Kat Simonelli
News Editor
Though the men’s soccer team stayed dialed in to all of its games, it was unable to reach its goal of making it into the SCIAC postseason tournament.
This did not change the fact that the team came out this year under a new coaching staff and played their hearts out for one another.
“For it being my first year, us getting 11 wins was historically a good number,” head coach Trevor Persson said. “Obviously I’d like to win a lot more, but we’re after the student athlete experience, making sure we were as competitive as possible and I think we were able to do that this year at 11-8-1.”
The team wasn’t just building the program from the bottom up, they were also building their relationships with one another.
“What I took out of the season is us just coming together and eventually going through the hard times,” sophomore forward Nathan Gonzalez said.
The team always came together as a group to pray before games.
“We would ask God to not only keep us safe, but the opposition as well,” sophomore defender Ferdinand Estrada said.“I think little things like that actually play a big role in the belief in the players and just coming together as a team.”
The team also grew closer through other rituals such as hugging each and every person on the team before they went out to play every single game.
“I think it just shows that every single one of your teammates has confidence in you and they believe in you, so I think that it just helped overall as a team because we just knew we had the support,” sophomore midfielder Mario Interiano said. “Even if we didn’t have the most fans or anything, we knew we had each other.”
This season, the team and coaching staff grew and made new connections, something that is critical for such a young team working with a new coaching staff.
“I think throughout the course of the year we just bonded more and the team just feels more like a family now more rather than a bunch of guys playing for a certain cause,” Interiano said.
Three players – Estrada, sophomore midfielder Saul Uribe and Gonzalez – were selected for All SCIAC team at the end of the season.
All SCIAC teams are composed of 24 of the best players in the SCIAC league.
Gonzalez earned a spot on the first team while Uribe and Estrada were selected for the second team.
“I think I owe a lot of my success on the field to the 10 other people around me,” Estrada said. “It’s not just me against the other team, I think it’s a team effort and it is because of them that I am able to be in this position.”
Gonzalez lead the team in scoring last season and had previously been selected for the second team.
This season he earned his first team spot after scoring 12 goals in SCIAC play, putting him second, only three goals behind the scoring leader senior Redlands forward Chris Izydorek.
“I really wanted to improve on what I had from last year because if you didn’t improve its kind of like a step back,” Gonzalez said.
Uribe was out on an injury for about half the season this year, but still managed to make an All SCIAC team as well.
“Honestly I was a little surprised after being injured for a couple games, but I guess my hard work really did pay off even though I started out with an injury,” Uribe said.
The men’s soccer team has high hopes for the next season and is expecting to clinch a spot in the SCIAC postseason tournament in the future.
“I think we could have been more dialed in this season, but this was the first year with a new coach, it’s like the transition year, next year I’m pretty sure we’ll be speed dialed in,” Interiano said.
Kat Simonelli can be reached at kathryn.simonelli@laverne.edu and on Twitter @KatSimonelli.
