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My Life Altering Story to Change Teams or Give Up Soccer

That moment when your college coach tells you, “your role on the team won’t be on the field.” 

Yep, that moment. 

That moment, after two years of working your tail off, you learn playing time isn’t an option for you. In the moment, it was awful. Looking back on it, it was life altering. 

My name is Matt Freibaum and this is my #Believeinit story. 

As a youth player, I grew up in Mt. Airy, a small town in Maryland. As a kid, I played any sport I could. I played baseball, basketball, football, tennis, golf, and of course, soccer. I just loved competition! 

As I grew older, soccer began to take center stage in my life. I knew I wanted to play college soccer. There were not a lot of opportunities to play at a high level and develop as a player in my small town. So, starting around age 9, my dad would drive me an hour and a half both ways to practice and to games to play on a very competitive club team.

Through a lot of hard work and dedication, I found a lot of success on my club team. I learned so much about the game from my coaches. I was an undersized player but I believed my soccer IQ, feistiness, and ability to find ways to score goals were what could help me make it at the college level. 

My hard work paid off and I was lucky enough to be recruited by a lot of schools. Ultimately, I ended up choosing to play division 1 soccer at Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU). I was ecstatic! My dream came true!

Making the jump from youth soccer to college soccer wasn’t easy, but I loved everything about VCU! I got along very well with my teammates, I enjoyed school, and had a lot of fun! 

Unfortunately, despite working my tail off, my playing time was little, if any. For some players, not playing equals them not trying harder to earn playing time. Not me. Overcoming obstacles was something I’ve been doing since I was 9 years old as a small player from a small town. I didn’t let not playing stop me. I knew I was undersized so I did what I could control about it and worked out in the gym! I would work out an hour before practice every day to get stronger. I would work extra after practice to try and improve my game. 

I gave it all I could to earn playing time, not beg for it. For two full seasons. 

At the end of our second season, my coach called me in for our individual player meeting. 

In our meeting, my coach painted a pretty clear picture of what my next two years would look like. He said, “my role on the team wouldn't be on the field regardless of how much I’d been trying.” He asked questions like, “Are you happy working hard with no guarantee to play?” and “Is it important to me that I get playing time?”

This was it. That moment I shared earlier. That moment when my college coach tells me, “my role on the team won’t be on the field.” 

Yep, this moment. This moment when after two years of working my tail off, I learn playing time isn’t an option for me. 

It was awful. Looking back on it, it was life altering.

To be fair to my coach he was direct and transparent. I couldn’t ask for more. Many coaches in this moment don’t tell it like it is, lead you on and then you get let down for years to come. I’d rather it this way. Even if it was hard to hear, my dream of playing college soccer wasn’t going to happen at VCU. 

Why was this moment life altering for me?

This moment was life altering for me because it forced me to decide how much I loved soccer. I could either give up on soccer and quit. Or change teams. 

There are a lot of variables that go into making a life altering decision like this. You have to know what’s important to you, what you value, what you can live with and what you can’t. I left my coaches meeting and went to work thinking about those questions. 

Ultimately, after making a pros and cons list on leaving VCU, it came down to one question. 

Am I ready to give up soccer? 

My answer was no. No, I’m not ready to give up soccer! 

In my reflection time, I knew it was important to me that I got playing time. Plus, I wanted to go to a place where I was a difference maker on the field.

With those constraints in mind of playing time and being a difference maker on the field, I chose to transfer to York College of Pennsylvania. York College was a division 3 school in York, PA. 

For some, it might seem like transferring from a D1 program like VCU I didn’t play at to a D3 program like York is a failure. Not me though. That’s not how I looked at it. My perspective was, I had my D1 experience and it was great. I chose to go to D3 instead of another lower level D1 school because I wanted to dominate again. I wanted to get my confidence back. I wanted to have the impact I used to have in my club days. Maybe for some that move down is a failure, not for me though. Not at all. 

My transfer to York turned out to be a great decision! I made new friends, loved my new teammates (even one of my VCU teammates transferred too) and I earned significant playing time being the difference maker I wanted to be! 

I’m humble, but proud to share in my Senior year I lead my team in points with 5 goals and 7 assists. I was also voted an all-conference player!

Looking back, I am so glad I made my tough decision to change teams. It wasn’t easy and it was life altering, but I’m glad I did it. It may seem like it’s easy for me to say now, as a current college coach, that it was an easy choice for me to make and I didn’t doubt it or feel negative about it. That’s just not true. At the time, from my perspective as a player in the moment after, I thought of my time at VCU as a failure. I did feel negative about it.  

I thought of my time as a failure because as an 18 year old kid who has always succeeded in everything athletic up until that point to not finish all 4 years at VCU because I wasn't one of the top 11-18 players felt like a failure. It just did. But as I reflected overtime and measured myself by how much I learned and experienced instead of how many minutes I played in a game, I realized my time at VCU wasn't a waste. It wasn’t a waste because I grew as a player. I grew as a person. And I improved on and off the field. That in itself is a success!

Fast forward to the present day, and as a coach now, I see that I wouldn’t have done it any other way. I learned a lot of things about myself through that experience. I learned that I can succeed through adversity. I learned how I need to operate on a day to day basis to get the best out of me. I only learned all this by failing first though. 

To this day, I still use those experiences to help players navigate their own playing time situations.

A coach friend of mine once asked, “Knowing what you know now, how do you advise players today facing a choice to change teams for playing time? Either as a youth player or college player.”

My answer to that is I would advise players to be honest with themselves. To take time to think about their goals and if the change will help them achieve their goals. Because once I was truly honest with myself and what I wanted, the decision was very easy. Additionally, I tell them to trust that the people around you just want you to do what will make you happy. I share this because many times players think influences on them, like their parents, will be disappointed if they make a change for playing time. It’s just not true. Parents are so supportive and really just want what's best for their kids. 

I hope you enjoyed my #Believeinit story. I hope it can offer you some guidance and perspective if/when the time comes you need to make your own life altering choice. 

Good luck to you! I wish you all the best. 

#Believeinit

- Coach Matt

P.S. Side note I still kept up with my VCU friends too when I was at York! So it’s not like I lost my old teammates as friends. :)