News Talk 1540 KXCL where Iowa comes to talk.
If you're looking to jump on a bandwagon this fall, there's a pretty good one that's rolling right now at Hawkeye Community College.
The Red Tails soccer team, a perfect 13 to know this year.
They are regular season conference champions and they're among the top 10 in their division nationwide for junior colleges.
We're going to talk with the head coach of the Hawkeye Red Tails, Chris Rennie, who
joins us.
Thanks for being back on the program.
Tim, thanks for having me on.
Excited to connect again.
Well, and under terrific circumstances too.
Tell us about this year and what's gone so well for you guys.
Yeah, it's been a really exciting season for us.
Like you said, we're currently sitting 13 and 0.
We've won 16 in a row in our games, including our scrimmages coming into the stage.
And then we've created, you know, a little bit of history in the college as well of winning our first conference title, something that we haven't done before on the women's side.
So a really exciting place to be at the moment, but obviously when you're having a season like this, you also want to kind of use that momentum to see how far that can also take us.
So we get ready to go into postseason this weekend and hoping that we can carry on this exciting season.
Now, I know some of our listeners will hear at Community College and they'll assume all these are all players that are from close proximity to Waterloo Cedar Falls.
Not the case when it comes to college soccer at Hawkeye.
This is really a very diverse roster.
Certainly you have some local players, but some from much, much further away than people might expect.
Yeah, we do.
So our women's soccer team is quite diverse in its makeup.
We have a squad size of 26 players this year.
11 of those players are more local players, so in and around Iowa.
And then we also have a big contingency of international players.
So we have women's players that are coming from the likes of Scotland, Wales, England, France, Germany, the Netherlands.
So definitely
coming from different parts of the world, but getting the experience of living here in Iowa and playing college soccer at the same time,
so.
We're talking with Chris Renne, the head coach of the undefeated Hawkeye Red Tail women's soccer team.
They'll play for their conference tournament title after winning the regular season championship.
That's a tournament game that's next on the schedule is Sunday, potentially a tournament championship game next week.
And let me come back to the international aspect of this.
Red Tails soccer team.
We actually in the United States have tremendous women's sports programs across so many sports soccer among them.
How is the game developing on the women's side in other parts of the world?
Yeah, it's a really good question.
You know, I left Scotland 21 years ago to come over to the U.S.
and play college soccer.
In that time, the women's game in Europe and in most of the world was really slow to take off.
The U.S.
was really
the platform for most women soccer players if they wanted to develop and wanted to grow.
But I would say in these last 20 years, the game around the world has really grown, has really, really taken off.
And I think that's one of the big reasons why we are looking at bringing players from other backgrounds, other countries.
Obviously, it builds our program.
It helps our local players learn from players from different backgrounds, different countries.
But we also are seeing what the growth looks like in those areas too.
So the talent pool is
continuing to improve.
But I think in those countries there is still an element that doesn't quite maybe match the US with regards to facilities, the amount of exposure they maybe have to practices and games.
So a lot of our international students look at that as an opportunity to come here, live away from home for the first time, have the opportunity to have the facilities that they're looking for.
And then that constant exposure of soccer almost every day, I think is what a lot of them have been really hungry for.
So, yeah.
Well, of course, a country like Scotland or Wales.
In terms of population is quite a bit smaller.
Do these players look to go back home at some point and potentially have some opportunities that would be something of a stretch for an American player who's won in however many million?
It seems like the field might be a little smaller to maybe have some opportunities to play for a national team in a place like Scotland or Wales.
Yeah, I think I think that's a really kind of interesting part to all of this.
Obviously the population of somewhere like Scotland is around five million people.
So a much smaller demographic.
A lot of our women's players who are coming from international countries are coming from Academy programs that have connections to professional women's programs, but they're maybe not quite ready to make that jump.
So coming here, I think is a platform where they are growing as players.
dealing with the speed and the physicality of college soccer.
Hopefully also being in an environment where they're exposed to soccer on a more daily basis and then have that ability to grow as a player.
Hopefully grow as a person in their time here as well and then see what opportunities present themselves after that.
I think a lot of our players choose two-year colleges because they like the idea of four years is a really long time of your life to know what that might look like.
So coming here for two years
evaluate their progression and then try and make a decision what's right for them after that stage.
A lot of our women's players will continue on and transfer to four year universities to keep playing and see how far this journey can take them.
But we've also had a lot of players that have returned back home and are trying to compete there to make it as far in the game as they possibly can.
So I think there's so many different pathways and that's what I love about it for especially for international players coming to the U.S.
is
the opportunities that I think can happen after their time here is probably a lot wider than the opportunities they had before they came here and that's the goal.
Chris Renne is the head coach of the Hawkeye Red Tails women's soccer program 13 and 0 regular season champs.
If you wanted to jump on the bandwagon, I'm certain that you'd find a place there and it would not be turned away.
If you wanted to get behind this Hawkeye women's soccer program and give us a story.
We've talked in general terms about some of the players and where they're coming from, whether it's the international players, whether it's the local players.
Chris, give us a story about a couple of these players who have helped make this team.
successful this year?
Yeah, I think our group this year, we didn't really know what we were going to have.
I think like every year we do our best to recruit players that we think will do really well, people that we think will help our program.
But we have a very freshman heavy team.
So we always anticipated this year would be a very big learning curve for them stepping into not only leaving school, living on their own, but trying to play in a new environment and a new setting.
But they hit the ground running.
They really did.
Especially with such a young team to have the success they're having probably wasn't necessarily expected.
But I think they got that winning feeling.
They've enjoyed that experience and they want to kind of keep pushing.
And I think for the group itself, I think the players have really adapted to the environment that myself and my assistant coach have tried to set for them and really embraced it.
And one of the things that I think we ask for each of these players is
To sort of embrace being that underdog status, I think we've really enjoyed that and relished that and trying to measure ourselves on controllable things such as work rate.
That's one of the biggest values that we have as a team is that we're incredibly hardworking on and off the field.
So I'm hoping that for each of the players that are now within this group, they are growing as soccer players because of this experience.
But they're also growing as people living away from home for the first time is difficult for an 18 or 19 year old to do.
But we're really proud of what each of them have put into this season.
And I think they're proud of what they're doing.
I think when you're in the season itself, it's hard to probably get a real feel for where you are at in the little bit of history we're trying to create at the moment.
I think once the dust settles and everything is said and done, then we can look back on what we've done to this point with something that we're really, really proud of.
But like I said, we very much want to keep going and see where this journey can take us the rest of the season.
Are you at a point, Chris, where the seasons reached no margin for error situation?
If things were to break against Hawkeye in this tournament semi-final this weekend, is there any opportunity to still advance on at the junior college tournament, or what's the outlook right now?
Yeah, another great question.
So I think we've kind of been in this phase since the mid-part of our conference season.
where there was that pressure of we started very strong, we quickly kind of became the favorites to win the conference.
So there was that pressure in each game of that feeling of we don't want to make a mistake, we don't want to drop what we have done.
And I think our message to the group has continued to do the things we've been doing, not be content of where we're at, but trying to keep improving during this time.
But now as we go into that conference tournament, it is that case of...
one game at a time, which is a little bit cliche, but that kind of is how it is.
We just have to approach it each game.
And if a result was to go against us and we found ourselves in a position where we've maybe not quite achieved the target that we're trying to set right now, we'd love to get to the national tournament.
There is a small possibility that...
One loss might not be the complete end to the season.
So currently we're ranked number eight in the country for two year schools for women's soccer.
So there's always four at large bids for teams that don't sort of win their way there.
So the fact of the record that we have at the moment, along with where we are nationally ranked, would give us a chance to do that.
but we would hate to not have it in our own hands.
We'd like to control our own destiny as much as we possibly can.
Well, finally, Chris, again, congratulations on everything that's been accomplished so far with the 13-0 record with the conference regular season championship.
Just what do you see as the implications for this going forward, whether you're trying to recruit players internationally, whether you're trying to recruit players right in your own backyard?
What's the outlook for the future of Hawkeye women's soccer after this terrific season?
Yeah, I mean, this is now my fifth season at Hawkeye.
Those first couple of years was very much about trying to build consistency in our program, trying to build a culture that we felt would be a platform to then grow from.
And during that time, we've had relative success of always being in the top two or three of the conference, continuing to reach sort of regional semifinals and finals.
But we always knew there was going to come a stage where we wanted to make that jump, not just to be competitive, but...
Could we go have some tangible success of winning a title?
So doing that this season, I think, has set us up now.
Makes things harder, because you definitely have a target on your back for any future success.
But I think we've shown now that we can achieve that.
And with a very heavy freshman class, I think we will return a lot of players for next year.
And I'm hoping with the success that we are now having of our record, our national rankings, winning a conference title.
that might also open up the opportunity to continue to evolve the level of player that we bring into our program.
And hopefully now this is a place that we can compete every single year to be challenging in these types of spaces.
That's the goal.
The Hawkeye Red Tails women's soccer team put their perfect record on the line Sunday in a conference semi-final match.
It's at 3 p.m.
Good luck Chris and we'll hope that there are more great stories going forward about this remarkable season.
Thanks Tim, and thanks again for having us on.
Chris Renne is the head coach of the Hawkeye women's soccer team at Hawkeye Community College with us on the station where Iowa comes to talk.
News Talk 1540 KXEL.
And as KXL Live in local continues on this Thursday, time for today's RFD 1540 conversation.
For that, as per custom, we draw upon the insight of Dustin Hoffman, supervising editor, senior farm broadcaster Iowa Agribusiness Radio Network.
You hear reports from the network nine times each weekday here on the Blowtorch.
And Dustin joins us here for this extended conversation Tuesdays and Thursdays.
Harvest is progressing very nicely.
Last time we spoke two days ago, we were talking about some folks sell out of the field, some store.
but if you're gonna store you gotta have a place to store it and that's a bit of a problem right now as I understand it.
It is a bit of a problem both on farm and at some of these local elevators and it you know we're talking right now about the second largest corn crop supposedly coming out of the ground according to the USDA estimates and of course there's some head scratching but that's a whole other topic for a whole other time Jeff but the thing is right now we're seeing grain rolling in and profit margins are tight now while there have been contracted out you know acres
There are still farmers that will still hold on to a percentage of their crop to see if they can sell for a better price when it comes out of the ground.
They'll hold on to it.
Or maybe they're going to hold on to someone for feeding and other considerations as well.
But the fact of the matter is, is with a tight profit margin.
you put that percentage that you want to hold on to maybe just to play the cash game you may be wondering where you're going to put it all and also the elevators when you look at the fact like Iowa for example is just one good example but it's all over the corn belt right now with all the rains we finally got some days where it was going to work and so it's been full throttle beans and corn and you got all these farmers going full throttle
it's there's a lot of storage of these elevators okay where are we going to go are we going to put on ground storage dump we're going to go out of the bins fill how fast can we get trains and trucks through here to get it out of the elevator and down the line to the next stop so there's a lot of considerations or getting it onto barges I mean as much as we have coming in it takes a while to get it out and make more room so I know that's one of the things we
talked about before about the fact that rain could slow things down for a couple days and at least give the elevators a chance to catch up but at home it really doesn't matter I mean you're worrying about drying any of the grain that you've got and then where do you put it after that
And some people will take it and store it at the elevator and pay a storage fee there.
But again, then you're paying a fee on something that doesn't have a very big profit margin to begin with and a place where there's not much storage.
So I mean, of course, you know, you're owning it on paper at that point.
But the fact of the matter is there's a lot of issues on where we're going to put things.
I mean.
Right now we have about 25.5 billion bushels of total storage capacity across most of the corn belt in the major producing areas.
So you look at about 13.6 of that is on farm.
So about 53% and about 11.9 billion bushels or 47% of that is off farm.
Whether that's your local elevator or what have you.
And so
We have billions of bushels of storage available, but with that large grain of the stocks coming out, some of these crops looking pretty good.
I mean, you've got to look at just for an example, the state of Missouri, the numbers that came in just our neighbor to the south, they're at 117% of the capacity of their grain storage.
So you got an overflow.
Kentucky's at 113.
Ohio's 110.
Indiana, Iowa, 109 and 108 respectively.
And so, and that's not counting Illinois and Nebraska either or Minnesota and the Dakotas.
And so there's a lot of issue trying to figure out where are we going to put the grain?
What can we do with it while we're waiting to get it moved on to the next stop?
This is a question born of my ignorance and there may not be a consistent answer.
But when you're talking about storing on the ground, is there a preference between storing beans or corn or does it depend on the condition of that commodity?
before you make the decision to store on the ground.
Now, you're gonna have to go on my ignorance here as well.
I mean, I haven't done much into this, but I have never really seen much in the way of soybeans being stored on the ground.
Usually corn can handle being stored in cold conditions.
In fact, you like to store corn in cold conditions.
That's why the whole idea is to get it, when you get it in the bin, is to get it dried to that percentage you want it to be at, and then cooling it, and getting it cold as fast as you can.
You turn off the heaters and let those fans just cool everything down.
And that's what you wanna do, because corn can usually stay better.
in the cold weather.
Usually the one I always see on the ground usually by that time is because of the fact that growing up it was always beans first, corn second.
And so by the time the elevators were getting full or running out of capacity, it was corn they were working on anyway.
And so it was always corn I saw going on the ground.
But I've never seen beans really be stored that way.
I'm not saying they can't be.
I'm not saying they haven't been.
I'm just having my encounters personally have not allowed for that.
But corn usually takes it a little bit better and can store for a longer time and out in the elements.
Obviously they're tarped to their bottom.
The bottoms are protected.
There are fans a lot of times in these temporary walls that they use for these outdoor storages and they're tarped on the top to keep
More elements out because obviously you don't want the corn to get wet whether it's cold or not You don't want snow melting on it and causing more moisture because that can cause the corn to rot And so you don't want that either so most of the time it's corn but that's not to say soybeans couldn't be stored like that if they had to be
Well, and that was my again far more limited than your experience that
it appeared to be that it was always corn.
And yes, it's usually beans then corn, you know, first one to the bin wins kind of thing.
But given how wet some of these areas were this year, we did get some nice dry time.
Have you heard from folks, though, who have said that they're having to incur additional cost for drying and that's really tipping the scale the wrong direction given
all the other things that we hadn't counted on, like $6.50 a gallon diesel, et cetera.
Well, I have been hearing more about drying not being as necessary because while it was raining, it wasn't affecting the total moisture of the corn.
Yeah, there was some sprouting going on, but the fact of the matter is the corn was still drying down.
Of course, the sun and the wind after that has definitely made it better.
And corn has been standing a little bit longer and I think farmers have been holding off on it.
They've opened fields up to see where they were at and decided that they could go ahead and get the beans out first, you know, because beans aren't as reliant on getting into a certain moisture level.
I mean, obviously you don't want wet beans, but the fact of the matter is, is corn usually has to go down to a drier condition.
And so I've been hearing that they haven't been doing that.
They've been leaving in the field to try to counterbalance some of that, because yeah, as you mentioned, the fuel prices,
is not even diesel as a whole, but I'm talking even the propane and the LP that you need to use to dry the corn and the corn is expensive as well.
So any limits you can do, or if you can limit how much drying you need, that's gonna go a long way.
But I haven't heard anything about some heavy moistures.
I mean, even before the harvest started.
We were hearing that moisture was getting close to that 16% in some places and maybe even better.
And so usually about 16 is where you want it to be for taking it out so it's minimal drying to begin with, usually.
But if you even get down to 15 or 14, great.
But if you go much further than that, then it's becoming too dry and you run the risk of losing it when you're out there harvesting.
Now here we are at the end of October.
Next time you and I will talk will be literally in November.
It's a bit of a late harvest.
What is the sense right now overall?
Understanding that everybody's plot of ground is different, but are folks having good reason to be optimistic about numbers in terms of yield and in terms of market price?
You know, from what I've been hearing and just talked with Ag Secretary Mike Nagler earlier this week, who just wrapped up his harvest last Friday, he said that, you know, all in all, it was a good year.
You know, was it anything to break records?
No, but was it solid?
Very much so.
There's nothing really to complain about.
We had some spots that weren't as great as others, and that happens any year.
So, I mean, you look at some of the challenges we had, either too dry, too wet, too wet at harvest, things like that that can normally cause some problems.
All in all, we're coming out of it pretty good.
Iowa has long, even in the bad spots, has long been considered the garden spot this season.
And it looks like that's just kind of what's come to fruition.
Great insight as always, Dustin.
Thanks so much for the time.
We'll talk here again on Tuesday.
Sounds good, Jeff.
Dustin Hoffman, supervising editor, senior farm broadcaster Iowa agribusiness radio network.
Don't forget weekend ag matters, the excellent half hour weekend program from the network Saturday mornings at six or if you prefer or in addition, Sunday mornings at 11 30.
And Dustin joins us here for this RFD 15 40 conversation Tuesdays and Thursdays on News Talk 15 40 KXEL where Iowa comes to talk.