Before his first collegiate head coaching gig began on the Saint Martin’s University campus on March 31, 2025, Scott Ford was an assistant coach for a Pacific Lutheran University women’s soccer program that won the Northwest Conference all six years he was there.
He helped the Lutes amass 88 wins and four trips to the NCAA Tournament. PLU had already enjoyed success before Ford’s arrival in 2018, but he played a part in raising the standard within the program on and off the pitch.
All six of those Northwest Conference title teams had something in common.
Ford classified them all as player-led teams.
It goes without saying that coaches play significant roles in building rosters, organizing practices, creating gameplans, skill development, and many more factors in the operation of a high-caliber soccer program.
But on a successful player-led team, the spark to improve and hold one another accountable comes from within the roster. Players lift one another up, take it upon themselves to spend time together outside of practice and games, and help enforce the standard established by the coaching staff.
Entering his second year at Saint Martin’s, Ford sees the Saints program trending toward adopting that kind of leadership that delivered sustained success during his time at PLU. Even though Saint Martin’s returns just 10 players from a season ago and five who started a game, the team culture has grown tenfold.
The Saints have hosted team dinners, rest days at the lake, and hikes. Team captains and seniors Sam Escobar, Lia Lopez and Nora Melcher have been some of the enforcers of this player-led approach.
“In my opinion, player-led teams are always more successful than coach-led teams,” Ford said. “That’s not to say that a coach doesn’t lead, but I think when the players want it as much or more than the coach, I think you’re going to see much better results on the field. It makes them more accountable. There’s more buy-in to what we’re trying to do.”
So what’s the recipe for being a great leader on a player-led team?
“Just be a spark. Make that fire grow and turn into a wildfire,” senior forward Briana-Jean Tanaka said.
Veterans within the program are confident that the player-led outlook will be responsible for a turnaround season after the Saints finished 2025 with a 2-12-4 record and 1-9-4 mark in the GNAC. Five of those losses were by one goal.
Much of this increase in team chemistry has been attributed to the returners’ disappointment in last year’s finish and the burning desire to vault Saint Martin’s to its first winning season since 2009.
“We were looking at where we were last year, and we’re not happy with that. We want to be better,” Escobar said. “We have standards, and we want people to follow those standards. We have team values, and we want the new people and the returners to keep with those values. We really believe in a player-led team. Scott is a great coach, and he’s gonna enforce things, but at the end of the day, it’s the players who are on the field.”
Only one player who scored a goal for the Saints in 2025 is back in 2026. Tanaka, who led the team with four goals last fall, is a fiercely aggressive offensive forward who connected four times on just eight shots on goal. She played a significant role in Saint Martin’s offensive explosion and creativity in an 8-1 exhibition victory Saturday against Bellevue College. Tanaka has thrived within the “competitive” culture that Ford has instilled since they arrived together prior to the 2025 campaign. Last season was her first as a Saint after transferring from Peninsula College.
“He’s been trying to push us to be better at practices and treat them as if they’re game days. He pushes us to compete at a high level at all times,” Tanaka said.
The standard that Ford and associate head coach Lisa Ryan are working to create is to mimic the intensity of a high-pressure game in practice so that the “butterflies in the tummy,” as Ford described it, are absolved when the Saints are playing in close games in GNAC play.
In order to flip those tight losses into ties and ties into wins, Ford believes his team has to buy into several non-negotiables, such as grit, defensive stubbornness, forward-thinking, aggressive attacking, and being brave with the ball. Additionally, the Saints must be better in the attacking third of the pitch, Ford said.
“The biggest difference for me between the top four and the lower four in the GNAC was the final third and the decision-making and the quality,” he said. “We’ve added some really key pieces there that will help us create and hopefully score more goals. I also think the culture that we started building last year about accountability, the ‘we-before-me’ mentality and the non-negotiables will play a big role.”
In terms of offensive returners, Tanaka and Melcher lead the way as everyday starters, and junior midfielder Annika Akiona returns after starting all but one game last fall. Joining Akiona in the midfield is sophomore Scotlyn Lecomte, and junior Alexia Rodriguez-Burdeaux should see increased reps after limited time in 2025. Escobar will defend the net as a senior captain who recorded 38 saves in an All-GNAC season a year ago. Lopez, sophomore Audrey Gadawski, and junior Darci Dalziel return as veteran defenders who mostly provided a spark off the bench in 2025.
Several freshmen have earned high praise from their teammates and coaches in the preseason. Forward Peyton Bowser, midfielder Leia Tupper, midfielder Nora Ziari and defender/midfielder Kate Bond are among the freshmen who have caught the eyes of the leaders in the program and have fit into the culture of the team. Spokane Community College transfer Cora Murray has also shined since arriving this summer, with Ford lauding her intensity, high IQ and athleticism.
The coaching staff emphasized building depth during its process of adding talent to the roster this offseason, as well as finding the right personality fits to continue developing the team culture. Early returns from Saints vets show that the new additions have added to that culture.
“We have a lot of good recruits coming in, a lot of new recruits wanting to be creative and goal-driven,” Escobar said. “We’ve worked really hard to create a player-led environment, and Scott is really good about letting captains and players who want to be leaders lead. We’re slowly getting better at it. We’re getting a lot of results from it.”
Saint Martin’s has work to do to dig out of the bottom tier in the GNAC and join the upper ranks anchored by Western Washington, Simon Fraser, Western Oregon and Seattle Pacific. Ford came into a program that he said was in the midst of declining standards on and off the pitch when he arrived, but he and the mainstays on the roster are beginning to see the fruits of their labor from last season and this preseason. It’s a matter of time before the Saints put it all together on the pitch, with their season opener scheduled for Thursday, Aug. 27 at home against Eastern Oregon.
“I definitely feel like we’re in the right direction. We play in a really competitive conference. We’re not the standard. We are chasing the standard,” Ford said. “We’re not quite there yet, but all the signs are pointing in the right direction. This is very much a marathon and not a sprint. It’s exciting to see the progress that we’re making.”
To view the 2026 Saint Martin’s women’s soccer schedule, visit smusaints.com.
