MSU Men’s Soccer Preview

Men’s Soccer Head Coach Ken Parsons giving his team training camp instructions. (Photo Credit: GoMetroState.com)

Starting the new school semester is exciting in itself, but nothing beats the beginning of fall sports. That’s exactly what RoadRunners Men’s Soccer Head Coach Ken Parsons and company are thinking as we are days away from the start of the regular season.

The RoadRunners will begin the year at home against Western Washington on Friday, Sept. 6, at 3:30 p.m. And while the WWU Vikings only finished 8-8-2 in 2012, Parsons and his squad aren’t going to take any opponent lightly.

“Each game is important,” Parsons explains. “Each opponent is important because you obviously want to make sure that we’re putting out the best 11 players for the start of the season and I think that’s all based upon their body of work, the level of improvement.”

The 11 players that Parsons will put on the field could fluctuate this season as the RoadRunners have 10 new recruits, including Junior Forward Makir Oropeza,  a transfer from Otero Junior College. Oropeza should get a lot of action in the absence of Marc Herschberger, a 12-goal scorer from a year ago, who graduated in the Spring.

Parsons thinks things are going good with the group he has heading into the regular season. “With the new players since we have so many,” he says, “and with what we’ve seen in this two and half weeks of training camp, I think all of those things are coming into play.”

Andrew Mejia was named RMAC Preseason defensive player of the year. (Photo Credit: GoMetroState.com)

What’s especially coming into play, is the on-field production from the seniors that Coach has seen during training camp and preseason.

“The seniors have done extremely well. It’s kind of a mixed bag as far as the seniors go,” Parson says.”

Coach has high praises for Senior Defender Andrew Mejia. “I think there was a reason why he was picked as a preseason defensive player of the year. That’s based upon his merits for sure.”

Mejia wasn’t the only senior that Parsons praises. “There’s Nolan Glivar, who’s been in this program for two years and he’s really grown as a player with his time here. Then there’s Brandon Hughes, Andy Lopez, and Kevin Pocalyko as well… they’ve all done a good job with their experience in the program and they know what the expectations are.”

With five seniors on the team this season, Parsons is also looking forward to them getting ready to pass the torch. “It’s important to have a solid core of seniors that can pass that information down to a team loaded with new players which is what we have this year.”

With freshman like Nolan Barth, another one of the 10 new recruits who has looked fantastic in preseason. On a deep team such as Metro State, promising freshman could definitely give Parsons good problems to have when it comes to allocating minutes.

With this deep team that Parsons has put together for the 2013 campaign, the stakes and expectations are definitely higher this season after losing to the eventual champion Colorado Mines in last year’s RMAC tournament.

“We want to go into every game (this season) and play well on both sides of the ball, as far as attack and defense,” he says. “I think if we can do those things right more times than not, it’s going to lead to results.”

Results, however, are not what’s on Coach’s mind. It’s all about going week by week. “I don’t think we put a mark on how many wins we want to have or where we want to be in the postseason,” he says. “But I think we go into every game wanting to win every single game. The way we’re going to have to approach that is to make sure that we are doing a good job on both sides of the ball. And I think if we do our job on both sides of the ball, we’ll win more games than we lose.”

With that, Parsons is convinced that this state of mind for the team will prove dividends at the end of the year. “That will allow us to have all the criteria that we need to hopefully make an impression on the selection committee by the end of the year (to make the NCAA Tournament).”

The new Auraria soccer fields, baseball and softball diamonds that are expected to be finished sometime in 2014.

But this season isn’t the only thing on Parsons’ mind coming into this year. It’s the new soccer facilities that are expected to be finished by the start of next year.

“I’m excited. I’ve been here 10 years, and this has been home for 10 years (at Auraria Field). So I’m certainly going to miss this. Lots of great memories on this field. But the new facility is going to be outstanding. It’s going to be a state of the art facility as far as what’s going on in this conference (RMAC). We’re excited for that, and it’ll be time to make new memories.”

While it’s difficult not to imagine how fantastic the new facilities will be in 2014, the focus of Ken Parsons and his squad is on this season, one they hope will create an easy transition into the new digs. One, they hope, will end with a banner being raised for the University.

NOTE: I’ll be the play-by-play radio announcer for every single Metro State Soccer game (both men’s and women’s) and you can hear every second of my calls at KMetRadio.org! Check out the schedules for all games at GoMetroState.org to know when to listen!