On a recent chilly weeknight, the Missouri State men’s soccer team spent the first half out-shooting and outplaying Southern Illinois-Edwardsville, but went to the break in a scoreless duel.
Eventually, the Bears broke through and wore down the visitor en route to a 3-0 victory. It was another workmanlike, blue-collar victory for the most-consistently excellent athletic program on campus. Asked if it was a typical outing for his team, coach Michael Seabolt smiled.
“We hope that typical is just fighting hard, being humble and being hungry,” Seabolt said. “If you do that and you have good players, good things will happen.”
Good things have been happening for a long time for the soccer Bears and continue to happen as Seabolt has taken the head-coaching reins from long-time boss Jon Leamy, who retired last fall after 30 seasons.
Success has become the expectation
Over the last 15 years, the Bears have won 10 Missouri Valley Conference regular-season championships, three MVC Tournament titles and gone to six NCAA Tournaments, including a Sweet 16 appearance in 2020-21.
Ranked in three national polls, from 17th to 19th, the Bears (9-1-3, 5-0-1) can clinch another MVC title with a win or draw on Friday while celebrating Senior Night against Drake. Kickoff is 6 p.m. at Allison South Stadium.
The success has become expected and the norm, even while losing some key players to graduation. Seabolt said it’s been a season of growth that hopefully continues deep into the postseason.
“We lost some really good veterans that are in the pros now, but we had some amazing players that were awaiting their opportunity,” Seabolt said. “They’re taking it and we believed they would and knew they would.
“They keep getting better in every match and that’s what we challenged ourselves to do this season — can we play our best soccer in October and November? So far so good. Let’s keep going.”
A ‘seamless' transition between coaches
The transition from Leamy to Seabolt has been seamless, mainly because Seabolt has been with the program since 2007 and already was trusted by Leamy with many of the responsibilities of a head coach.
“Exactly the same,” leading scorer Nicolo Mulatero said when comparing the “new” regime to the old one.
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”Coach Leamy and I had a great partnership for so long,” Seabolt said. “He was so generous in giving me so much responsibility that it was not really a tough transition. I’m so lucky with the staff we have. Those guys have made my job so easy.
“It’s been really cool. We get so much support from the school. It’s been smooth and seamless.”
Leamy, who despite his retirement remains a fixture around campus volunteering his time to help the school any way he can, doesn’t miss a home game. He enjoys what he sees, albeit from a different vantage point.
“We all think it’s a team that could go far,” Leamy said. “It could really do some damage in the NCAA Tournament.”
International players have helped win
A lot of the success has come from a strong international presence on the roster. The Bears have recruited globally over the years, though no roster exemplifies it more than the current one with 25 of the 26 Bears from abroad.
Leamy said it seemed natural to begin recruiting international players, for a couple of reasons.
“Number one, soccer is a tremendous world game,” Leamy said. “And two-fold, the university has done a great job of expanding into all 50 states and countries all around the world for enrollment. It has a public affairs mission with a global perspective.
“That’s pretty neat, when you look at how the university has gone from Southwest Missouri State to Missouri State but with a global brand. And coach Seabolt is very plugged in, with great ties and recruiting contacts and some go back from many, many years and he’s done a good job of exploring new ones, too.”
Casting a wide recruiting net
Ten Bears hail from England, five from Italy and four each from Spain and Norway. There’s one player from New Zealand and Ireland to go with the lone American, freshman redshirt Elijah Zelkind from San Diego, California.
“I coach locally for Sporting Springfield and have for 15 years and I’m one of the directors there,” Seabolt said. “We’ve had some really good local players and we want to recruit locally and regionally, but in the end, we want to win and want to have the best possible players to do that.
“We cast our net wherever we need to, to find players. It really started with working and networking and spending time recruiting all over. It’s just finding the best guys and finding the best fit for Missouri State, academically, as a human being and athletically too.”
Missouri State's soccer reputation spreads internationally
Goalkeeper Harry Townsend, a junior from Cornwall, England, has been a mainstay in his first season as a starter. The Bears had two shutouts last week and Townsend has nine shutouts this season.
Townsend said foreign soccer players typically use a recruiting agency to link with college coaches in America and that’s how he and many others connect with Seabolt. While he had never heard of Springfield prior to arriving in the Ozarks, he said the reputation of Missouri State soccer is well-known in Europe.
“It was just a great opportunity and a great program that really wants to push nationally,” Townsend said. “It’s the consistency and the ruthlessness to be a top program year-in and year-out. It’s not up and down, it’s every year. We want to push and the consistency of that really stuck out.”
Teammates become family
Seabolt said it’s interesting to put together a program of players with so much international flavor, on top of replacing key players lost to graduation year after year.
“They become a family,” Seabolt said. “A big part of athletics is the teamwork and experiences you learn from that. These guys have done that.
“What’s been cool, we’ve seen a lot of them actually become Americans. They’ve stayed and contributed and got jobs here and stayed in this country and given back to our community.
“Every business you can imagine is global now and the sport is global, too. The more you can adapt to that, the better you are going to be.”
Bears eye deep postseason run
As for making a deep NCAA Tournament run, Seabolt tries to keep the focus on what is next. It’s a formula that’s worked for Missouri State soccer for a long time.
“It’s crazy, you can think the team is amazing and it just takes a bad bounce and it changes,” Seabolt said. “But I’m proud of the boys right now. They’re in a great position to finish strong and we have the ambition to play great every match while staying humble. If we do that, I think this team can go a long way. We’ll just let the games speak for themselves.”
MVC streak
Missouri State has earned a positive result in 16 straight Missouri Valley Conference matches dating back to the 2020-21 season. The Bears’ last conference loss was to Loyola on April 8, 2021. Since the 2019 season, Missouri State is 32-1-1 in Valley regular season matches, which is the best conference run nationally over that time period.
A title this year would also be the Bears’ fourth-straight league crown, becoming only the second team in league history to win four or more consecutive titles. Creighton is the only other program to do so, winning five-straight titles from 1992-96.
