FORT MYERS, Fla. - Florida Gulf Coast University men's soccer begins regular season play with a road trip to North Carolina to face Elon Aug. 22 and NC State on Aug. 25. The match in Elon starts at 7 p.m. and the match in Raleigh starts at 4 p.m.
The Eagles come off an exhibition slate that featured FIU on the road and Miami-Dade College at home. Both matches saw the Green and Blue jump out to early leads. The FIU match started 2-0, while the Miami-Dade College match started 3-0.
Against FIU, the Eagles got goals from
Alon Drey and
Job Choute.
Lucas Sperner assisted Choute's goal and Drey scored on a penalty kick drawn by
Luke Barforosh.
In the match against the Sharks, FGCU obtained its 3-0 lead by way of goals from
Lucas Sperner,
Pablo Brimeux and
Shoki Yoshida. Sperner's goal came on fantastic build up play with Barforosh feeding the ball to Choute who got the ball to
Addrian Knights-Browne. Knights-Browne showed unselfish play by making the extra pass to Sperner to put in the wide open goal. Brimeux drew a penalty kick which he converted for the second goal to give the Eagles a 2-0 halftime lead. The second half saw Yoshida, the Eagles' leading goal scorer in 2023, find the back of the net with a feed from
Jahvanie Hammond.
Elon played to a 6-8-4 overall record and a 3-3-2 mark in the Colonial Athletic Conference a season ago. NC State put up a 6-8-2 mark overall last year with a 1-5-2 record in the ACC. The Eagles have never faced either team before.
FGCU is coming off a 3-7-5 campaign in 2023 where the team narrowly missed out on qualifying for the postseason. Eleven of FGCU's 15 matches last year ended in either a draw or one goal. The Green and Blue were picked to finish fourth in the preseason coaches poll, and
Lucas Windschauer was named to the Atlantic Sun Conference's Preseason All-Conference Team.
Following these matches, FGCU continues a four-match road stretch against Georgia State on Friday, Aug. 30th. The first home match will be on Sept. 8 against Utah Valley. Tickets can be purchased at the link above.
