Taking over at a program with just five wins in the previous two seasons, Fleming is well into the work of building self-belief among the returning players and interest among potential recruits. The former assistant coach at Northwestern and Boston University, Fleming is pleased with his early progress.

“I have a blueprint. What I’m doing now is drastically different than what I did at Northwestern or BU. I’ve tried to think like a head coach for a while now,” he said. “There are some differences of course but in the end you succeed with quality people. The people and the process are important. You can’t teach winning but you can recruit good people and create a good environment and work on the fundamentals of the process, and those things add up to winning. If we can bring that all together we will be a success.”

While Fleming is doing a lot of observing these days, running the rule over his returning players at spring practice, he is pleased to find the response from the general soccer public to be positive.

“No one’s asked me about the past,” he said. “No one’s said ‘I’m not interested’ because the program hasn’t done well. The kids are working more on relationships and I think I have the contacts and energy and charisma to engage kids.”

What he’s telling them about is the academic and athletic opportunity available at the Cincinnati-based Jesuit school.

“Moving forward, every kid I talk to I tell them we are at the South Pole, that there’s no way to go but up,” Fleming said. “We’ve got a blank canvas. There’s not a big-time, signature or cornerstone player here now. You can kind of leave your mark here and become the first you instead of the next someone else. I’ve been pleasantly surprised at how the higher end kids are interested. I do think we’ll be appealing to a mid-major type kid that maybe I wasn’t dealing with at Northwestern, but I think we can steal some higher end, top 100 kids who will do well here.”

In the meantime, Fleming is working on the culture of the Atlantic 10-member program, emphasizing things like punctuality, professionalism and spirited training sessions. He compares each practice to a brick, with each brick used to build the foundation of a successful program.

Another key, returning to the recruiting angle, is for the Musketeers to rebuild a connection with the strong youth soccer tradition in Cincinnati.

“Our first goal is to become Cincinnati’s team. I don’t know if we can become Ohio’s team, with Ohio State and Akron, but we still want to be in the mix with those schools and come away with some of those kids they have been recruiting,” he said. “I want to keep Cincinnati’s best players in the city.

“The other thing is we are a five-to-seven hour drive from a lot of cities with strong soccer communities, like Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Louis and even down to Atlanta,” he continued. “We’re close to a number of places I’ve recruited well at in the past. We want to concentrate on some key players in the Midwest and also draw some players in the east from where I’ve recruited in the past, but we have a tremendous state soccer-wise in Ohio.

Fleming also mentioned the importance of Kris Bertsch, who along with Alex Morawiecki and Mike Popejoy are the program’s assistants. Bertsch directed soccer operations at Connecticut and more recently at Syracuse, helping that program set attendance records last year. Fleming is counting on Bertsch to build a strong campus and community connection with the program, raising interest in Xavier matches among students and area residents alike, hoping a football-free campus can serve as a good platform for an enthusiastic, enjoyable soccer experience for fans and players alike.