The Mesa Men’s soccer team took the field Wednesday at 3:00 pm against Orange Coast College and the final score ended up 6-1 in favor of OCC.
Mesa Soccer is a part of the Pacific Coast Conference and have earned three PCC championship honors since 2000. Such success in this conference has barred a greater expectation for the team to have a winning season.
With only three sophomores on the team and the rest being made up of all freshmen, Mesa was expected to have some growing pains as their young players get adjusted to competing at the college level. Coach Abdelghani Toumi expects his players to progress throughout the season and get more adjusted to the differences of college soccer. When asked about the difference between this years team and teams he has coached in the past, Coach Toumi implied, “For this particular team, most players are freshman and are inexperienced with high level soccer.” The coach, however still seemed optimistic about the remainder of the season. Coach Toumi later stated, “Many of them possess the technical qualities to help them improve and advance their game with more hands on practice.”
It was evident early in this game that Mesa was a young team in just their 6th game together and was still trying to make the transformation to this higher level of soccer. Orange Coast College controlled the tempo of this game right from the start as they did not wait long to score the first goal of the game. The ball spent much of its time at the feet of the OCC players as they dominated the time of possession in this contest.
Mesa fell behind 4-0 in the first half, however, still gave a great effort in the second half. It wasn’t until late in the game, nevertheless, Mesa was able to put one shot into the goal for their only score of the game when freshman Forward Joe Garcia was able to slide the ball past the goalkeeper.
When asked about the way the start of the season has gone for the team, Garcia said, “It hasn’t gone as well as we thought it would but once we get our first win we will start to play as well as we know we are capable of.”
The players, as well as coaches know that they are a youthful team that still needs to work hard to improve and win games. Although the season has not begun in the most ideal fashion to this point, the team’s goals remain the same as when this season started. Coach Toumi commented, “Our long term goal is to make the playoffs and compete regionally to expose players to scouting opportunities. “
It is still early in the season and the Olympians will surely continue their strides to get better as a team and start accumulating wins.