Despite a winning record last season, the Colorado Mesa University men’s soccer team was not happy. Some programs would be satisfied with a 9-7-1 record, but the Mavericks eye redemption this year.
Last year, the team had sky-high aspirations, and rightfully so. In 2021 CMU won both the regular season and postseason RMAC championships, en route to advancing all the way to the NCAA tournament third round. Unfortunately, luck just wasn’t on their side in 2022.
Several key players had injuries in different parts of the season, and 34 different players recorded playing time. While playing a new lineup almost every game, four of the seven losses were by one goal.
“We set some goals and what kind of happened is when we weren’t achieving those goals, [it] kind of went downhill, rather than using that as motivation to step it up,” Goalkeeper Diego Chavez said.
Over the summer many of the players played competitive collegiate summer ball to maintain fitness and used the disappointing last season as motivation.
“Coming into preseason, it was like a whole new dynamic. Guys were competing more, and guys were fitter, stronger [and] there was just a lot more passion,” Chavez said. “So now these trainings are going very well. Guys are just hungry, they want that redemption.”
The men’s soccer team has always been one of, if not the most diverse sport at CMU. This year, the team backs players from 11 different countries.
“I’ve always said soccer is universal, Chavez said. “Besides the language barrier, you can speak through the game. Once they do jump that language barrier and we can communicate in that sense the chemistry just fuses. There’s an American style, a European style, there’s just so many styles once we mix it all together it’s its own unique kind of mash reaction.”
During the preseason, CMU got valuable experience playing an exhibition against a Division I opponent in Utah Tech. Following that match, the squad had a blowout victory against the semi-professional team, FC Cosmos, a team based out of Grand Junction.
“We played a local group and I think that represents a different kind of challenge, some older guys on that team with a little more experience. What we really wanted to focus on was creating chances consistently, which in the first half, we kind of struggled with. We created some but for the amount of possession that we had, we really should have been creating more. I kind of challenged them a little bit, and in the second half, they definitely rose to that challenge,” head coach Jon Fridal said.
Leading the offense up front this year projects to be a pair of veterans in midfielder/forward Joey Joiner and Fernando Morales. Last season Joiner recorded three goals and three assists, and Morales registered 11 points in 14 games played.
A wild card for the offense is sophomore Manuel Ponce Casas. In his freshman season, the Playa del Carmen product began his career scoring a goal in each of his first five games, celebrating with backflips and looking to be a serious threat for the Mavs. However, after dealing with injury and different lineups, Ponce Casas only scored one more goal in the year, but with seven goals he led the team in scoring and points.
Midfielders Diogo Silva and Mattheus Lazzuri, as well as defender Raymond Jackson all return after playing vital roles on last year’s squad. Fridal has also added center-back Dimitrios Leonoglou, a veteran from Western Texas College who looks to be starting on the backline.
“I think his mindset is that he wants to take it to another level. He wants to continue improving every day, and throughout the summer and so far in preseason, that’s kind of been clear that that’s been his approach. He’s been very consistent so far,” Fridal said.
In the net Diego Chavez will get the start to begin the season. Chavez will be replacing the graduated Connor Durant. Durant was an All-American in 2021 but did not repeat the same performance in 2022. Chavez went on to start the final five games in 2022, and impressed, recording three shutouts, and supporting a 0.94 goals-against-average.
“We felt last year we had the two best keepers in the conference, and he still is in our mind. He’s ready,” Fridal said. “He’s been working hard for the last couple of years for this and he showed he was ready last year and we feel pretty comfortable with him.”
With a mix of players who had valuable experience last season and experienced transfers, the Mavericks enter the 2023 campaign in redemption mode. The team’s first home game is Sep 7, against Northwest Nazarene University.
