Brooke Otto’s choice to transfer to Kansas soccer gave coach Nate Lie one of his captains

LAWRENCE — There’s a lot that’s new for Kansas soccer head coach Nate Lie this year.

Not only is he about to embark on a new season Thursday, on the road at South Dakota State, but 2024 will be his first season at the helm for the Jayhawks . He took the job after spending seven years as the head coach at Xavier. There’s a new roster, a new coaching staff, that he’ll look to continue to build chemistry within as the season unfolds.

But when the season kicks off Thursday, Lie will have a familiar face on the roster as one of his captains. That’s junior defender Brooke Otto, who transferred in from Ohio State ahead of the 2024 campaign. She’s from the state of Ohio, and someone Lie tried to recruit out of high school.

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“I feel like we’ve been leaned on a lot already, and put in some tough situations through team stuff,” said Otto, describing the group of captains as a whole. “But I think it’s good and I’m really excited for all the things that we’re put in and the things that we can do this season as captains and just on the field and off the field as well.”

Lie explained when Otto hit the transfer portal, Kansas didn’t wait long to get into contact with her. That’s something Otto confirmed herself. Lie already knew she was the type of player and person they wanted for this program as they approached the first season of a rebuild with the Jayhawks.

Otto believes she was able to be recognized by her teammates as a leader so soon after arriving on campus because she went into the spring with an open mind. She tried to just be herself, and not play with stress or pressure weighing on her. While there was so much that was new for her as well, it was new for all of her teammates, too.

It’s been an adjustment for Otto and those teammates, to play with the style Lie has brought to Kansas. The Jayhawks will aim to bring significant pressure to opposing teams, among other strategies, and that demands a certain level of buy-in from the players. But while Otto acknowledged it may take time to get where they want in that regard, she and her teammates have the mentality and will to get them there.

“I just see, like, what they expect out of us is just you go out there and you work and it’s all, like, what can you control?” said Otto, describing how players within Lie’s program should carry themselves. “You can control your effort. You can control your attitude, all those things on the field. And it’s, like, if you put those aside and actually — they can coach us on the things we can get better at.”

When it comes to expectations for how much Kansas could excel in the months ahead, Otto brought up a desire to just take things one day and game at a time. It’s a similar point to what Lie has said before. While Lie is going to try to lead this team to both the Big 12 Conference and NCAA tournaments in year one, much of his evaluation of the season when it’s over will come down to how much of a foundation they were able to set.

But, again, it’s not something Lie is going to have to deal with alone. From Lie’s perspective, Otto lived the life of a captain before even being selected as one. Otto, along with her fellow captains, will play a pivotal role in the foundation the Jayhawks will leave this season with.

“Those are the things, those are the building blocks, that will eventually decide — are we a championship program?” Lie said. “Are we an NCAA caliber program? And so, those are what we’re going to invest in on a daily basis. Those are what we’re going to talk about in team meetings. And our bet is that some of those outcomes will eventually find themselves on the right side.”

Jordan Guskey covers University of Kansas Athletics at The Topeka Capital-Journal. He is the National Sports Media Association’s sportswriter of the year for the state of Kansas for 2022. Contact him at jmguskey@gannett.com or on Twitter at @JordanGuskey.

This article originally appeared on Topeka Capital-Journal: Brooke Otto’s choice to transfer to Kansas soccer gave coach Nate Lie one of his captains