Yale tops Ivy League as reclamation project reaches new heights

Yale has reached unprecedented territory this fall, the program's fifth under head coach Kylie Stannard. (Yale Athletics)

During the interview process for the head coach job at Yale, Kylie Stannard remembers how other candidates were hesitant to take on the role, concerned that they couldn’t be successful in New Haven, Conn.

The Bulldogs had slid to the bottom of the Ivy League, and the task at hand was basically building a program back up from scratch. Yale had one winning season over the prior decade as Dartmouth and Brown set the conference's standard.

“It was almost harder given where we were,” Stannard told New England Soccer Journal. “At a new program, there’s no history and a clean slate where you’re starting from the ground up. But for us, it was battling a team culture that was pretty down. You’re really climbing out of a hole.”