Cody Bartlow Reviews

Great coach that taught me so much! Truly helped me find my love for the game.

Great coach. Loved playing for him.

I played for Cody for 3 years. During my time he was a stand up person, a great coach and really improved our team and each player. He is a great coach and I’m thankful to call him a friend now and mentor.

Cody has been a great coach for me! He recruited me to join a program where he wanted accountability and service to be at the heart of who we are. He taught be so much about the game and constantly related the game to what life is like. He employed a staff that were balanced and worked well together to support us. I always felt like I was learning and getting better at the sport and developing as a person under Cody's leadership. He was always available to us players and would talk with us through any problems we were having whether that was soccer related or not. His belief in his players is always clear for those that chose to hear it, unfortunately not everyone wanted to be coached or accountable on our team. He is a great coach, leader, and mentor!

Cody is the best coach I’ve ever had. He believed in me and our team. He pushed us to learn more about the game and stretched our limits as players to show us we are more capable than we give ourselves credit for. He supports you on and off the field, and holds you accountable for academics. Decisions were always collective involving coaching staff and player leadership. 100% would play for him always.

Wanna know the real truth, why isn’t Cody coaching at Midland University anymore. Could it be that he allowed and placed narcotic patches on players with injuries just so he could win games or could it be that he knowingly allowed positive marijuana players to continue playing all while pushing back their drug testing while the assistant coach who is a registered nurse married to a pain management doctor lead and show girls how to pass these tests using other players urine. No, he just got caught and it’s not over yet. He has damaged multiple girls and not only mentally but physically but it’s not over Cody. It’s all gonna come out and you are going to be held responsible for your actions. Parents trusted you with their daughters and you physically and emotionally tried to destroy them, but look who’s standing now these girls were stronger than you thought, and they stood up for what was right, and did the right thing unlike you.

It’s embarrassing that he has to write his own good reviews to seem relevant. A pathetic excuse for a coach and human. Don’t be fooled. He also grooms women

Cody was a great coach who recruited great players. Those players are all leaving now, at least the ones that can. The problem was new recruits with better talent began to replace players who were not putting forth the effort. Since Cody left sessions went down in intensity and seriousness. We we completely trained to win the conference. It really didn’t matter who was coaching. But less players actually played minutes after Cody left. But what does it matter as long as substandard players get to play who wouldn’t work during the season. Many of the players who did quit, couldn’t pass the pre season fit test. Still, they believed they had a right to start. It’s sad. My suggestion is to look at our team roster now and see how many are there next year. Then the truth will be known. I will be surprised if they have a team because I won’t be there!

Cody is the biggest narcissist I have ever met in my life and does not take responsibility for anything. Not once has he owned up to his mistakes that we have brought forward to him and taken constructive criticism. I want to share some stories from my time here at Midland to give you some context to who he truly is as a person. The first year Cody was coaching at Midland he said a racial slur at practice within the first few weeks. Another terrible thing that he would do all the time is comment on our bodies and how it affects us as athletes. A few examples of this are (1) he told a player in a one-on-one meeting that she needs to stop eating so many carbs so that she would be more agile, (2), in another athlete one-on-one meeting he had asked her with no context if he could feel her thighs and then after told her that all of her stress is going straight to her legs, (3) he pulled a girl aside after practice to explain to her why she hadn't been getting as much playing time, his reasoning was that her body was maturing and she couldn't keep up with it. These are only a few examples that I am willing to share because frankly, they all disgust me. He does not hold himself to a professional standard whatsoever. He would consistently dump all of his previous trauma on us and would use it as a weird bonding opportunity or blame us for not having similar experiences. One time after a game that we lost we had over an hour long talk in the locker room and he was telling us a story of how he beat up his old best friend to protect someone and told us he should have been arrested and put in jail for how badly he had hurt him. Another unprofessional instance is the fact that he would bring up all the time that he used to sell drugs in his past. One thing I would like to bring up is all of the positive reviews that I have seen saying that the only people who dislike Cody are the people who didn't receive playing time. I was a starter every single year that I was at Midland and saw plenty of time on the field. Yet I was still treated like dirt and was used as a punching bag for Cody. He manipulates you into how you're supposed to feel and not how you are actually doing. From the first day I arrived at Midland, I was treated like an outsider for no apparent reason. I have never once been treated with dignity or respect. He will never give you a compliment when you are playing well because "that is an assistant coach's job" and will only compliment you if you are one of his favorites. He will single people out in team huddles and completely embarrass players. There have been several cases will I will politely ask a question for clarification in practice and he will beat me down. Abusing his power against me and making me hate the sport of soccer. I never felt safe at practice or games constantly on edge for when I would be yelled at next due to his bipolar behavior. After Cody got fired midseason I saw my team flourish. I saw girls start to score who hadn't in years. I was finally happy to see girls who were about to quit soccer smile and enjoy the sport that they loved so much. There were so many girls before that who gave up playing because of Cody and it is unfortunate that it took so many sacrifices from them to finally get someone to hear our complaints. We ended up winning the conference championship at the end of this season something that Cody never had achieved here. If he had still been here we wouldn't have been able to do that with him, number one because the majority of our team would have quit before then and number two because of his poor coaching ability.

During Cody Bartlow’s time at Midland 9 girls quit, they did not medically retire or transfer, they quit. They quit the sport they once loved because of an aggressive, obsessive, rude, and untrustworthy man. I have seen him drive girls into the ground where they feel like they aren’t good enough, not just on the field, but off of the field. He does not respect boundaries whatsoever with girls, he has weird obsessions over his players that make them uncomfortable but they are too scared to speak up. He told players he wants to be their father figure and wants to know every detail in their life. He then uses that information against them. He says mental health means a lot to him but has told multiple players that “it’s all in their head”, and that they don’t have a learning disability, they just don’t apply themselves. This man is a manipulative person who will turn his players against each other. He would tell us to leave our problems outside of practice but he would come to practices and games with the worst attitude and take his anger out on players. He should NOT be coaching women

Cody took over a full program of men's, women's, and youth teams and turned the entire ship around. Before Cody, the best summarization of the program was "a band of misfits with no direction" He took players from all differing levels of the game, from kids being forced to play by parents to college athletes who live and breath soccer, and taught them more than I ever could have imagined. Not just about soccer (although his knowledge and love of the game is massive), but more importantly about life and how to grow as a person. He took time out of his day to care for every single player and parent in the run down program that he found himself leading. Apart from the regular "on the pitch" coaching duties, Cody took pride in the responsibility that he had to improve the life and character of each and every player under his name. I owe much of who I am as a person to Cody and the lessons he taught me over the four years I played for him. Lessons about adversity, success, and everything in between. He was not a coach that would let you sulk and shy away from your mistakes. Instead, Cody pushes you to be humble and own up to your shortcomings and flaws so that you can grow from them. He will never allow his players to hide behind timidness and pride to shirk their responsibility to grow as a person. It is a difficult task to face and grow from your flaws and failures but it is made much easier when you have a coach like Cody on your side.

I have the opportunity to watch Coach Bartlow join a directionless soccer program and turn it into a championship program. He is demanding and sets high goals but he sees potential in his players/teams and coaches them to be their best. This is tough for some player to hear. Coach Bartlow is not easy but often equates soccer to life as he coaches effort and decision-making as key components to success on the pitch and off.

Cody Bartlow is a liar and the worst coach I’ve played for. I’ve had some pretty bad experiences with coaches prior to coming to midland but never in my 19years of playing soccer did I ever think that I’d walk away from my team mid season. My parents and significant other both mentioned that after I stepped away from soccer that even the tone of my voice was much happier and lighter. I completely lost myself with all the mind games and lies that Cody put me through. It was bitter sweet to walk away from the sport that I grew up playing and what got me though school but it was absolutely necessary because of how bad my mental health was and it was making my physical health deteriorate as well because I was not eating what so ever. I had no energy and could barely hold myself together. Cody also threatened to kick me off the team for my “attitude” because I had a bad day but he would show up and treat us like we were nothing and couldn’t even follow is own nonnegotiables. Before one of the games in a pregame meeting he wrote the word r*pe on the board which triggered me from trauma that I have from the past. He would constantly trauma dump on us and we had to show up absolutely perfect but he could again not follow his own standards. He also would blame everything on certain players even if they were nowhere near the ball. I really do not recommend playing for him or hiring him. Women’s sports have no place for toxic, narcissistic, dishonest and disrespectful coaches like Cody Bartlow.

This man shouldn’t be allowed to coach women or anyone. He would make comments on growing women’s body and would tell us we should be “servers” because we would make a lot of money because we all look good. he has weird obsessions with players. if u weren’t one of his favorites, u wouldn’t even be acknowledged. his favorites were able to miss as many classes as they wanted and could fail classes but if u weren’t one of his favorites u were punished. he would preach mental health but took our mental health days away because he thought we didn’t need them. he has told many players to lie about their injuries so they could play. some would play with fractured ankles, torn knee injuries, torn muscles, concussions and the list goes on. everyone on the outside will view this man as a decent human but if u really know him, he is a narcissist control freak. random people on Midlands campus would go up to soccer players and ask if we were depressed because we all looked drained and lifeless. when he left, u could see the light come back in most players. we don’t play scared anymore, we play for each other. please whatever u do, do not let this man coach ur child.

I am an upperclassman who has spent three years with Cody. And I can officially say that Cody is one of the worst coaches I have ever played for. I thought throughout my time here at Midland I was going to have the best years, but when he came it went downhill. He claims he is all about being a successful student, but never gave us the time to work on anything when it came to school because all he ever cared about was soccer. He never held standards in any situation. The rule was that if you had a certain amount of missing assignments then you were supposed to miss games, but that didn’t happen if you were a favorite player or a starter. There was a consequence for those who had been applied to that rule, but like I said if you were a favorite or starter you never had a consequence. I can say he knew some about soccer but he was never organized. With our assistant coaches he gave them a sheet of paper and expected them to know what they were doing, but if they attempted to do what was on the sheet and it wasn’t right, then Cody would yell at them. Like I said, you would expect a coach to hold standards and be accountable, but he wasn’t. The only ones who got treated “fair” or “nice” were starters, captains, and favorites. Then others would get treated like dirt with no explanation. He did not represent our soccer program or Midland University itself. There has been an instance where a drug was involved and he didn’t follow the rules to getting the player tested and admitted he knew that players were doing it. He wanted to protect those like I said and not turn them in to get tested which is our programs and the schools policy. Then he claimed he did drugs and would trauma dump on us. He always told us that his job relied on us and would threaten players to kick them off the team or take away their scholarship. At the beginning of the season I had went to urgent care for a physical exam to play my senior year of soccer. I was never cleared by the urgent care and they told me I needed to see a primary doctor in order to get cleared as I told them I had five concussions which is true. The doctor didn’t clear as that was hard to break the news to him. After telling him he wanted me to go to an Omaha urgent care and lie about how many concussions I’ve had. When it comes to practices he will yell at players for making mistakes during practice to embarrass them in front of the whole team. Other players got pulled aside and he would tell those players how to fix the problem or tell them what went wrong. He split the team up into two teams: first team and reserve team. With this split he made each team do their own practices and not involve everyone. For those who are medically retired, managers, or on reserves you don’t feel like you are on the team. As being a medically retired player he would never acknowledge me for showing up to games or practices. He has removed people from the group chats which makes it seem like I could never be apart of the team. I can say overall he ruined me as a person and completely destroyed my mental health. I had to seek talking to a therapist to get me out of a dark spot. He made me read letters from previous players about certain situations that made me uncomfortable because one I never got their permission and two it wasn’t my place to read someone else’s business. After he got fired, our team was super successful becoming the GPAC champions. You can tell that after he left, everybody’s confidence sky rocketed and the sport became more fun and enjoyable and to play how they wanted to play and not under specific systems. We were supposed to be apart of a family and have each others backs, but he wanted us to leave the practice wanting to fight each other in the parking lot and turn against one another.

As a coach, he was very knowledgeable about the game of soccer. However, as a person he was narcissistic. Manipulative. Played favorites. Recruited an entire JV team and essentially just forgot about them. Interpersonal relationships were way too uncomfortably close to players. Tried to force players into this "family role" that he did not really have. Told us he was a previous drug dealer. Broke SEVERAL friendships/made us go against each other. Made captains/leadership council do his dirty work. Obsessive behavior with players. Blocked all (or most) Midland University players on his Twitter after finding out we won the conference title. Weird behavior. Way too intense for NAIA program. Would always explicitly tell us that his job depended on us. Too much pressure. Overwhelming. Asked players for "letters of recommendations" only to go behind their backs and copy/paste their letters as "positive ratings" on this website pretending to be athletes.

I wish I could truly put into words the absolute disgust I have for the toxicity this man has caused a multitude of young ladies. By far the absolute worst coach I have ever seen in my life and trust me I have seen a fair share of subpar coaches. He is manipulative, plays favorites, pins girls against each other for the sport of thriving on their pain and mental anguish. This man turns a blind eye to the truth for the sake of a win. The level of inappropriate behavior is an entirely whole other problem. I thank God every day the college took the girls seriously when they brought about concerns. I thought this man was going to be the reason I brought my daughter home in a coffin. He should NEVER be allowed to be around athletes ever again. The day he got fired was the day I no longer feared for my daughter’s mental health and suicidal thoughts. Thank you Midland for standing up for our girls! I pray every day this man no longer has the power to manipulate athletes, shove his narcissistic ways down their throats, and can no longer treat these ladies so poorly. Please, if you’re reading this, do not ever consider hiring this man for your program. He is fake. He is a narcissist. And we will never admit he was the problem.

As a parent of one of his former players, all of the negative comments are true along with the positive comments from players who are supporting him. This reflects his bipolar nature towards all of the girls on the roster. With some players he was fake nice and others he mentally manipulated them, this included starting players too. He lies to get girls thinking he’s helping them when all he’s doing is saying things to make him “seem” like a caring coach. He’s not honest or caring, but a narcissist thinking he is. He never saw the reason the team wasn’t having fun or doing well mentally was because of him. Once he was fired, during the middle of the season for obviously serious reasons after an investigation, the team has thrived. There’s something blaring obvious about this fact and I’d seriously recommend looking elsewhere for a coach. If you don’t believe these reviews, talk to the upperclass players at Midland who endured 3 years with him.

I was one of the players who just won the GPAC Championship with OUR HEAD COACH Tatum. Cody Bartlow has no right to take credit for our succes after he was FIRED! I came from a top JUCO where I had a lot of succes and loved what I was doing. When I had my recruitment meeting with Cody he promised to many things, those were all lies. He promised this culture where we will find our bridesmaids. This man told me to stop being friends with my best friend on the team, she was the only thing getting me through this season. I left everything I have ever known for a opportunity to continue my dream. Little did I know this opportunity would ruin me as a person. I can’t tell you how many times I would call fmaily memebers crying saying I don’t know if I can live like this anymore, in constant pain mentally and physically. My mental was so bad and I felt bad for my therapist that would listen to me cry about what that man has done to me and she could hear the pain in voice. This man should not be a coach he is making girls write on this website good things about him so schools will want to hire him. The girls who are writing them were the ones that he treated like gods. I was definitely not one of them, I can’t tell you how many times he would tell me I’m not the player that he brought in. How am I supposed to succeed when I don’t even to be alive. Since he was FIRED, I have found peace in my life and working towards living with what that man has put me through.

I’ve never had a coach care so much about me as a person. If you truly want to play competitive he’s the coach for you. If you want everything handed to you and don’t want to work maybe look elsewhere. He cares about us as people and cares about your mental health. He gives Mental Health Days that you can take no question asked, he gives us the opportunity to show pride in ourselves and others, He’s built a great program bc he believes in people. His biggest fault may be that too as people take for granted his rare that truly is. I will choose to play for Cody every chance I get.

His team won the conference championship tonight. Funny how all the “favorites” were the ones on the field playing. His favorites are those that work hard, buy into the culture and play for one another and the program. The best coach I’ve ever had hands down. I’ll fight for him till the end!

I have valued my time with Cody as my coach. He has been a mentor and provided wisdom when I needed it the most. He encouraged me, motivated me to work harder, and pushed me to be the best person I can be. I will forever be grateful for him believing in me and supporting me.

Cody truly changed my life. I can truly say that Cody and soccer saved my life. In the last 2 years of knowing Cody I have learned more about the game and myself as a player than in my entire life leading up to then. I had the most fun playing for Cody then since I was a little kid. He taught me how to play to my strengths and always reaffirmed with me that I would not be where I was if I wasn't good enough. Cody is the coach that sees you, even if you don't want to truly see you.

Cody Bartlow has completely ruined my mental health and others on my team. There have been many many times where this man would say I was never good enough and never will be in individual meetings. Even though he’s gone now I still hear his voice in the back of my head saying “you will never be good enough to play at this level.” There’s a difference between being honest and just straight up bullying. He would comment on my teammates weight whether it was about gaining it or losing it. He told me that my learning disability was just an excuse to why I was struggling in a class. Since he has been here I have yet to love soccer and he promised us that he would heal our bad coaching experiences but I can now add him to the list of the horrible coaches i’ve had. He made players stop being friends with other players because he would brainwash them and he would cause a very toxic environment to where girls who were friends before he got here are no longer friends. We are now going to the championship for our conference which he couldn’t do the 3 years he was here but now that he’s gone it has been an amazing experience. There was a time where my teammates and I were sitting in public on campus and some random people came up to us and said “is midland soccer okay? everytime we see a player you guys look depressed.” That comment right there is when I knew it was bad because we never noticed it. The saying “forget about me i love you” is so weird because it makes us feel like we need to not focus on ourselves but focus on other people and that’s not what’s important. Mental health is a huge topic when it comes to athletes because we are expected to put our bad mental health to the side and that’s what Cody exactly did, would toss our mental health to the side. If we came to practice having a bad day then we would get yelled at but he would constantly share is personal life and if he yelled at us at practice it was because he had issues going on. If you weren’t one of his starting 11 then he wouldn’t even look at you as a person he knew. Never in my life have I heard a group of girls saying that life wasn’t worth living anymore because of him. He was very inappropriate with some players and would touch them in a weird way, he would hug girls with his hands on their hips. This man does not deserve a coaching job with girls at all. He has completely ruined everything I dreamed of and other players as well.

Hello I’m the one who will make sure Cody is never around women again and especially for soccer. For one main and obvious reason is he said the N*** word to some of my teammates and acted like he never did when there was two witnesses. He DESTROYED A LOT of women’s mental health at Midland University. If you don’t believe that then go check out all the women who quit and email them IMMEDIATELY. I as a player who played for him had more than 8 concussions and he knew that. Yes its my fault for playing still but he was a manipulative person who made me think it was okay. Now I suffer with memory loss and depression due to the multiple concussions I endured there. I even had to get a brain scan because of the constant headaches that I still have from not quitting earlier. I watched this man bully multiple players at practice. I watched this man talk about my prescribed Adderall to players for my diagnosed ADHD and told them at individual meetings that “I DON’T NEED THEM.” That’s laughable because it was prescribed for a reason? This man made women feel uncomfortable alone with him and AGAIN make sure you talk to multiple players before hiring him and I have coaches numbers in NEBRASKA who stated “I would not leave him alone with young girls ever.” I have that mans contact number who told me this outside of Fremont, NE. A lot of coaches disliked Cody Bartlow here in NE he just assumed they liked him but they never did. He crossed a line and I will never let a coach ruin someone else's mental health again.