, is very excited about what we have the capability of doing. The coaching staff, like I talked about earlier, is young and energetic, and we’re excited about the group of players we have.
“We’ve continued to be impressed with everything they’ve done from day one. Not necessarily surprised, because we know we have a talented, talented group of players. But they seem to be a lot farther along than we thought they would be at this point in the season, which is a great place to be. That allows us to continue to grow and get better and better.”
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