How Elliot Chadderton built a college soccer power in Chanute
What’s happened, happened.
For some, it’s an excuse to do nothing. For others, it’s an expression of faith in the mechanics of the world.
Call it what you want. We all carry the trauma of dismantled dreams. The traipse of life is finding the courage to dream again.
Elliot Chadderton, the head coach of the Neosho County Panthers’ men’s soccer program that just finished as the NJCAA runner-up, was 8 years old when he was signed to Manchester United’s youth academy — a prestigious honor to train for one of the world’s best clubs.
“They have people who come out and scout. Where it’s different is that you don’t pay fees. It’s basically a youth contract,” Chadderton said. “They have the best coaches to develop you with the end goal of trying to make you a professional. You’re recruited based on your age group.”
Year-by-year, for eight years, Chadderton was under the Manchester United flag before he switched to Barnsley FC, where he played from age 16 to 18.
When Chadderton reached adulthood, Barnsley FC declined to sign the young goalkeeper to a professional contract — a common yet heartbreaking ending for most young footballers in Europe who spend their youth in academies.
“It was a short meeting,” Chadderton said. “I walked in, sat down and they told me they wouldn’t offer me a contract. I lived about an hour away, so I drove home and gave my parents a call.”
Chadderton had six weeks left on his contract to figure out his future. A friend, who had been cut from his academy a year prior before making the journey across the pond to the United States, offered a roadmap.
“When he got released, he signed a scholarship in the U.S. He messaged me on Twitter and asked if I was interested. The next day, an agency reached out to me,” Chadderton said.
How do footballers needing a new home end up in the U.S. playing college soccer? The primary path is recruiting agencies that target players that academies cut and funnel them to colleges in the states.
“There’s different agencies that help recruit and they’ll go out and watch academy players play,” Chadderton said. “They help players get to the U.S. and there’s a huge dropoff of players who don’t get their contract renewed at 18. There’s no clear path to continue playing without going back down a level. People come (to the U.S.) to get a chance for a degree and get a chance to keep playing for four years.”
A big draw for athletes coming to the U.S. is the chance to get a degree — scholastic sports at the college level is a uniquely American concept. There is no soccer team at Cambridge University.
“In the whole of Europe, there’s no clear pathway to continue your education as well as play,” Chadderton said. “It’s one or the other. If you wanted to study and go to a university, you have to sacrifice soccer. That’s why guys come to the U.S. because you get a mixture of the two.”
Over the next year, after being cut, Chadderton applied for his student visa before playing for two seasons at Fort Lewis, an NCAA Division II school in Colorado. He ended up transferring to Chowan University in North Carolina, where he became one of the most decorated goalkeepers in school history.
After graduating, Chadderton quickly landed at Mary Baldwin University in Virginia, a new NCAA Division III program. After being hired as a graduate assistant, the head coach got fired and Chadderton was named the interim head coach.
“We had to take the reins right after graduating from college and had to recruit a whole team to a Division III school,” Chadderton said.
Craving more stability, Chadderton saw an ad for a graduate assistant spot at Drury University in Springfield, Missouri. He applied and got hired.
Chadderton finished his master’s degree and saw Neosho County had a job opening for a men’s and women’s head soccer coach.
Neosho County’s men went 6-5 the year prior. The women were in even worse shape, going 0-13 in a year where the Panthers only scored two goals.
“We just wanted to hire a coach that would bring energy for the program,” Neosho County athletic director Riann Mullis said. “We wanted things to be competitive. And we wanted the women’s program to take off. Eliot had a lot of energy — he was eager to win and he stood out. He came on campus and everybody liked his energy.”
For Mullis, whose doctoral dissertation was on athletic equity within the NJCAA, Chadderton was the first outside hire she ever made. And he was 26 years old.
“My eureka moment was his enthusiasm to become a head coach,” Mullis said. “I thought that would translate into his program. It was just energy and excitement he brought to the table.”
For Chadderton, now eight years removed from his dream of playing professionally taken away, he saw a haven for athletes enduring the same struggle he went through.
“One of the biggest things I realized is that there was a negative stigma towards JUCO soccer,” Chadderton said. “I realized the players could play at a high level but that they didn’t get a chance to go Division I or Division II for a variety of reasons. Maybe they failed a class or they couldn’t get good enough clips for a highlight video to get somebody to take a chance.”
For both the men’s and women’s programs, Chadderton connected with various recruiting agencies to facilitate the rebuild.
“One of the biggest things is building relationships, and that’s with any job,” Chadderton said. “We’ve built respect with the agencies that we’ll do right by the players they send us. It took a year or two to build that trust so they’d send guys to Neosho County. You gradually start getting better and better players. It’s just a matter of relationship building.”
Neosho County’s women didn’t win a match for the second straight year in Chadderton’s first season. The men went 5-7-4.
“It was hard, especially walking into the women’s program where they didn’t win a single game the year before I got there,” Chadderton said. “I walked into a program on both sides where it’d be a professional environment. On the girls’ side, there’s no player that doesn’t deserve to win. It took a lot of work to revamp and set the standards on both sides. If we set the standards high, the results will come.”
Chanute isn’t exactly highlighted on travel brochures in Europe — enticing athletes to small-town Kansas from overseas took some doing.
Establishing a system that mirrored what Chadderton experienced in his academy helped bridge the gap.
“Coming out, you don’t know what you’re looking for,” said Callum Niven, a freshman striker from England for Neosho County’s men’s team this fall. “You’re never sure what’s going on. Once we get here, we’re here for two or three days so we get straight into the schedule and training. They get us used to it.”
“A majority of the guys had a taste of academies,” Chadderton said. “They’ve been brought up with a certain mentality — structure and organization that it takes along with discipline. I like to go for those players. The ways I run my training sessions mirrors how they grew up.”
That infrastructure bred success.
By Year 2, Chadderton delivered the first of what is now three straight Kansas Jayhawk Conference titles for the Panthers’ men’s team. The women went 3-13 in 2022, then broke through in Chadderton’s third year with a KJCCC title of their own.
“It’s so exciting because you want to see that success,” Mullis said. “Our mission at the college is to enrich lives. And winning helps do that. Athletes want to win. Community members want to see the successes. The kids are happier. It’s contagious. When that first conference title came, everybody got a taste of that success.”
Not only was Chadderton attracting high-level talent on the pitch to Neosho County, but he also brought another up-and-coming coach in Aaron Dowsett, who played at Drury.
After hiring Dowsett as his assistant, Chadderton handed the baton of the women’s program to him. Chadderton still serves as Dowsett’s assistant for the women, while Dowsett is Chadderton’s assistant for the men.
“Sports are evolving quickly. We’ve had success and we saw a lot of potential in Aaron,” Mullis said. “We wanted to get to a point where we had a head coach for both the men and the women. That’s what’s best for the athletes and we want to keep progressing forward.”
In 2023, the Neosho County men were a win away from a national tournament bid. That set the stage for crossing the threshold this fall.
Even Chadderton, going into Year 4 in Chanute, didn’t expect the Panthers to make it to the national championship match the same year Neosho County qualified for its first ever national tournament.
“It takes a lot to make a national final and a lot of hours and dedication,” Chadderton said. “If you asked if we should make the tournament, I’d have said yes. Make a national final? No. Doing that in the same year is something special. The guys were the ones out there on the field. When you get the buy-in from the players, that’s when you get the success.”
One of three First Team NJCAA All-Americans on Neosho County’s roster this fall, Niven was a critical piece to the Panthers’ season.
Spoiler alert: You’ve heard his story before.
Niven spent his childhood in the Burton Albion FC academy before he was cut at 18.
“My last season there, I had a special year with over 30 goals,” Niven said. “You spend your whole life up to that point hoping to kick on. Then you get to 18 and bang, it’s gone. There were 11 guys that got cut and eight or nine don’t play at all anymore.”
With help from the Professional Footballers’ Association — the players’ union for soccer in England and Wales — Niven found his way to Neosho County.
“The main thing is to get back into a full-time sports environment,” Niven said. “You feel like you’re back amongst it. That’s the main appeal, at least for me. I get a proper coach and a team and facilities.”
An NJCAA national title was something Niven had never heard of a year ago. But on a sunny, chilly November evening in Huntsville, Alabama — a world away from England — Niven wiped tears from his face and picked teammates up off the pitch after a 2-1 loss to Northeast in the national championship.
“When I got let go, I stopped playing for six, seven months,” Niven said. “I didn’t know if I’d have the same emotions. The season we had, it brought all those emotions back. I had that spark. And I had that disappointment. It was really nice.”
Mullis, who spent the entire week of the national tournament working in Iowa for the NJCAA Division II volleyball tournament, caught a Saturday morning flight to Alabama to catch the match. She arrived at the stadium as the pregame clock hit zeroes to see the Panthers.
“It’s just been amazing how season has been,” Mullis said. “I’ve been on a coaching staff in a national title game where we got second. You’re always heartbroken. But when you take a step back, you realize how big of an accomplishment it is to get runner-up. It was hard to see how difficult the guys took it. But in a few weeks, they’ll be super excited.”
Moments removed from a tear-filled postgame address in the locker room, Chadderton characterized the 2024 season as the best year of his life in soccer.
“The group of guys, especially this year, have bought into what we wanted,” Chadderton said. “I’ve had many families reach out and congratulate us. That means more to me than the wins and losses. The families trust us to send their kids to Chanute. Clearly, the guys are enjoying it.”
For the Panthers, including the 27 international players on the roster, the ride to a runner-up finish was proof the game they loved could still love, and hurt, back.
That message was the thesis of Chadderton’s final speech to his players moments before they took the pitch in the national championship.
“Enjoy playing. You guys fully, fully deserve to be here,” Chadderton said as Phil Collins’ “In the Air Tonight” blared over the speakers.
“We have to stick together and be together. If you do that, no matter the outcome, I’ll be proud of you.”
