Yes, the Elon University men’s soccer team won the Southern Conference championship last season, upsetting the No. 3 seed Georgia Southern University, No. 2 seed Furman University and No. 1 seed University of North Carolina at Greensboro in consecutive games as the No. 6 seed in the 2011 tournament.
Despite that, and returning their top three scorers, the Phoenix finds itself selected as the fourth-best team in the conference to start the season.
But head coach Darren Powell is pleased with the first-place vote his team received.
“I’m very excited that someone would think we’re the top team,” he said with a smile. “I was kind of surprised we got first-place votes, so that’s something to be proud of, I guess.”
A couple of his players think otherwise.
“Yes, a lot,” said senior forward Chris Thomas when asked if he felt slighted by his team’s ranking. “It’s alright because I know our team is better than that. Hopefully, we’ll be turning a lot of heads this year.”
Thomas, who led the Phoenix in goals last season with ten goals, and fellow senior and midfielder Gabe Latigue, are looking to lead Elon back to the promised land of the NCAA Tournament, a tournament the team made last year for the first time in program history. Elon lost to Coastal Carolina University 4-3 in the first round.
[box]Relive the Moments Last season, the Elon men's soccer team won three straight games against higher-seeded opponents to win the SoCon Tournament. Read how they did it.[divider_flat] [/box]
“To create history the first year meant so much, and if we could repeat it again for my senior year, it would be unbelievable,” Latigue said.
To do that, Elon will need to have a better regular season than it did in 2011, with a 6-10-2 record. A better regular season record, Powell said, will allow for an easier path back to the tournament. He made an example of Furman University, which finished the regular season ranked No. 16 in the country and, despite losing to the Phoenix in the semifinals of the SoCon Tournament, made the NCAA Tournament.
So what would success in the regular season mean, exactly?
“To put ourselves in the position to make the national tournament from our schedule, without having to rely on the conference tournament to get the automatic bid,” Powell said. “This team’s going to be capable of that, and it would be nice going into the conference tournament with a little more security like Furman was able to do last year, be a top-20 program all year, lose in the conference tournament but still make the national tournament.”
The Phoenix will have to do that without key cogs like James Carroll, Nick Millington and Austen King, three key players on last year’s team that have graduated. So leading scorers Thomas (ten goals, two assists), Latigue (four goals, seven assists) and junior midfielder Matt Wescoe (three goals, two assists) will have to take over not only the scoring, but the leadership.
Latigue points to the freshmen that are coming in, especially midfielder Miguel Salazar, whom Latigue said “just controls everything for us.” Much like Carroll did from his midfielder position.
“You can never replace guys,” Powell said. “James Carroll, Nick Millington, Austen King, fantastic individuals, fantastic players for the program. And all (of) that senior group was. You don’t replace them, but you have a different look. That’s the positives and the negatives of college soccer, it’s constantly moving. So you can never get a settled team from year to year, but you’re constantly moving yourselves with the program, with the team.”
[box]Balancing Act James Carroll, now graduated, excelled on and off the field during his time at Elon. Read about his academic exploits.[divider_flat] [/box]
Despite the losses of personnel, the head coach is “very optimistic” with the roster he had in front of him.
“Like every year, I think this team can achieve many great things,” Powell said. “We’ve been very fortunate the last couple years to keep moving the program forward, different stats and different standings, making the tournament and winning championships. I fully expect to continue to move the program forward this year, and what I hope is that we would come out with the right focus. If that’s the case in each game, we should be very exciting to see.”
And as far as the preseason ranking, he thinks nothing of it.
“Preseason rankings, nobody really knows each other, so it’s based on what you think could happen, like in most sports,” he said. “I think a lot can happen. I don’t feel slighted at all, because that’s what they are, preseason rankings. You take them for what they’re worth. We don’t really focus on those. It’s the table at the end of the year and the conference tournament, that’s what we like to focus on.”
It is the focus on the basics Latigue points to as the key to success for repeating last year’s triumph.
“If everyone’s working hard and on their toes and everyone’s putting in the work, I think the road to repeating is right in front of us,” he said. “If we can all get our chemistry down and play together well, and everyone working hard and everyone’s doing what we’re supposed to do, we can do that.”