Podcast: Ian Speliotis of Brooks on building a program in the ISL

On this episode of the "Chasing The Goal" podcast, the guys are joined by Brooks School head coach Ian Speliotis.

On this episode of the “Chasing The Goal” podcast, hosts Kyle Devitte and Owen Hart are joined by Brooks School head coach Ian Speliotis.

Speliotis graduated from Brooks in 2014. He went on to St. Michael’s College to pursue a bachelor’s degree in English Literature, where he played hockey and lacrosse. After stints coaching hockey and lacrosse at Culver Academies and Frederick Gunn, he returned to the Brooks community in 2022 to teach English and coach lacrosse.

After winning  a total of two ISL games in his first two seasons, Speliotis oversaw a much improved team last spring. Brooks went 3-12 overall, with wins in the ISL against St. George’s (9-7), Lawrence Academy (12-10) and St. Mark’s (9-8).

Watch the full podcast below on YouTube. It’s also available on all major podcast platforms. If you enjoy it, please leave a rating and a review. Watch more episodes on the Chasing the Goal podcast channel.

Here are some excerpts from the pod.

Owen Hart: We had another ISL coach on about a year ago and asked him this question. You look to the realm of college athletics, and you see with the NIL and the transfer portal, kids are changing schools two, three times before they graduate. Have you seen any of that kind of trickle down into the prep levels, especially the ISL?

Ian Speliotis: It’s certainly happening. I think probably less at the high school level than at the college level, but it certainly happening, and you see kids bouncing from schools all the time.

Obviously, there are various reasons, right? Some are academic-related, some are financially-related. There’s tons of pieces. There’s athletics-related, (Because) at the end of the day, kids want to play. They want to play with good players. They want to play with winning teams and winning programs. And I don’t think you can really fault them for that.

At the same time, do I always love a little sense of loyalty and locking in at a place, and making the right decision? Sure. But not everybody nails that on the first go. And there’s a whole bunch of factors that go into that.

OH: Since you’re a relatively new coach at Brooks, you’re trying to change the culture there. Can you think of a moment in your tenure, either a signature win, or a moment that clicked, or a practice a moment with a kid where you feel like that was kind of like a turning point for you?

IS: I have a very vivid memory of it. It was my second year as a coach here. My first year it, it just did not go anything like I expected. I got the job after the recruiting cycle, so I had what I was given and tried to work with that. We certainly had a lot of downs that year, but the mentality started to shift that second year.

We’re playing in the ISL, right? It’s a gauntlet every single day. Every game’s a battle for everyone. Anything can happen. We’re working with teenagers at the same time, and if you’re betting on a 15-, 16-year-old to do something, you’re probably going to lose. And so, it’s just keeping that mentality.

We started to see a shift in my second year. We’d play a good game here and there, and the results were a little bit better every step of the way. We certainly had our downs and took a lot of punches, but we were kind of building and we were playing Rivers. Shout out to Matt Hudson, he has done a wonderful job with that program, but for whatever reason, the last two years we’ve played them really, really tough. It was our senior day. Everything was clicking that day and it was an absolute battle of a game. We would go up a little bit. They would go up a little bit. It was back and forth, just like your dream of a lacrosse game. Ended up going into overtime.

Rivers had a phenomenal face-off guy. He was giving our kid the business all game. I think we may have won, three or four face-offs up until that point. But for whatever reason, something clicked over time; our face-off guy won it clean, went down, and we ended up getting my first ISL win. It was just a huge moment for the program.

@TheKyleDevitte
kyle.devitte@laxjournal.com

More Episodes