In recruiting future Jayhawks, Kansas soccer coach Nate Lie doesn’t hesitate to mention how much it meant for the Algerian national team to use KU’s facilities at Rock Chalk Park this summer — how it validates their quality that they had the chance to play a role in a sporting event of global significance.
But for Lie, what was perhaps even more striking about the World Cup was how the city of Lawrence embraced its guests from Algeria to such an extent.
“The downtown watch party when they kicked off at whatever it was, 10 p.m. — I mean, it was hard for me to stay awake as much as I cared,” Lie said in a recent interview, “and having downtown packed, I think it just says a lot about this place, and their sort of openness to to people and experiences, and then the love for soccer that does exist.”
The challenge now for Lie, entering his third season as KU’s coach after immediate and robust success — a Big 12 tournament title and a couple of NCAA Tournament victories early on — is to harness that enthusiasm for his own program.
“We’re going to do our best to keep that soccer momentum going,” he said, “and try to provide a product that makes people want to come out and watch, and just like makes them want to wrap their arms around our players and this program.”
While the Jayhawks lost a large chunk of their goal-scoring production from last season, they do return a number of key players, headlined by wing backs Caroline Castans and Livvy Moore, goalkeeper Sophie Dawe and midfielders Jillian Gregorski and Kate Langfelder.
“I hope and I think if people spend time around these women and see how hard they compete and see the way they play for each other, and then I think the caliber that this team can be, it can be something that this community is really proud of,” Lie said.
The KU schedule begins with an exhibition at Rock Chalk Park against Iowa on Aug. 8 at 1 p.m. before the season opener at home against Utah State on Aug. 12 at 7 p.m.
Fans watch the match between Algeria and Switzerland outside The Granada in downtown Lawrence on Thursday, July 2, 2026.
WELL READ
Lie has a well-stocked bookshelf in his office on which you might find the expected sports nonfiction alongside something like Michael Lewis’ “The Big Short.” (He actually worked in finance out of college before delving into coaching nearly a decade after his college graduation.) By his own estimation, he also stores about 20 more boxes of books at home.
It might not be a surprise, then, that Lie’s assistant coaches organized an offseason book club for the Jayhawks. This summer, the book in question was “Legacy: What the All Blacks Can Teach Us About the Business of Life,” a study of the New Zealand rugby team’s consistent success written by James Kerr.
It isn’t the first time the KU soccer program has studied this book under Lie, but it was new to everyone except for the handful of players who were with the Jayhawks when he arrived following the 2023 season: “We have a consistency of language when we talk about culture and expectations, and so we revisited that book, which I would recommend to anyone.”
“There was a phase where I read a ton, and I like lots of different things,” Lie said. “But I think ‘Legacy’ is great because it’s small chapters, it’s a lot of anecdotal stuff, right? About different teams, different businesses, why people can be successful, why teams (can be) successful, why they can’t, and it’s all kind of centered around the All Blacks, which is this little country, (and) is able to be the best in the world.”
HABITS DIE HARD
The KU soccer team’s trademark under Lie has been its relentless pressure, which forces plenty of mistakes in the attacking third and generates critical goals. (Consider for example the turnover that led to the penalty kick that won the Jayhawks the 2024 Big 12 tournament.)
It’s so core to the Jayhawks’ identity that it sometimes makes it difficult for them to simulate other teams’ play styles in training, because so few of them bear much of a resemblance to KU.
“I’d take that trade-off, right?” Lie said. “I would take that trade-off that they know how to play Kansas soccer. The hard part is preparing them for real games might look different, and we’ve kind of still got to learn on the fly a little bit there.”
Lie used the example of Utah State. Last year the Aggies held the Jayhawks to an early-season scoreless draw at the Chuck & Gloria Bell Soccer Field in Logan, Utah. They defended in a mid-block style that frustrated KU in the middle third, resulting in the Jayhawks being “as chanceless as we’ve been, because we had a hard time breaking down their block of players.”
“As we try to prepare for maybe what we might see against them (in the season opener), it’s going to be hard against our team, quite honestly,” Lie said, given the Jayhawks’ ingrained tendency for pressing.
Even as KU is working on its own strategy — such as how its goalkeeper and defenders might build from the back — this mindset can present problems because of the Jayhawks’ abject refusal to let opposing teams do it against them.
“And you try to tell players, ‘OK, hold on, don’t engage there, and they can’t do it,'” he said. “And it’s actually kind of charming to me because again, I’d much rather it be that way.”
When it comes time to face a team like USU, Lie said he is hopeful that his players’ experience will help them push through.
FULL CYCLE
Because Lie arrived in the offseason prior to the 2024 campaign, the 2026 freshman class is the first one for which his staff has essentially been on equal footing with its competitors.
Of course, that hasn’t inhibited KU all that much. High school players it added in 2024 like Jordan Fjelstad, Gregorski and Langfelder were key to the Jayhawks’ Big 12 tournament title that first season and their Sweet 16 berth in 2025.
And in fact, many of KU’s 2026 freshmen — Lie cites midfielders Olivia Joyce (Carmel, Indiana) and Chloe Trotter (Clarkston, Michigan) and defender Gianna Weiner (Evergreen, Colorado) — committed within the first week they were allowed to come on campus in August 2024, meaning before Lie had ever coached a game at KU.
“So they were committing to a program and a coaching staff that hadn’t quite done it yet, and it was more on trust and belief, and so that’s one thing that has a real soft spot in my heart about this class is when we’re out there recruiting 2028 players right now, we point to trophies and we point to Sweet 16 and we have a proof of concept,” Lie said. “We’re looked at in the soccer community a different way. This group came in, I don’t want to say blindly, but they had to trust.”
One common thread among this class as Lie sees it is that many players occupied critical but “understated” roles for successful squads. Trotter’s club team recently won a national title, while Weiner’s and Sophia Canepa’s are perennial national contenders.
“If you ask the coach who’s your most important player, it might be a different answer than when you show up and watch them, like, who’s the best player,” Lie said. “I think we have something resembling more like who the coach would say are their most important players.”
FURTHER REVIEW
Video review frequently took center stage in this summer’s men’s World Cup. Now video challenges are coming to NCAA soccer, with coaches able to issue two per game.
Lie, a basketball fan, joked that he has been practicing his finger-twirl signal in the mirror. He said there’s one school of thought that thinks the game should continue throughout — “we did that for 50, 100 years, and it seemed to be fine” — and another that believes if the technology is available, you might as well try to get it right.
The third course of action is finding a compromise between those two extremes.
“When you add in all these other stops, it does kind of take away from the flow of the game,” Lie said. “And I understand why we’re experimenting with new ways to try to find the medium ground. But it’ll be funny. It’ll be funny, whether it’s the other coaches or us trying to figure out the timing of how quickly you need to challenge, and then there’s a limited amount of challenges. Just like in basketball, if you use yours early, and then at the highest-leverage moment something happens, too bad, too sad. Even if it’s clear, we’ll have to figure out that balance.”
Shawn Valverde/Special to the Journal-World