The shirt came off.
Dave Brandt was just weeks into his coaching tenure with the Pittsburgh Riverhounds, but he was already making himself comfortable.
Wanting his team to push through a fitness session in the summer heat, Brandt shouted orders and ran alongside his players, throwing his shirt aside in the process.
“Everyone was just like, ‘who is this guy?’” said midfielder Nick Thompson. “I think it just embodies him well. He’s intense and he wants a lot from the guys, but he also cares about the guys he coaches.”
Unlike most players at the time, Thompson was already familiar with Brandt’s expectations, having played for him at Messiah College and coached under him at the United States Naval Academy.
“It’s been great to be back in his system and his way of coaching and teaching,” Thompson said. “I think he’s teaching a lot of good life lessons for guys and it’s good to always be growing and pushing yourself in that way, so it’s always good to be around him.”
Brandt first played at Messiah from 1981-84 before accepting an assistant coaching position at his alma mater in 1988. Nine years later, he grasped the head-coaching reigns of the team and steered it to national prominence.
In their third season under Brandt’s direction, the Falcons won their first NCAA Division III Championship. This greatness was sustained throughout Brandt’s 12-year coaching stint with Messiah, as the program won a grand total of six national titles.
“The process at Messiah was turning a quite good program into a great one,” Brandt said. “We really kicked the door in and made it a dynasty.”
Brandt won his sixth and final championship at Messiah in 2008. The following year, he would accept the head coaching position at Navy, where he would reside for seven seasons until landing with the Hounds almost two months into their 2016 campaign.
When Brandt arrived in Pittsburgh, he reached out to a former player who could help establish his system – a player who was part of his 2008 national championship team and volunteered as an assistant coach under him with the Midshipmen.
Thompson received a call from Brandt while coaching at Eastern Nazarene College in Massachusetts and was asked to come play in Pittsburgh. Soon after the phone call, the two were reunited with the Black and Gold.
“He really wants to be successful,” Thompson said. “He has this hunger and drive in him that’s like ‘I need to win. I need to be successful. I’ll do whatever it takes.’”
Rebuilding a Program
In the midst of freezing January temperatures, the Hounds kicked off their 2017 training camp at Highmark Stadium.
Pittsburgh was alone in its efforts, as no other professional team had yet commenced its training sessions for the upcoming season.
“They committed to that,” Brandt said. “It’s been a consistent effort. They’re grinding pretty well.”
Despite missing the postseason, Pittsburgh improved under Brandt throughout its 2016 campaign and finished with a 3-3-3 record in its final nine games. Now as the coach prepares for his first-full season with the Hounds, he finds himself in familiar territory.
“At Navy, it was the process of inheriting a struggling D-I program and turning it into a very good one,” Brandt said. “I think it’s the experience of having done that.”
When he first began his stint at Navy in 2009, Brandt led the team to four more victories than its previous season. The soccer program steadily improved, eventually winning 27 matches from 2013-14, tying the highest two-year win total in school history.
Similar to when he acquired the Navy coaching position, the Hounds were sputtering and held a 1-4-3 record at the time he was introduced as the head coach. Just as he did at the collegiate level, Brandt now takes another attempt at rebuilding a program.
Brandt said he does not believe there are many differences from the collegiate to the professional game and players at both levels tend to function in the same ways.
“In many ways he’s the same coach,” said assistant coach Dan Visser. “He’s going to demand a lot from guys and hold guys to really high standards.”
Like Thompson, Visser originally played for Brandt at Messiah before following him to Navy as an assistant coach. Now a member of the Hounds staff, Visser will help Brandt make his coaching imprint on the team.
When Brandt took the head coaching position in Pittsburgh, he implemented a system that features an aggressive, attacking approach. One forward in particular welcomed this new philosophy.
Corey Hertzog’s 2016 season started relatively slow, as he scored two goals in the first eight games. Like the rest of the team, Hertzog would benefit from Brandt’s ideas.
“When Brandt came in it was more of my style of play,” Hertzog said. “I think that benefited both of us very quickly.”
With this new style of play, Hertzog broke out of his early season slump. The forward went on to lead the team with 13 goals for the season, scoring 11 times in Brandt’s offensive attack.
“We have the same attitude,” Hertzog said. “We just want to win. And we’ll do anything possible for that to happen.”
Pushing the Wheel
Brandt established three goals for his team the first night they met this season – to win the USL title, for each player to grow personally as men and for the 2017 campaign to be the most life-impacting season of their careers.
For these things to happen, the head coach told his players they need to be completely open to new ideas, work harder than ever before, be held to higher standards, become an “elite mentality” and be willing to be challenged to become better men.
“A better man makes a better Riverhound,” Brandt said.
This season, Brandt wants to continue to build cohesiveness throughout the team, which is something he has been striving toward since he accepted the position last year. Acquiring players who act as one group is at the forefront of his focus.
This process has led to a large roster turnover this past offseason, as less than half of the current players returned from the 2016 season.
“I think the guys who are here from last year clearly want something more and are clearly committed to that,” Brandt said. “They have been surrounded now by a different group they need to lead.”
An analogy Brandt uses to convey the concept of one group working toward its goals involves a large flywheel. This wheel is heavy and requires everyone to move in the same direction to turn it.
“It’s all about starting something and creating momentum through constant effort in the same direction,” Brandt said.
Brandt keeps notebooks filled with ideas, philosophy and quotes that influence his coaching. One of these quotes comes from President George Washington who says, “Tis not in mortals to command success, but we’ll do more, we’ll deserve it.”
Being an avid reader, the head coach seeks inspiration and learns from others’ experiences. Observing others’ successes and failures is something he has and will continue doing during his coaching career.
“I like to watch people in organizations that are successful and dig into them and find out why,” Brandt said. “I’ve learned so much from things like that.”
