Will it even matter?

Indy Eleven posted on Friday that "A new era starts soon." with an image that implies that an announcement of the new coach will happen in the coming day(s). Since Mark Lowry and the team "parted ways" on November 28th, the club has signed one new player (Aedan Stanley) and the schedule has been released (first game in Oakland on March 9th), as well as the club announcing a  partnership with Grand Park as the club & Ersal's company Keystone Group will take over the operation and management of the facility, a partnership with CareSource, and a partnership to produce a new Indy Eleven-themed beer with Metazoa Taproom. In a vacuum, that's a lot of things going on with the club/team.

However, while Indy fans have waited (more or less) patiently, all the teams around them have been announcing player signings because they already have a coach in place and are building towards the season in a non-rushing fashion. The season has the same feeling to me as the transition from Tim Hankinson in 2017 to Martin Rennie in 2018. Hankinson was announced as leaving on November 28th, 2017. When Rennie was announced on January 16th, 2018, there were just a few weeks to put together a team to his liking before spring training began. As I previously mentioned in my article about Lowry's departure (ironically also occurring on November 28th), Rennie completely cleaned house of the 2017 roster, returning just three players; Ring, Braun, & Speas. Of that Rennie 2018 thrown-together-late roster, only 8 players survived to continue with Rennie in the 2019 season; Speas, Ouimette, Farr, Ayoze, Starikov, Pasher, Watson, & Matern. Rennie also released several players that were in contract to be in Indy during the 2018 season, leaving them struggling to find teams at the last minute. Turnover was a major part of those early Rennie days, and I can only hope that the new 2024 season coach does not follow that same pattern with the 12 players that are currently signed to the roster.

More to the point of this article, though, will it even matter? Will it even matter who is announced as the new coach?

I don't know who the incoming coach is going to be, despite some rumors and some guesses. However, I don't know that it will even matter. I fully expect this club, for the men's first team, to be in this exact same position in a year or two. 

Hankinson was a good coach whose second season was derailed by injuries. Though to be fair, he might have also lost the locker room a bit.

Rennie was a good coach whose teams account for 1/2 of Indy's playoff appearances, and seemingly had reached a point where he had enough. Spectacularly.

Lowry was an excellent coach, with proven success in the USL. For a number of factors, his first season in 2022 didn't go as planned. Indy struggled in the early part of the 2023 season, predominantly due to injuries and suspensions, but as players became healthy, Indy finished the last 17 games of the season (i.e., the second half of the season) with a 8W-5D-4L record, with a +8 goal differential in that span. The four losses were to Louisville, Memphis, New Mexico, and RGV (3 or the 4 were playoff teams, with RGV just narrowly missing). In the second half of the season, Indy averaged 1.70 points per game, getting points nearly 60% of the time. The 3-nil win late in the season at home against Detroit looked like the best Indy had played all season, and looked exactly like how a Mark Lowry team typically wants to play. They followed up that performance a couple of games later with a dominating performance in the first half of the San Antonio game with some of the most fluid, beautiful soccer before the game went off the rails after Asante's second yellow card put the team down a man. 

The team, and the way they were playing at the end of the year, was exactly what I expected to see from a Mark Lowry coached team. The team made progress throughout the year and managed to make the playoffs despite the early season injuries and suspensions. The team looked like it was building towards something sustainable, with a historically winning coach who, every indication to me during the seasons, liked being in Indianapolis.

Yet, we find ourselves in the early weeks of January, still waiting for the official announcement of a new coach so that we can then hear about new players, and then begin thinking how the season is going to progress. New players that history has told us time after time are going to take time to gel together. So the 2024 season could likely be marginal, and bad at worst, and given the late roster build, will likely start off rough. Maybe Indy makes the playoffs. Maybe they don't. Either way, the coach almost always gets a pass for the first season because they "inherited" some of the roster, despite the fact that the players that this coach will be inheriting from the 2023 season are some of the best players in the league. So unless things go absolutely horribly with a missed playoffs and losing the locker room, the new coach will get a second season to bring in some other players, and success at that point will be unknown. 

Either way, will it even matter?

Martin Rennie is the longest tenured coach for Indy with 99 official games (+1 friendly), which was 3 seasons + 8 games of the fourth season, but really only amounted to 2.75 seasons of actual games due to the shortened 2020 season. Hankinson coached 70 games across all competitions (2 seasons), Lowry coached 72 games (2 seasons). The history of this club has shown that two seasons of failure (or less) and they're definitely headed somewhere else and two-ish seasons of success and they're probably still headed somewhere else, because that has been the club's method of operation. I can't envision the club hiring a coach that will suddenly have full control over roster selection capable of having immediate success, who will then also stick around for very long. I think Lowry might have been that guy in 2024 and beyond, but that ship has sailed, with reports out that he is headed to Salt Lake City to be the head coach of the Real Monarchs, Real Salt Lake's MLS Next Pro team. 

Every single one of those three coaches had some level of success during their tenure and yet they, or the club, felt like it wasn't a good fit to continue any further. I have thoughts and theories about why (I described one of those imaginary scenarios in my article about Lowry's departure, but I can imagine more), and all of those thoughts and theories lead me to wonder if it will even matter who the next coach is when it's finally announced. I just don't see the coaching carrousel trend changing here in Indy in the foreseeable future. 

Whomever gets announced soon, I think the "new era" is going to continue to look significantly like the "past eras."

Parted Ways - Mark Lowry

In the summer of 2021, I wrote an article about how Indy Eleven "mutually parted ways" with Martin Rennie after an odd on-air rant after a game. Twelve hours later, and the club and Rennie went different directions. Today, the club announced that they "parted ways" with Mark Lowry, who joined the club just over two years ago. Not sure if there was anything to the different phrasing by not including the "mutually" part, but it stands out to me as interesting if nothing else.

I think the last time I was this surprised about a front office move was the off-season before the aforementioned Martin Rennie joined the club. That off-season was full of surprises as the 2017 team led by Tim Hankinson transitioned to the 2018 team led by Martin Rennie, in a new league (NASL to USL), and in a new stadium (Carroll to Lucas Oil), much of that announced extremely last minute as the club tried to extract itself from the dying NASL. The 2018 team had no resemblance to the 2017 team, returning just Ring, Braun, & Speas, after Rennie decided that he couldn't see any place on his team or in the club for any of the 2017 players who had just a season before made it to the NASL's Soccer Bowl before being beaten by the Cosmos in penalty kicks. Rennie couldn't see a place for a ball-hawking forward like Eamon Zayed or a goalkeeping legend like Jon Busch. Hell, it was seemingly only because of a near fan-uprising that he kept club legend Ring around. That off-season was weird as hell.

Today's surprise departure of Lowry takes a close second in my opinion. 

There was absolutely nothing from my perspective that would have made me guess this was going to happen. Lowry seemed to genuinely convey to me during conversations that Indy was the place he wanted to be to keep moving Indy forward, and to be a part of the first games at Eleven Park. It seemed like such a given to me, after getting the team back to the playoffs this year, that I barely wrote anything about the coaching situation in my end-of-year off-season article. 

Could I have misread the situation? Definitely.

Do I think there is something else going on? Definitely. 

The following is a scenario that I can envision happening to lead us to watching yet another coach, this one highly successful in this league, walk away from the club after signing nine core pieces of the 2023 roster.

Martin Rennie "mutually parted" Indy, in part, because of the poor turf at Carroll stadium. Despite a new turf being installed in 2020, the team that Mark Lowry put together still found that field to be less than ideal in the way that it played. Lowry found late in the season that with some pregame effort, this new version of the turf could be massaged enough to play in a more predictable way, thereby allowing the team's preferred style of play to shine. That level of field maintenance takes time, and time is money. Part of the theory behind artificial turf fields is that they are supposed to be low maintenance. I'm guessing, and I stress guessing, that Lowry requested more budget next year for the field maintenance.

That, by itself, wouldn't have been enough to "part ways," mutually or otherwise.

However, and I don't remember if this was said to me on- or off-record, so I could get in trouble here for saying something that I shouldn't, but many of the clubs' groups had their budgets frozen for at least the last month of the season. Lowry likely had one of the highest paid rosters in the USL Championship this past year, but that money was focused on the core group of players. As the team found out, that created a depth of skill problem when suspensions or injuries sidelined some of those core players. I'm guessing, and I stress guessing, that Lowry requested more budget next year to bring in some other players to have a higher level of depth than what the team had this year. That additional depth was going to come with a cost.

Ersal and/or Stremlaw said no. Lowry said that he didn't think he can get the team any higher without that money for stadium and player help. "Then we have reached an impasse." 

Ways parted.

There's an oversimplification in that scenario, and I honestly don't know if any of that scenario is true. Can I see all of it, and more, happening? Definitely. 

As I stated today on X (formerly known as), whatever happened on the field, Mark Lowry was the first coach from this club to remember my name at press conferences after games and answer all my questions, on- or off-record. The last game of the season, he asked Ian Gilmour if I was there. He was conscientious of me being a grassroots, fan perspective of covering the team. On multiple occasions, he would honestly answer questions for me that he didn't have to answer. Questions that I wouldn't have bothered asking his predecessors because I knew they would just answer them in general coach-speak terms. He knew that he could trust me with the information and answered my questions openly, knowing that if he said "this part is off-record," that it would be, which gave me the confidence to try and find out more about the way his coaching mind works. 

I honestly think that Mark Lowry was the right man for the job to get Indy to higher level. The club and even fans think that Indy need to get back to the successes the team used to have. That is not this club. Actually, I should be more specific and say that is not the men's first team. The Academy and the women's side have been successful. The men's first team is, and has been, an average to below average performing team for nearly the entirely of its history. 

• The team has now had 4 permanent coaches and 2 interim coaches in 10 seasons of action. 
• The team has made the playoffs just 4 times in those 10 seasons.
• The team has just 4 seasons with a positive goal differential and two of those have just barely made it to that threshold (2016 - +21; 2019 - +20; 2020 - +2; 2023 - +3).
• In the team's time in the USL-C, they have finished 7th (2018), 3rd (2019), 3rd (out of 4 teams in their group due to the 2020 pandemic arrangement), 12th (2021), 9th (2022), and 6th (2023) in their conference.
• The team has made it to one league final (2016 NASL season, which had just 11 teams in the league and 4 of them made the playoffs).
• The team has made it to one conference final (2019 USL season, which imploded in the final minutes to Louisville).
• The team has 1 piece of hardware; a "spring season" championship because the NASL was kooky-dooks and split the season into two parts, that Indy won on the third tiebreaker. 

Look, I love the team, the players, and those limited successes, but this is not a team that can be described as being a consistent on-field beacon of light. 

Assistant Coach Gabe Zapponi was brought to Indy as one of "Lowry's guys." Don't be surprised if he departs too. Jerome, Rebellon, Velasquez, to name a few, are guys that Lowry has taken with him from place to place. Don't be surprised if none of them return to Indy. Nobody knows what player contracts look like, but a caveat that I would want in my own contract with a team would be that it was contingent upon the manager in charge. King was in El Paso with Lowry and then Lowry brought King back here to Indy. Did he know Lowry was on the way out? Would he have re-signed if he knew Lowry wasn't going to be here? I think Lindley wants to be here close to family. Same for Quinn, whose wife's family is from Ohio. Did the rest of the guys that re-signed want to be here or to play for Lowry? The guys that haven't signed yet? I have no idea where they will fall now that Lowry is onto a different team. As a result, announcements for returning players might not happen again until the new coach is hired, whenever that might happen. 

As I already said, I honestly think that Mark Lowry had the ability to get Indy beyond just the occasional good season and turn Indy into a perennial contender. Whatever happened between when the announcement of the first group of players returning and today's announcement of Lowry's departure, Indy took a step backwards today.

Lowry on the hot seat?

Photo: Don Thompson

As the Indy Eleven losses continue to pile up like an interstate accident in winter, I keep getting asked a version of the same question; "Is Lowry on the hot seat?," "Is Lowry in trouble of being fired?," "Is Lowry the right coach?"

The answer I continue to give, and continue to believe, is that Lowry is too good of a coach to yank him this fast. This has been a historically bad stretch for Indy Eleven and that is saying something given the history of the club. However, even Sommer was allowed to go into a second season, even though it felt like very early that Sommer might have been out of his depth. I remember catching Peter Wilt's eye in the press box after a 90'+8' rocket from Kyle Hyland salvaged a draw against Tampa Bay on a night where a +2 hour weather delay forced a near midnight finish and Indy had a man advantage for the final 17 minutes of the game. It was a look of "this isn't good enough." Sommer spent the post-game telling the guys that very same thing and that all their jobs could be on the line. The very next day, Sommer was let go by Wilt. 

Even as much as that first (and second) team struggled, they never had a streak where they went on an 11 game winless streak with 9 losses in that streak. What makes it baffling is that Sommer had never coached a team at this level, and Lowry has been highly successful at this level. To narrow down why this season has gone like it has leads you on a sad trail of infrequent shots, fewer shots on target, and at least one or two major mistakes every game by the defense that opposing teams capitalize upon and win the game. As with all teams, where does the blame start and finish when these are the things that are happening? Is it the coach or is it the players? It's obviously easy to put it on the coach, in that a change there fires one person, whereas if it's the players, multiple firings have to take place. Some of which has occurred and the results have been about the same. In fact, in this last game against Hartford, we watched Hackshaw make a pass that was intended for Vazquez, who was clearly not on the same page and the ball easily went to Barrera. Then Hackshaw, Vazquez, and Dambrot all stood and watched as Barrera dribbled up the field uncontested, took a shot uncontested, and scored a goal uncontested. Two of those three players are new additions to the team. Were they the wrong players (selected by Lowry), were they not in sync with each other yet, or was it something else altogether? For me, in that case, that's a mistake by players and not a mistake by coach. I've never played at a high level and even I know that if nobody stops the ball, bad things can happen.

Photo: Don Thompson

For now, I still have faith in Mark Lowry. From my discussions with him, he is fully aware that the entire squad, from coach to assistant to starters to bench players, are at risk and are responsible when things are going poorly. That includes him and he has said as much to me. He has said exactly what Sommer told that team after the Tampa Bay Rowdies game in 2014. Everybody's job is on the line, including his. I don't see him "pulling a Rennie," and exiting the club during a post-game interview with Rakestraw and Hauter, but I have waited on the field for him to come back from the locker room after enough games recently to know that he is not enjoying this stretch of games any more than we're enjoying watching them. 

Yet, it got me thinking. How does this stretch of games rank in club history? So I did what I do, and I started digging into my stats to find out. Below, I present the data for the worst winless streaks per season and then each coach's record in their first 24 games, which is where Lowry stands right now when you include the Open Cup game. Below that I'll highlight what I find interesting about the data.

Worst Winless Streaks each Season

• 2014 - Sommer
• First nine games - 0W-4D-5L
• 0W-2D-4L streak in Fall Season
• 2015 - Sommer/Regan
• 1W-4D-3L to start Spring Season (Sommer)
• 0W-1D-4L in Fall Season (Regan)
• 0W-2D-3L in Fall Season (Regan)
• 2016 - Hankinson
• 0W-2D-3L stretch in Fall Season
• 2017 - Hankinson
• 0W-7D-4L to start Spring Season
• 0W-1D-4L
• 0W-2D-3L to end season
• 2018 - Rennie
• 0W-1D-3L to end season
• 2019 - Rennie
• 0W-0D-4L (games 28-31)
• 2020 - Rennie
• 1W-1D-5L to end season
• 2021 - Rennie/Rogers
• 0W-1D-3L (Rennie)
• 0W-3D-2L (Rennie/Rogers)
• 0W-2D-4L (Rogers)
• 2022 - Lowry
• 0W-2D-2L to start season
• 0W-2D-9L (including 6 losses in a row and another 3 losses in a row)

Coach Records through First 24 games

• Sommer (includes 2 Open Cup games)
• 4W-7D-13L (win percentage = 16.7%)
• 34 GF; 47 GA = -13 GD
• Regan (in 23 GP; includes a friendly)
• 7W-6D-10L (win percentage = 30.4%)
• 28 GF; 37 GA  = -9 GD
• Hankinson (includes 2 Open Cup games & a friendly)
• 12W-9D-3L (win percentage = 50.0%)
• 37 GF; 22 GA = +15 GD
• Rennie (includes 1 Open Cup game)
• 10W-6D-8L (win percentage = 41.7%)
• 30 GF; 28 GA = +2 GD
• Rogers  
• 6W-7D-11L (win percentage = 25.0%)
• 25 GF; 38 GA = -13 GD
• Lowry (includes an Open Cup game)
• 6W-4D-14L (win percentage = 25.0%)
• 25 GF; 39 GA = -14 GD

Let's start with the winless streaks. Even when it has been bad for Indy Eleven through the years, the longest string of losses has been 4; in the beginning of the 2014 season with Sommer and in the 2019 season with Rennie. The worst number of losses in a winless streak was 5, again with Sommer in 2014. I included a streak of games where the 2020 Rennie-coached season finished the year on a 1W-1D-5L run, which kept them out of the playoffs. Following both of those 5 loss stretches, both coaches made it to game 8 of the next season before being fired/quitting. This year's team's winless streak makes those earlier streaks seem like happy times. That doesn't look well for Lowry.

Photo: Don Thompson

Looking at how Lowry's first 24 games compare to previous Indy Eleven coaches doesn't look well for him either. Obviously. What is interesting though, is that he has nearly identical records and goals for/goals against/goal differential as Indy's two caretaker managers, Regan and Rogers. Those two guys were forced to continue the season with players selected by somebody else, whereas this team, with a few notable exceptions, were guys selected by Lowry. Sommer clearly had the worst start to his tenure of any coach, but Lowry's start most compares to the records of the men that were figuratively thrown into the lead role. That's not a good look.

What if I told you, though, that in Coach Lowry's inaugural season with El Paso in 2019, the team had a 
1W-4D-6L stretch between June 22nd and September 4th? Admittedly, that team didn't dig themselves the early season hole that Indy did this year, but that ELP team still made the playoffs and advanced to the Conference Finals. Or that in Lowry's 1st full season as head coach with Jacksonville Armada in 2017, that team went on a 0W-4D-4L stretch across the end of the Spring Season and start of the Fall Season from July 8th to August 19th? Or that after he was announced as the interim coach in 2016, the team went on a 1W-5D-2L streak to start his tenure from August 17th to September 28th. 

Maybe Coach Lowry just has some summer struggles in his first season? Maybe by that point in the season, he has a better understanding of what the guys are capable of doing, the guys have a better understanding of how Lowry really wants to play, and in trying to enact those tactics, the teams go through some growing pains in the summer? I honestly don't know, but ELP turned into a perennial winner in his time there and that summer bump in the road isn't really mentioned by anybody except the ELP fans. With some insight from Seriously Loco Soccer Pod, a group that provides content for, and by, El Paso supporters, that 2019 stretch was "a combo of things with Jerome Kiesewetter being hurt for a bit, Mechack Jerome suffered a season ending injury at the Gold Cup, and some issues with goal scoring more generally that eventually were sorted out." Sounds familiar, right? Insert Arteaga and Pinho in for Kiesewetter, long-term injuries to Briggs and Meredith (which forced another shuffle with the goalkeepers), and issues with goal scoring. We can only hope that Indy does the same as that ELP squad and gets their goal scoring sorted out too.

As I said before, this stretch of games has been historically bad for the club and there's no way around that. I will also reiterate that I still have faith in Lowry. There are still too many mistakes that are being capitalized on by opponents, and Indy is still struggling with getting enough shots on target, but their summer slump included an entire month away from home and games against some of the best teams in the league. That was always going to be a tough stretch even without the constant changes in the goalkeeper position, the injuries to key contributors, and some unlucky bounces and calls (I'm specifically thinking about the one shot/one goal fiasco in the first Pittsburgh game and the goal that wasn't allowed in the second Pittsburgh game). 

Yet, I've also seen improvement in the play recently, even if the results haven't followed. If Indy can't get a win by the end of the season, Lowry will, unfortunately, be gone. However, against my pessimistic nature, I believe the results will get better even if they don't make the playoffs, and Lowry should be allowed to return next season.

Until, at least, the 8th game...

Mark Lowry announced as new Indy Eleven coach and Technical Director

Photo Credit: Ivan Pierre Aguirre
for El Paso Locomotive

Indy Eleven officially announced today that the club's fourth (permanent) coach, as well as its new Technical Director, is Mark Lowry. Mark comes to Indy Eleven from El Paso Locomotive, where he lead the team to three playoff appearances in the club's first three seasons, reaching the conference final in the first two seasons, and a record of 42W-29D-19L, "including playoffs and the U.S. Open Cup." The El Paso press release included the following quote from Lowry after the Western Conference quarterfinal loss to Oakland Roots:

“The three years I’ve been here have been great,” shared Lowry after the Western Conference Quarterfinal. “I felt the love from the fans every single time we stepped on the field, personally. I can’t thank them enough for what they’ve done and what we created here over the three years. They are a huge part of that. We’ve won, we’ve scored goals, we’ve had fun, and celebrated with them. Those are memories that will live with me forever and will hopefully live with them forever as well. There will be lots more of those in the future.” 

Hearing his voice in that press conference from November 5th, in hindsight, it almost makes me wonder if he knew then that he would be headed to Indy. Based on my inquiries to Indy Eleven last week, I have to think he probably did. It's a bit ironic that the person that officially replaces Martin Rennie was the coach that handed Indy a 2-nil loss on June 9th prior to Rennie's on-field, post-game, unofficial resignation on June 15th against the Pittsburgh Riverhounds.

After El Paso announced Lowry's departure, I immediately tweeted that I wondered if the coaching carrousel was bringing Lowry to Indy Eleven. Simultaneously, I reached out to some people whose opinion I trust and one told me that it was, but that "you didn't hear it from me," while the other one said, "no comment," but then praised my intelligence. Shortly after all of that, Jeff Reuter at The Athletic tweeted that their sources were indicating the same thing. For some reason, Jeff's tweet was more popular than mine. Oh well. By the end of the business day, the El Paso news sources had an interview with Coach Lowry where he confirmed that he would be going to Indy.

I laughed out loud when I heard the interview clip because earlier in the day I had said, "If nothing else, @IndyEleven continue to be able to sell guys on the "long-term goals of the club." Rennie & players routinely stated it & I bet @CoachMarkLowry says it when he is officially announced." 

It didn't even make it to today's official announcement, as Coach Lowry stated in the clip, "Indianapolis is a market where they've had that aspiration and they've tried before [moving to MLS]. I know they're still ambitious to do that and it's a market that can have a case for an MLS team and hold an MLS team. So that's all, that's in the back of my mind." As Colin Deaver indicated in the beginning of the clip about Indy Eleven, "Ownership has long wanted to try to make the jump to MLS and if they do so, Lowry would get a shot at that level. Plus, if he's successful in Indianapolis, he would also make himself even more attractive to clubs at higher levels of soccer." I think Lowry's got a better shot at the latter scenario than the former, but either way, he's being pragmatic about his goals, particularly for a 36-year old coach. 

Indy Eleven made all of that official today. When I asked what he thought about the hiring, former Indy Eleven President and General Manager Peter Wilt stated, ""I love it. Surprised he was available. Proven head coach. Knows the league. Respected by his players. Great hire." Current Indy Eleven play-by-play announcer Greg Rakestraw provided similar praise of the hire, stating,

"I'm a huge fan of this hire. In his previous stops in Jacksonville and El Paso, it hasn't taken long for Mark to turn teams into consistent winners. I think this speaks to the power of the Indy Eleven brand and fanbase that Mark would feel comfortable leaving what he had established in El Paso to make the move to Indy."

Greg's television lifemate and color commentator, Brad Hauter is also a big fan of the hiring of Mark Lowry, stating, 

“I’m very excited about Coach Lowry coming to lead the team. From back in the Armada - Indy eleven days, I enjoyed the way his teams played and felt he was able to get more out of his players then people expected. What he did in El Paso this year was incredibly impressive and I think naming him this far in advance of the season allows him to create the roster he wants. He has shown he can win at this level and I think it’s a great fit!”

As for me, I'm ecstatic about the promise of what Lowry can bring to Indy, having began intently following El Paso after Dylan Mares joined the team in March 2020. After Macca King joined the squad in August of that year, I began to watch even more closely, even indicating that September, that "I have become a fan of @eplocomotivefc and the way @CoachMarkLowry has them playing." In August of this year, I tweeted, "I'm an @IndyEleven supporter but I really like watching @eplocomotivefc play." For my article this year regarding my journey into the Scottish Professional Football League, I had watched enough of their games to know that their midfielder Nick Ross was from Scotland, so I reached out to Derick Fox, their Manager of Communications (and always helpful to me), to get comments from Nick. In August, while pointing out the anniversary of the last hat trick scored by an Indy Eleven player, I noted that Lowry was on the bench for the visitors that day, the Jacksonville Armada, coached by Tony Meola at the time. I'm going to come back to that tweet in a minute, but I think I may have been willing this move for the past two years...

Notable: current and former @IndyEleven players @karlouimette @jasonplumhoff & @ZachSteinberger were on Jacksonville's team that year.

Current @eplocomotivefc coach Mark Lowry was an assistant for Jacksonville as well. pic.twitter.com/NxiLg3vbTv

— Drew (@GenWRX6) August 3, 2021

While El Paso plays on a baseball field (and I have repeatedly stated my hatred of those fields for soccer), Coach Lowry had the team play a very possession oriented style of play, but in a more attack minded way. Where Indy Eleven fans have seen a very defense minded style of play the past four years under Rennie and Rogers, El Paso maintains a very solid defensive line, but has a more attacking presence than we've seen out of Indy in recent years. There are about a dozen players on that roster that I wouldn't mind seeing make the trip to Indy with Coach Lowry; Dylan Mares, Macca King, Richie Ryan, Nick Ross, Jerome, Borelli, Carrijo, Solignac, Herrera, Yuma, Luna, Ketterer. Though, I'll feel a bit bad about it for the rest of the El Paso fans.

As I mentioned in tweets today, I might have to rethink my list of what I thought might happen to the current Indy Eleven roster this off-season. One of the players in my "Possibly Gone" category was Karl Ouimette, because of his reduced minutes late in the season, he was a Rennie man having been here since Rennie's first season, and he might be out of contract. However, as noted in the tweet embeded above, Ouimette was on the Jacksonville roster when Lowry was an assistant there. If Lowry liked what he saw in Ouimette's loan at the end of that season, we may see the two reunited again. I think Ayoze, Moon, Hackshaw, Timmer, Arteaga, Law, Wild, Adewole, and Ledesma could all fit into Lowry's system of play as well. 

This was the first step that had to take place this off-season for Indy Eleven. Now that this domino has fallen, expect to start seeing player announcements in upcoming days or weeks as Lowry takes inventory of what players are contractually obligated to return, what ones he might want from the rest, and what other players he might want to bring in from other squads. It's notable that of the names I listed above for El Paso that I wouldn't mind seeing come with him, Jerome and Richie Ryan were on that 2016 Jacksonville team. From the current El Paso squad, Matt Bahner and Bryam Rebellón have also played at both locations for Lowry as well. If you're wanting to do a deep dive of players that might be on next year's Indy Eleven roster, a review of past Lowry teams will provide you a good indication of the style of player he prefers, and may even provide you with some actual names.

Indy Eleven's post-season was going to be a busy one, but today's announcement of Mark Lowry is a positive step in the right direction.