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Cases in point:

Steve Collins (W swimming)
Eddie Sinnott (M swimming)
Schellas Hyndman (M soccer)
Rhonda Rompola (W BBall)

We KNOW JJ is a good coach...

Lets hope the formula holds true, I for one am very excited.

Carry On.

Don't forget Jim Stillson (best diving coach in the country), Dave Wollman (track), Carl Neufeld (men's tennis - he's won a ton of matches at SMU) and the golf coaches.

So hiring people who are thought to be leaders in their fields is successful?! You don't say!

Matth Doherty........DOH!

SMU has been successful at most of those sports for 40 years-generally in fact more successful under previous coaches. Has more to do with SMU's natural affinity to these sports due to location and the makeup of student body. There was an ehtire decade where SMU was annually in the National Top 20 in all sports competition each and every year.

Stallion wrote:SMU has been successful at most of those sports for 40 years-generally in fact more successful under previous coaches. Has more to do with SMU's natural affinity to these sports due to location and the makeup of student body. There was an ehtire decade where SMU was annually in the National Top 20 in all sports competition each and every year.

What decade was that?

ready4abowl wrote:Cases in point:

Steve Collins (W swimming)
Eddie Sinnott (M swimming)
Schellas Hyndman (M soccer)
Rhonda Rompola (W BBall)

We KNOW JJ is a good coach...

Lets hope the formula holds true, I for one am very excited.

Carry On.

the formula isnt holding true for Doh right now but some would argue that he isnt a good coach.

[quote="Stallion"]SMU has been successful at most of those sports for 40 years-generally in fact more successful under previous coaches.[/quote]

Who were the previous coaches more successful than Schellas or Rhonda?

I believe you could consider Red Barr-swimming and Doc Hayes- basketball as more successful than Schellas and Rhonda. Red and Doc were legends in their time. Schellas is a good soccer coach but can never seem to get his team to the final championships (NCAA). Yes, I know he is perhaps the winningest soccer coach in the southwest but accepting a finish less than number 1 is an admission of failure. BTW, I have been an SMU soccer fan for many years.

GO PONIES!!!!!

The SMU Soccer Program was built by Jim Benedict-wasn't that his name. Their pre-internet records seem long ago lost to the world but my twin brother was on the team in the late 1970s and I worked the games for the SIDs office. I think they were perennially in the Top 20-usually Top 10 and No. 2 in the Country in about 1980 which makes sense since they had 3 First Team All-Americans in 1980 and 2 All-Americans in 1979. I believe they were ranked No. 1 at some point in at least two of those years. All I could find were all the All-Americans on those teams-6 All-Americans honors in 3 years with Randy Phillips and Said Baghvardani winning it two years.


1978 Dragan Radovich, Saint Francis College George Gorleku, Eastern Illinois
Adrian Brooks, Philadelphia Textile
Greg Ryan, Southern Methodist
Ty Keough, Saint Louis
Barry Nix, Columbia Raymond Ford, UM (Baltimore)
George Lesyw, Temple University
Peter Notaro, Loyola (Maryland)
Jim Stamatis, Penn State
Ole Mikkelsen, UCLA

1979 Randy Phillips, Southern Methodist Saeid Baghvardani, Southern Methodist
Mike Freitag, Indiana
Barry Nix, Columbia
Jerry Reardon, Adelphi
John Young, Hartwick College Armando Betancourt, Indiana
Steve Charles, Columbia
Clyde O'Garro, Saint Francis College
Ray Taylor, Western Illinois


1980 Randy Phillips, Southern Methodist Saeid Baghvardani, Southern Methodist
Tim Gagan, Lock Haven
Erhardt Kapp, Connecticut
Joe Morrone, Jr., Connecticut
Kevin Murphy, Rhode Island Trevor Adair, Lock Haven
Hernan "Chico" Borja, NJIT
Damien Kelly, Eastern Illinois
Kemal Khilian, Southern Methodist
Robert Meschbach, Indiana

I know Jim Benedict well. He verbally offered my son a soccer scholarship and then later reneged. A year later he called him and said he had his scholarshhip. He was going to transfer but found out he would have to sit out a year and passed on the offer. I am not sure Benedict built the team or the team was successful because Dallas was such a 'hotbed' of soccer at that time. IIRC Benedict was one of the early members of the Dallas Tornado soccer team (MISL) that emigrated from England to play in the U.S. I feel that Schellas has built a much better legacy than Benedict but neither have come up with a national championship. I also feel that Schellas is a better coach and 'developer' of players. Not sour grapes just an honest opinion. My son was offered by 9 different schools and passed on all of them because his girlfriend went to a non-soccer school and he decided to follow. Obviously not thinking with the big head. BTW Randy Phillips was a fantastic goalie but Kamal was much more exciting to watch.

GO PONIES!!!!

Jimmy really did lay the ground work for SMU Soccer. He had many great players through his years, not just the All Americans named by Stallion. Jimmy was more of a players coach. Stallion, I know during Schellas' first few years, we were number two for most of the year and ended up #4. Jimmy had plenty of his players still on those teams. Jimmy deserves a lot of credit for soccer's success at SMU.

Jimmy Benedict was a very good coach, but not in Schellas Hyndman's league.
Rhonda Rompola is lightyears better than Welton Brown.
Carl Neufeld appears to have been a better coach than Dennis Ralston (a well-respected coach in his own right).
Matt Doherty will be on this list as his team matures - anyone who doesn't think he's an enormous improvement over Coach Tubbs knows even less about basketball than the rest of us.
Brent Erwin might well join this list, too - jury's still out.

[quote="Stallion"]The SMU Soccer Program was built by Jim Benedict-wasn't that his name. Their pre-internet records seem long ago lost to the world but my twin brother was on the team in the late 1970s and I worked the games for the SIDs office. I think they were perennially in the Top 20-usually Top 10 and No. 2 in the Country in about 1980 which makes sense since they had 3 First Team All-Americans in 1980 and 2 All-Americans in 1979. I believe they were ranked No. 1 at some point in at least two of those years. All I could find were all the All-Americans on those teams-6 All-Americans honors in 3 years with Randy Phillips and Said Baghvardani winning it two years.


1978 Dragan Radovich, Saint Francis College George Gorleku, Eastern Illinois
Adrian Brooks, Philadelphia Textile
Greg Ryan, Southern Methodist
Ty Keough, Saint Louis
Barry Nix, Columbia Raymond Ford, UM (Baltimore)
George Lesyw, Temple University
Peter Notaro, Loyola (Maryland)
Jim Stamatis, Penn State
Ole Mikkelsen, UCLA

1979 Randy Phillips, Southern Methodist Saeid Baghvardani, Southern Methodist
Mike Freitag, Indiana
Barry Nix, Columbia
Jerry Reardon, Adelphi
John Young, Hartwick College Armando Betancourt, Indiana
Steve Charles, Columbia
Clyde O'Garro, Saint Francis College
Ray Taylor, Western Illinois


1980 Randy Phillips, Southern Methodist Saeid Baghvardani, Southern Methodist
Tim Gagan, Lock Haven
Erhardt Kapp, Connecticut
Joe Morrone, Jr., Connecticut
Kevin Murphy, Rhode Island Trevor Adair, Lock Haven
Hernan "Chico" Borja, NJIT
Damien Kelly, Eastern Illinois
Kemal Khilian, Southern Methodist
Robert Meschbach, Indiana[/quote]

Ok. I know that our soccer program has a long and distiguished history. No one said that we werent very good. But, the question wasnt wether we were good, but rather your assertation that we were more successful under the prior coach, and frankly I dont see anything in your post that I cant say several times about Schellas, from the national rankings to the All-Americans. Schellas has coached more than 20 All-American players, 2 NCAA Player-of-the-Year winners, and one Herman Trophy Winner. We've been ranked #1 several times in the past few years, most recently in November of 2007. His 466 career wins make him 5th all time amongst college soccer coaches. He's been to the Final Four, twice. Thats the real bottom line when we discuss success of a program, it's measured in victories and success against the highest level of competition.

I'll repeat that I understand that we were good before Schellas, and that Jim Benedict laid a strong foundation here. But I disagree that SMU was significantly better prior to Schellas, than they have been under him.

[quote="redpony"]I believe you could consider Red Barr-swimming and Doc Hayes- basketball as more successful than Schellas and Rhonda. Red and Doc were legends in their time. Schellas is a good soccer coach but can never seem to get his team to the final championships (NCAA). Yes, I know he is perhaps the winningest soccer coach in the southwest but accepting a finish less than number 1 is an admission of failure. BTW, I have been an SMU soccer fan for many years.

GO PONIES!!!!![/quote]

This was a really odd post. MY first reaction was to ask if you understand that Schellas coaches our men's soccer team, not the swim team? And Rhonda Rhompola coaches women's basketball, not the men's team? Comparing them to someone outside their own program is apples to oranges.

If you really want to compare Doc to Rhonda, then Hayes career record was 299-191, a winning percentage of 61%. Rhonda is currently 312-196, or 61.4%. If you compare number of NCAA tournament appearances, tournament wins, number of conference titles, 20+ win seasons, winning seasons, etc, then Rhonda compares very favorably with Hayes. What seperates them is Hayes Final Four appearance. Regardless, it was different programs, playing in different eras, the womens program had never been to the NCAA or even the NIT tournament before Rhonda became the head coach, they hadnt even had a season over .500 since her senior year as a player.

If anything less than number 1 is a failure, then by your own standard, both the men you are calling legends were also failures. Red won several conference titles, and Doc made the Final Four once, but neither won a national title.