There are a few things I regret about National Signing Day.
For one, I woke up at 5:45 a.m. on a Wednesday morning to refresh Twitter a couple times. But, more importantly, I regret allowing football to become the all-consuming beast that it always turns into.
The Bruins’ recruiting efforts gave them the No. 7 class in the nation and plenty of national fervor followed, but two other UCLA sports finished the day with even better hauls – and nobody paid much attention.
The men’s soccer coaching staff signed five players to give UCLA’s 2016 recruiting class the No. 2 spot in the nation. Two of the incoming players – four-star recruits Reggie Cannon and McKinze Gaines – are ranked in the top 25 overall and currently compete on the U.S. U-19 team.
Two other freshmen join the class, in Minnesota Thunder Academy product Duncan Werling and Real Salt Lake Academy’s Ethan Shacknai. Junior transfer Jason Romero rounds out the group of five. The ACCAC Division I Player of the Year scored 32 goals and tallied 12 assists in 23 games at Pima Community College last season.
The UCLA women’s soccer team somehow managed to trump both performances, as it brought in seven players – highlighted by the No. 1 recruits in both the U.S. and Canada – to assemble what may become one of the most impressive classes in collegiate soccer history.
U.S. Women’s National Team star Mal Pugh and Canada’s Jessie Fleming are impressive in and of themselves, but they will have plenty of help when they get to Westwood.
Four of the other newcomers – five-star Marley Canales and a trio of four-stars – are currently on national youth teams. The seventh and final member of the signing day haul was Julia Hernandez, a sophomore transfer from Eastern Florida State College.
Both the men’s and women’s teams have talent on the way, but the storyline going into next fall is different for each program.
It’s been 13 years since men’s soccer nabbed a national title, but over the course of the past four years UCLA has snagged the No. 1 recruiting class three times. 2016 was the first time the Bruins slipped, only managing to sign a runner-up class.
Much of that success can be attributed to former associate head coach Nick Carlin-Voigt. The recruiting extraordinaire spent four seasons at UCLA, developing crucial relationships with some of the top talent across the country. Carlin-Voigt left to become the head coach at the University of Portland in January.
His influence is easy to see, but the impact on the field is still in question. Will star rankings translate into wins? The Bruins certainly hope so, as they are now without their lead recruiter and are coming off a down year in which they consistently underachieved and were promptly bounced in the second round of the NCAA Tournament.
Coach Jorge Salcedo will be entering his 13th season and the pressure to win a championship only increases with each disappointing finish.
On the women’s side, the influx of youth might be the spark UCLA needs to pull itself out of the mess that was 2015.
Last year was bad. Coach Amanda Cromwell’s team lost more games in a single season than it did in the four years prior – nearly double as many, for that matter.
With Pugh and Fleming, though, it should be easy to forget all about those struggles. And I bet that preseason rankings will be quite high on UCLA – a combination of the bias of an often-elite team and the expected potential of these young superstars.
Will the women be able to live up to those expectations after such a down year?
Will the men take advantage of the only year where every member of the team was recruited by one of the nation’s best development coaches?
These are the compelling storylines that I can’t wait to watch, these are the talented young players who will eventually captivate an entire country in World Cups of the future and these are the things I wish I would have focused on last week.
Football has plenty of hype but it’s often so overblown. Next year could potentially be a revival of the soccer programs – a revival that you certainly won’t want to miss. And it all started on National Signing Day.
Last week I talked about how much I dislike the day. I think I just might be doing it wrong.
Email Walters at twalters@media.ucla.edu or tweet him at @tannerbwalters.