At the midway point of the women’s college regular season, the UNLV Rebels of the Mountain West Conference are a team that has begun to emerge as one worth watching.

The Rebels are 8-2-1 in this, Michael Coll’s first year at the helm.  The former Penn State assistant cites some familiar, but at least one interesting source for the improved performance from the team.

“I’m not the only change here. The whole coaching staff, the strength coach, the medical staff is all new,” he said. “We changed our formation and moved some people into different positions, but I think part of it is that there’s a sort of natural excitement that comes with a new coaching staff and a new season. You see that a million times in history. There’s an almost-automatic positive response to change, and then the wins follow.”

Coll described his team’s mental and emotional makeup as another contributing factor.

“They are pretty even-keeled, focused,” he said. “They saturate our various coaching styles and the things we want to teach. Thankfully, when I came in here I saw early that they truly like each other. Team chemistry is vital and I can see that it is strong. It’s a nice situation to be in.”

Coll said his team is committed to playing an attractive, purposeful style of soccer.

“You’ll rarely see the ball in the air. We get it down on the carpet and we play most of the time. Every player, and I mean every player, is comfortable on the ball. They take limited touches. We move up the field systematically. Maybe we’ll complete 15 passes before we get a chance and that’s a good thing for fans to see. In any conference now you can see 3-4 teams that play that style. In the last 10 years there’s a lot more of that in the women’s game. You can see a lot of players who want to get the ball at their feet.”

With the Mountain West season now upon the Rebels, Coll said he and his staff want to bear the brunt of the research duties for the team as it prepares for matches.

“I carry everything I learned at other places in my time coaching, including preparing for matches. Most of that is centered on watching film,” he said. “Mostly this is the coaches doing it as we design practice sessions. Maybe sometimes we might bring a few players in to show them something we see, but even now for our next match we haven’t decided if we’ll do that. The coaches will have broken it down substantially and we’ll be ready, but video can be overused at some point.”

Forward Jenn Wolfe and attacking midfielder Macy Jo Harrison are the leading scorers in the group, with other regular starters including Caitlin Allen, Julie Owens, Courtney Botelho, Samantha Weber, Justine Sauder and goalkeeper Kylie Wassell.