When it comes to upsetting the apple cart, Colgate University women’s soccer coach Kathy Brawn and her assistants Chris McLain and Paul Stinson are not shy at all.

The most noticeable evidence for this currently is on the recruiting trail. The Colgate program has been turning some heads with its performance in getting top players, including a number from the TopDrawerSoccer.com Top 100 lists, to sign or verbally commit to the program, from each of the 2009, 2010 and 2011 graduating classes.

The defending Patriot League champions may not have a name synonymous with national soccer power, but if this caliber of player keeps choosing the upstate New York campus as the place where she wants to play her college soccer, a revolution may well be in the works.

The most recently-announced recruiting class includes standouts Kelsey Hough and Christy Patterson, while last year’s class included a number of top players including Alyssa Manoogian and Elise Amioka. It’s the 2011 class that is shaping up to be a breakthrough year for the Raiders, with Alyssa’s sister Emily Manoogian, Montclair SC’s Jenna Gibney and Crossfire Premier’s Caroline Brawner all verbally committing to the program.  These are the kinds of recruits that change the balance of power.

For head coach Kathy Brawn, who is prohibited from talking about specific recruits prior to that class’s signing day (next February for 2011 grads), capitalizing on Colgate’s strong academic reputation was a key to improving the recruiting classes.

“We’re always looking for a way to keep things dynamic. You want programs to keep getting better, to make things a better experience for the players on the team and to move things to a higher level,” she said. “I went to our Admissions office and to our Registrar to see what the demographics were of the students who were coming in. I knew we had students from all over the country because of the school, so I wanted to focus on 2-3 areas in addition to the Northeast, where we’ll always be recruiting, to see which areas matched areas where there are strong pockets of girls’ soccer. That’s really played out well for us and Chris has done an outstanding job running with it.”

Chris is assistant coach Chris McLain. He said he and Brawn share the ambition that teams don’t have to accept the status quo in women’s college soccer’s competitive pecking order.

“Some club coaches push kids to the same types of program and never give that player the chance to look at what other universities could provide as an overall experience (athletically and academically). We're considered one of the top academic schools in the country, not to mention we have a pretty strong soccer program. What we try to sell is not just about four years of a college scholarship  - although we can provide that – but about the 40 years after that. We’re using their soccer ability to get them into the door of a school where with 10,000 applicants, maybe 9,500 don’t have the grades to even get in to the program,” McLain said. “On the soccer side you’ll see a program get six or seven forwards in one year where four of them are in the national pool and the other three in the regional. Well, somebody’s going to be sitting. In Division One, women’s soccer has the highest transfer rate of all sports. So we have to open players and parents’ eyes to the opportunities that are awaiting. Other small schools have built top programs, like Portland, and it has to start somewhere. We feel we can become the Stanford of the east coast, we just need to get the right kids.”

Brawn added that this approach requires a little more patience in the recruiting process.

“When you initially see somebody play, you might notice their talent but you don’t know their personality completely. You have conversations with the player and their family and you learn more,” she said. “We tend to be drawn to a certain person as a player, who tends to fit soccer-wise and as a student. We hope it’s Colgate, but wherever it is, we want these young women to end up at the school that is the best fit. If they’re dedicated intellectually and not just athletically, that’s the kind of player who will flourish here.”