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Coach Deb Belkin with her players during a game.

I

Deb Belkin coaches the
up -an d-coming,
year-old women's soccer
program at U-M.

LONNY GOLDSMITH
StaffWriter

our years ago, the University
of Michigan brought in
Deb Belkin to start up th eir
new women's soccer pro-

gram.
This year, the up-start Wolver' Ines
are ranked 13th in country and have
clinched second place in the B ig Ten
with only one loss.
"I'm pretty impatient," t he 31-year-
old Belkin said. "I had hig h expecta-
tions coming in here.
"Starting a program i s hard because
you need to get everyt hing from goals
to uniforms and the rest of the equip-
ment."
Belkin has exper' fence in starting up
a program. She di d the same with
Fairfield Univers ity in Connecticut.
"Recruiting was hard there," she
said. "I had a recruiting budget of
$200, and I n ever went farther than
an hour aw ay in any direction."
At Mic higan, Belkin has the chal-
lenge of r ecruiting against some col-
lege soc cer powerhouses, including
Notre Dame and North Carolina.
"A t first we were able to sell recruits
on s tarting a tradition here," she said.
"N ow that we're getting good, we tell
th em they can help us get to the top."

0

Belkin feels that U-M loses as many
recruits to the likes of Notre Dame as
they get.
"Two of our players chose us over
Notre Dame," she said. "They'd have
played for them, but here they are two
of our stars."
Belkin was a student-athlete at the
University of Massachusetts, near
where she grew up. While at UMass,
she also played for the U.S. National
Team, beginning in 1986.
"We played in China in 1987, in
some small town, in front of over
60,000 people," Belkin recalled. "It
was incredibly intimidating, but that's
all it took to break the ice.
Belkin was a member of the U.S.
team until 1991. She retired at age 25
after the U.S. won the first Women's
World Cup in China.
"Women's soccer wasn't in the 1992
Olympics, otherwise I'd have stayed
with it," she said. "The only places to
play and make a living from it were
Norway or Italy."
While a player for the national
team, Belkin was an assistant coach
for one year at Division III Tufts
University, and an assistant at the
University of New Hampshire for two
years while completing work for her
master's in sports psychology.
Her first job after leaving the
national team was at Fairfield.
"Fairfield was a great job, and we
had a soccer-friendly athletic director,"
she said. "But I wanted to be in a big-
ger college atmosphere, where you
recruit against national programs and
you have all the tools to be success-
ful." ❑

.

BE PART OF THE ACTION

$185 before Dec. 22 • • $225 thereafter
Fee subsidized by the

Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Detroit
for those who pledge $200 or more to the 1998 Allied Jewish Campaign

Information meetings:

• 7 p.m. Wednesday, Dec. 3
• 7 p.m. Tuesday, Jan. 13
Max M. Fisher Federation Building
6735 Telegraph, Bloomfield Hills

Heidi Fischgrund

"

Aaron H. Sherbin

Local Recruitment Chairs

For details, call Tanya Mazor-Posner, (248) 203-1456

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