Last year, the UCLA men’s soccer team began its season with a dud road trip and finished its first three games without a win.
The Bruins face another brutal road stretch to start this season, and now the stakes are even higher.
Jorge Salcedo’s team enters the season ranked No. 1 in the country, and it has a clear chip on its shoulder after falling short at the College Cup last season.
This week the Bruins will travel to the Indiana University Credit Union Classic in Bloomington, Ind., where they will face No. 11 Notre Dame and No. 8 Indiana.
“Every game, we’re going to be a target,” junior midfielder Tony Beltran said. “Being No. 1 and being UCLA, every team we play ““ it’s going to be their biggest game of the season.”
The Bruins will be playing without their two most potent threats from last season. Midfielder Sal Zizzo signed a professional contract with Hannover 96 in July, ending his collegiate career. Sophomore David Estrada, UCLA’s leading scorer in 2006, will miss four weeks after having surgery on his left foot.
“It hurts us, but it also gives other guys some very good opportunities,” Salcedo said. “It will create more depth and more competition for the team … which is a good problem to have.”
The first trip of the year will be quite a test for the Bruins, but it’s nothing this team hasn’t seen before. Last year, UCLA lost to No. 1 Maryland and No. 3 Virginia on the road early in the season. It’s a feeling the Bruins don’t want to experience again.
“Out of our first three games (last season), we were without a win, we felt like the world was coming to an end,” Salcedo said. “We just figured out a way and recovered.
“This is an important first tournament for us. We hope to be in a good spot at the end of the year, and these early games prepare you for that.”
The tournament starts a year that the Bruins hope will end with a championship. They already faced North Carolina State in an exhibition on Saturday, which ended in a 2-2 tie. It’s clear the Bruins have the tools they need to dominate this season.
UCLA has just three seniors on its roster, but there is plenty of experience. Senior defender Mike Zaher has already been named to a College Soccer News pre-season All-America team. Junior midfielder Jason Leopoldo was the team’s second leading scorer in 2006.
“Our team is very similar (to last year’s),” Beltran said. “Overall we got the majority of the team back. We were very young last year, and we had a lot of freshmen who are now starters. We have a really good core group.”
The sophomore class will be huge for the Bruins this year.
Sophomore Brian Perk could start in goal. Estrada will be an important offensive threat at forward when he returns for the beginning of conference play. Sophomores Kyle Nakazawa and Michael Stephens will anchor the midfield, and Chance Myers could start on defense.
“You can tell already that the sophomores are taking more important roles,” Stephens said.
“This year we are going to be impact players.”
UCLA will also welcome back junior forward Maxwell Griffin. The Palmdale native had five goals in his first eight games before tearing his ACL last year. He missed the rest of the season, including his team’s run to the national championship game.
“I’m 100 percent, I’m ready to go,” Griffin said. “It was the worst feeling in the world to be out for that long. I’m just thankful to be back.”
Griffin will be key for the Bruins, especially without Estrada in the lineup.
“It will be great to have (Griffin) back, he’s really a handful for other teams,” Salcedo said.
Salcedo was also excited about the experience his players got over the summer play in international competitions.
Perk, Zizzo and Estrada played in the FIFA Under-20 World Cup in Canada with the U.S. national team. The team had a great run to the quarterfinal, upsetting juggernaut Brazil on its way.
Stephens and Myers played with senior Greg Folk at the Pan-American games in Brazil.
“International is an even higher level than college,” Stephens said. “We all got very valuable experience ““ when we come back (to college), we’re ready for the speed of play.”
Salcedo called the Bruin presence on U.S. teams “phenomenal.”
The U.S. national team experience is one more part of the equation that has this team believing it can be the best this year.
“We feel like we should be the No. 1 team in the nation, especially after what happened last year in the final,” Estrada said. “It’s hard to not look ahead, because we have such high expectations. In the end we just have to step up.”
But for all the excitement surrounding the group, Salcedo is still grounded and focused on this weekend’s games in Indiana.
“Preseason No. 1 is just that: preseason,” he said.