By Derek Blalock
Oakland Athletic Communications

Eric Pogue was 3,000 miles away in Iceland. His latest recruiting trip was taking wrong turn after wrong turn. Travel delays. Cancellations. Riots. Just two weeks prior, the Oakland men's soccer head coach was taking in the Major League Soccer (MLS) Conference Finals to see two former players, Mitch Hildebrandt and Steve Clark, who were goalkeepers for Atlanta United and the Portland Timbers respectively. Both teams advanced to the MLS Cup final, but their longtime coach couldn't be there and it didn't feel right.
 
"I was sitting in Iceland and I was supposed to be in Paris, but the riots and they wouldn't let Americans in," Pogue said.  "I was getting re-routed. I was having to change all of this. I called (Oakland Athletics Director Steve Waterfield), and said, 'I'm struggling. I want to do my job here. But it just didn't feel right."
 
The phone chat with Waterfield, however, convinced Pogue that home was where he should be, so he got on a plane on December 7th at 1 a.m. ET. The MLS Cup was at 7:30 p.m. ET on December 8th—Pogue's birthday. But it wouldn't be until 12:30 p.m. ET on December 9th that he finally had time to sleep. Despite describing himself as delirious and barely able to stay awake, Pogue successfully made it to Atlanta for the MLS Cup. For Hildebrandt and Clark, however, this was not out of character for their former coach, mentor, and now best friend.
 
"To have somebody in the stands to come and support both of us and fly halfway across the world to do so isn't something many people have in their lives," Hildebrandt said. "That's a testament of the type of person Eric is. He loves everyone he coaches like a son."
 
"You don't get that other places. I think Oakland is unique because everybody is there to support each other. It doesn't matter which sport. The whole athletic department is like that," added Hildebrandt.
 
There's something to be said about the coach-player relationship. It's one that starts off with just a teenage athlete looking to fulfill his dreams of playing collegiate athletics, and this one ends with those athletes becoming some of the best friends the coach could have made. And it all started because of Oakland University.
 
When Pogue was recruiting Clark and Hildebrandt, he was still an assistant under former Oakland coach Gary Parsons. Clark said he was 17 when Pogue saw something in him as a goalkeeper. Clark admits that he was more of a hungry athlete than an actual goalkeeper, but because of Pogue, that quickly changed.

 "Eric changed the trajectory of my career with his goalkeeping knowledge and coaching ability," Clark said.  "After I graduated and was turning pro, he was a mentor and brother through those years. As I became older,  just best friends, offering support both ways. You count your closest best friends on the one hand, and Eric is one of those guys that have been at every major life (and) career event—my wedding, games, Norway, MLS Cups. He's been a great friend and great mentor for a long time for me."
 
 "One of the things about Eric is that he always shows up. He's one of the hardest working coaches in the NCAA, if not the hardest. People he cares about, he's going to show up."
 
 
For Hildebrandt, when he started at Oakland, he said that it was a long, arduous process for Pogue to get him to be the goalkeeper that they both knew he could be. A process that Hildebrandt thought about quitting his first year on campus.


 

 "I came in as a pretty high recruit nationally, and he broke me, but then he slowly built me back up and showed me the type of   goalkeeper I could be," Hildebrandt said. "When I graduated, I wasn't drafted, and I didn't know what I was going to do. So, he sat me down and said nothing comes easy. You need to break   down barriers, and I did, and was able to get my first professional contract."
 
 "That's the big thing for him with Steve and I. Our careers, soccer-wise, have not come easy to us.  We've had to work tremendously hard to get where we are. Neither of us were drafted. Having Eric there that saw potential in us and to drive us forward, I know Steve does the same thing, Eric's on speed dial. We'll talk up to three hours and just hash things out."
 
Despite not being drafted, Hildebrandt was named United Soccer League (USL) Goalkeeper of the Year and was featured on many sports shows for his three penalty-kick save performance against the Chicago Fire. For Clark, he started in goal for the Columbus Crew in the 2015 MLS Cup.

 After 10 seasons as the Oakland head coach, and the previous as an assistant, Pogue admits that he had changed from the days when he coached Hildebrandt and Clark. Trophies were always on his mind. Winning was always on his mind. It still is, to a certain extent, but as he has progressed through life, Pogue realized, with the help of Hildebrandt and Clark, that his impact far reaches the trophies that sit on the top of his office cabinets.
 
 "I feel like my job is trying to teach young men to become future husbands, fathers, leaders and potential coaches and mentors," Pogue said. "For a while, I just focused on that trophy, that trophy, that trophy, and I think (Hildebrandt and Clark), just as much as Nick Kristock who is doing all these amazing things at Fleece & Thank You, he won the Young Alumni Award and Senior Class Award... Travis Harrington who graduated and   is foregoing his redshirt senior year to join the Peace Corps to do a mission in Togo... those kinds of things, after 17 years, you start putting into perspective, even though it's sports and you want to win championships, being a part of a university that's educating, we're also here to develop young men to be successful."
 
Neither player saw game action in the MLS Cup, but that hardly mattered to Pogue. The journey that they both took to get to big moments such as this one was what mattered. And something he's glad he realized sooner rather than later.

"Even though they're both very talented keepers, when you come from Oakland University, you're not highly recruited. You don't get drafted. You get cut by a bunch of teams," Pogue said. "There are so many times where you can cash your chips in. Steve slept on a park bench in Europe. So just to see both of them, and being a goalkeeper myself, having a role in helping them get there. Just the blood, sweat, tears, and the hours that we put in, not even knowing that was the dream, it was like winning a championship but each time you get knocked down, you get cut, just to see them, it was the epitome for me."


 
 








This is something he credits to Waterfield, who joined Oakland in  2018 after serving as the senior associate athletic director at Nebraska.

"It changed my approach because there's a lot bigger picture. I don't want my tombstone to read Eric Pogue; Greatest Soccer Coach Ever; Won 29 Championships. It would mean something when you look back on the legacy you leave being one of amazing young men doing unreal things, but yeah, along the way we won a lot."
 
   

#WEARtheBEAR