Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
PORTALES — When new Eastern New Mexico men’s soccer coach Jon Fridal was asked about the biggest difference between Division II soccer and junior college soccer, he felt it was almost an impossible question. Because of the parity across all of college soccer, he reasoned, one juco program may compete with Division-I schools while others would struggle just to stay with an average Division-II school.
What’s not up for debate is when it comes to Division II, the Greyhounds are in one of the toughest conferences with No. 5 Midwestern State and No. 15 St. Edward’s among the Heartland Conference’s dozen members.
“If you look at the top six teams,” Fridal said, “they’re all ranked in the top 50 or 60 RPI-wise. It’s a really tough conference.”
The Greyhounds, who finished tied for 10th in conference last year at 3-11 (4-13-1 overall), are picked to finish 11th this year. But Fridal said he and the team “haven’t given it a second thought” because the Greyhounds are frankly not the same team as when Fridal left Indian Hills Community College to take over the Green and Silver in February.
“When I got here in the spring, we had about 18 guys,” Fridal said. “Of those 18, we’ve got seven that are currently on the roster. Now we’ve got 22 guys joining them. Some are new to me, some are from my previous school. We’re still getting to know each other.”
In fact, Eastern has the same number of returning players as it does transfers from Indian Hills, which went 18-3 last season and won the Iowa Community College Athletic Association regular season title for the first time in school history.
This year’s model of the Greyhounds has so far split a pair of exhibition games with Western Texas College and University of the Southwest, and will open the regular season with a 2 p.m. home tilt today against Southern Nazarene and 1 p.m. Saturday against Oklahoma Baptist.
After that, it’s a Colorado two-fer at Colorado Mesa Sept. 6 and Fort Lewis Sept. 8. And then Heartland play starts the following week.
“The biggest thing I’m trying to prepare my players for,” Fridal said, “is every game is going to be a battle.”
They’ll also have to find some offense. Returning Greyhounds accounted for three of last year’s 18 goals and four of last year’s 11 assists.
“It just comes down to team play,” Fridal said. “I don’t think we have anybody elite who can win the game themselves. It comes down to how we’ll play together to get goals, and how we’ll play together to get shutouts. I don’t think we’re the type of team that’s going to win shootouts, 5-4 or something like that. We’ve got to be solid defensively as a unit.”
