Tampa Bay Sun FC is led on the field by a beast in coach Denise Schilte-Brown, who not only had a a 184-97-43 at the University of South Florida, but guided the USF to six conference championships in the AAC, and eight NCAA Tournaments where the Bulls went to the second round four times, and the third once.
Brown is almost always at a 10 when it comes to competitive energy, and told Creative Loafing Tampa Bay that it’s hard for her to scale that down. “It doesn’t matter if we’re doing rock-paper-scissors or trying to win a USL championship, I try to win,” she added.
Last fall on WMNF’s public affair program The Skinny, Schilte-Brown checked in from an international recruiting trip and described how her model of play has evolved over the course of a nearly 20-year collegiate career. She envisioned a Sun side strong in the attacking third, and was searching for keepers and center backs who were comfortable with the ball, plus midfielders who wanted to rotate all over the field.
“Those are examples of how I won’t really compromise on my model of play,” she said at the time, adding that the style will have to evolve with whoever ends up on the roster. “I think when a coach wants to be strict with their model of play, if they don’t have that flexibility, they’re gonna get stuck.”
Schilte-Brown has never shied away from letting a player know how they’re performing either.
“She’ll definitely tell you if you’re not doing something, which I think is actually really good, because you don’t want a quiet coach,” forward Hannah Keane told CL.
Keane—who is rehabbing a ruptured patellar tendon and hopes to be back on the game field by mid-season—said the initial training sessions lit a fire inside her, too.
“I just kept thinking about how this team would destroy my team in Australia,” she said about watching a Tampa Bay Sun FC squad that is rife with individual skill prime for Schilte-Brown’s aggressive style that includes a really fast counterattack.
Japanese-Brazilian midfielder Yuki Watari signed after falling in love with Schilte-Brown’s approach to the game and passion, and then immediately fell in love with Tampa.
“Honestly, this is the best team I have ever seen,” Watari— who comes to the Sun from FC Juárez, which plays in Mexico’s Liga MX—added. She said the Sun will have a lot of possession during its matches, a sentiment that the gaffer agrees with.
“Everyone’s going to want to have the ball on their feet, they’re going to be skillful and creative, and that’s going to be fun to watch,” Schilte-Brown told CL. If we lose the ball, we’re going to win it right back and then we’re going to be deadly on the counterattack.”
Last Tuesday, just days away from the first regular season game and fresh off a friendly pre-season tune-up, Schilte-Brown told CL that she believes in the special, and talented group of athletes that have joined her
“There are always going to be peaks and valleys,” she said about the road ahead. “But I believe we’re going to be at the peak more than in the valley.”
