SEASON OUTLOOK
ROCK HILL, SC— The Winthrop men's soccer team opens the 2016 season on Friday as it heads to Jacksonville, FL for the 5
th Annual Mike Gibbs Memorial Tournament.
Winthrop will open the year at North Florida on Friday at 7 p.m. and wrap-up the weekend playing at Jacksonville on Sunday at 5 p.m.
This is a new look Eagle squad with a new leader in first-year head coach
Daniel Ridenhour, a new assistant coaching staff and nine new starters from the 2015 Big South Championship team that was 11-7-2 on the year.
With senior
Max Hasenstab out of the season with an injury, Ridenhour has to replace nine starters. Among the two returning starters is
Marco Gatzke, who is the only returner that scored a goal last season and he finished with eight points (1g, 6a). Senior
James Skonicki is the other returning starter as he played outside back last season but is expected to move up into the midfield this season.
With Skonicki moving into the midfield, that means all four spots in the back will have new faces. Junior
Andrew Raad has 10 career games with no starts but is expected to be in the starting lineup. Also expecting to vie for a starting role in the back is
Charlie Ramirez,
Andreas Jackson,
Francesco Tiozzo,
Miles Rapp,
Zack Smythe and
Pietro Bottari.
The midfield will be made up of some sort of combination between Gatzke, Skonicki,
Sal Perez, Leif Estevez,
Nil Vinyals,
Jogvan Jacobsen,
Kento Ito and
Joey Soeder. The possibilities at forward will consist of
Rasmus Arousell, Vinyals, Skonicki and Jacobsen.
The Eagles have won six straight season openers with the last loss coming in 2009 at North Carolina State, 3-1. Winthrop will face North Florida for the first time in a decade as its won both meetings. This will be the seventh meeting against Jacksonville and the first since 2009. Winthrop is 3-1-2 against the Dolphins all-time.
Winthrop faces a North Florida team that has been a successful program in recent years, including three consecutive trips to the Atlantic Sun Championship game. Last season the Osprey earned the program's first NCAA Tournament berth and fell 1-0 to Coastal Carolina in the opening round of the NCAA College Cup. UNF was voted to finish second in the A-Sun preseason poll.
Jacksonville is coming off a 3-12-1 season as it returns a young squad under third-year coach Mauricio Ruiz. Ejiroghene Mrabure is the team's top returning scorer as he had five goals and 10 points in 2015. The team also returns veterans Jack Burns, Joe Amico and Cam
eron Grassmyer.
