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Thursday, July 23, 2015
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
SPORTS
Soccer getting ready
for upcoming season
By TED JANES
Daily Sports Writer
The Michigan men’s soccer team
reunites in Ann Arbor this week
ahead of the upcoming season. The
Wolverines begin captains’ prac-
tices July 28, a full 20 days before
the opening exhibition against
Butler in Ann Arbor.
The two captains, fifth-year mid-
fielder Colin McAtee and senior
forward James Murphy, will lead
these training sessions as a means
for the team to get back into rhythm
before the preseason exhibitions.
The incoming freshmen will begin
to move into players’ houses, where
they’ll reside before moving into the
residence halls.
The team has only made a few
changes to the roster over the
course of the offseason. Three
important seniors, midfielder Tyler
Arnone, goalkeeper Adam Grinwis
and Marcos Ugarte all moved on
to minor league teams. Former
freshman Ahinga Selemani trans-
ferred to UC Santa Barbara, where
he joined one of the nation’s top
recruiting classes. Selemani was
the Wolverines’ starting center for-
ward, but an unexceptional debut
season left Selemani with little rea-
son to stay.
While Grinwis was a strong
keeper,
sophomore
goalkeeper
Evan Louro earned many minutes
last year as a highly-touted fresh-
man, and will certainly be ready
to step in as the team’s number one
shot stopper.
A strong, eight-person incom-
ing class that includes two inter-
nationals from Ghana and Chile
is expected to make an immediate
impact and fill any gaps.
Michigan’s
first
exhibition
against the Bulldogs is followed
12 days later by the first preseason
game in Omaha, Nebraska, against
a Creighton team that finished the
season ranked in the top 10.
Winning games against reputable
non-Big Ten schools is crucial for
Michigan, a team in its 16th season
that has still yet to achieve consis-
tent success. Despite one trip to the
NCAA Tournament College Cup,
soccer’s equivalent of the Final Four,
the
Wolver-
ines have only
made a scat-
tered number
of tournament
appearances,
the last in 2012,
and have yet to
win a Big Ten
regular season
title.
As someone
who has now
had time away from Michigan, for-
mer captain Arnone is beginning
to see how the Wolverines stack up
on the national grid, playing for the
Real Monarchs of the United Soc-
cer League.
“In the professional ranks, peo-
ple ask, ‘Where’d you go to school?’
They know the name Michigan, but
in terms of soccer, it’s not as much
respected,” Arnone said. “(Michi-
gan) is not UNC or UCLA. Those
are the big schools. Is (Daley) the
guy to bring Michigan to that level?
That’s the question for me.”
Arnone, part of previous coach
Steve Burns’ last recruiting class,
felt that the 2014 was hyped to be
“the season” that would bringing
Michigan up to the next level, but
the team was radically inconsis-
tent, losing to teams it was predict-
ed to dominate.
“Last season, we were, on paper,
one of the best teams in the coun-
try, and surely one of the best in our
conference,” said senior forward
Will Mellors-Blair. “We thought
we could just show up on a Tues-
day night and mull over teams like
Bowling Green and Western Mich-
igan, and that’s got to change.”
While Michigan is often con-
sidered a favorite in many of those
matchups against less nationally-
renowned programs, it has yet to
truly earn its place in the cham-
pionship conversation among the
likes of the Tar Heels and Bruins.
“We have all the infrastructure
we need, it’s just a matter of having
that one season which will define
Michigan soccer on the national
track,” Mellors-Blair said.
The Wolverines need more time
than just one season to become a
definitive, consistent contender on
the national level, but they’ll need
to start somewhere.
And the 2015 season is just
around the bend.
LUNA ANNA ARCHEY/Daily
Senior forward and team captain James Murphy will lead the team after a disappointing 2014 season.