Steve Springthorpe: I started my coaching career right after college at Methodist University. When I graduated, I stayed and became an assistant coach for the women’s team. We were a pretty good Division III team – I was there for nine years. I worked for Puma sporting goods in Boston for a few years and got back into coaching at the University of Florida, which had just won a national championship. They beat Carolina in 1998 and I started in the spring of 1999. The head coach there helped me develop my coaching skills. I was offered a head coaching position at Fresno State University and was there for five years. Then this job opened. It was a chance to get my family back to the East Coast and to coach at a higher level in the best conference in the country for women’s soccer at a great school. For me, this job was sort of a dream come true. Technician: Were you familiar with N.C. State? Springthorpe: We used to play N.C. State at Methodist. We never won a game – they were pretty good back then, frequent final four participants and going to ACC championship games. It was really one of those programs that, as a small Division III coach, this was always the kind of program we wanted to emulate. Technician: You spoke of N.C. State’s “glory years,” so to speak. What do you plan on doing to get N.C. State back to that level, where it can compete with divisional powers and make runs at the postseason? Springthorpe: I took over a program at Fresno State that had gone a few years without success and had slipped. Before that, they were a top-25 program. I was able to go in and create a different atmosphere and got the players to believe in what we were wanting to accomplish, and I hope to do the same thing here. There were some glory years for this team, with Charmaine Hooper, the “Canadian Connection” and Laura Kerrigan … there were some great players back then that were some of the best in the country. I don’t know if we’ll ever be able to recreate that, but I want to get us back to a place where we’re nationally recognized. That’s going to happen through hard work. Technician:  There’s obviously no formula for this sort of thing, but what are you going to do to make that happen? Springthorpe: We’re going to try and change the culture that is currently in place with the team. Not being successful and having some losing years can compound on you. Things don’t go right sometimes and you’ve got to try and get that monkey off your back. We’re going to take some steps this year, and maybe things will click our way and we’ll have some more success. This will be a period where we will redefine who we are. Technician: This is a team in transition. It just lost its two captains and its scoring leader. How will that factor in? Springthorpe: I got a chance to meet them in the spring. Lindsay [Vera] and [Tami Krzeszewski] were great people and players and they certainly did a lot while they were here. Going forward, there are some things we need to work on. Technician: Such as? Springthorpe: We have gotten fitter. We have a different mentality toward training. We’ve built a staff that is going to help to elevate our team to a different level. Technician: Former Coach Laura Kerrigan was known for recruiting what seemed to be primarily in and around the Raleigh area. Since you’ve coached all over the country, are you going to broaden your range? Springthorpe: We’ve already done that a little bit. I noticed when I came in here and looked at the roster that there are a lot of Raleigh players. There are great players here – we always want the best players from the state to be part of our program. But we will ultimately need to look at other places as well. Some of our recruits for the next couple of years are coming from other states, the West Coast, and the Northeast. We may even go international at some point. We’ve gone all over the place to find players. We will do things differently from a recruiting standpoint.