Coastal Men's Soccer announces recruiting class

This past season, Men’s soccer at Coastal Carolina has made quite the impact on the soccer field. The team finished their season 14-7-1 winning eight of their games at home and six of their away games.

With the help of their seniors, the team fought their way to win the sunbelt conference title in 2017. They were also given the bid to play in the NCAA tournament and made it to the Sweet Sixteen

Due to offers in the MLS and graduating seniors, fifteen spots became vacant for the coaching staff to scout for players and fill.

As of now, assistant coach Kyle Russell and head coach of Myrtle Beach Mutiny has scouted and signed eleven players to the team with a newly added recruit who signed on Feb. 14 named Paul Odendahl, a transfer from Tyler Junior College who is from Meerbusch, Germany.

Russell talked about how the staff goes about recruiting players and bringing them to play college soccer at Coastal Carolina.

“We’ll go wherever we’ve got to go to find them, and we’ll compete with anybody to recruit them," said Russell. "It doesn’t matter who else wants them, where they are located, near or far, we’ll go and find them.”

There are many returning juniors and seniors, who will play alongside the new signings in the upcoming fall season, the coaches have also remarked about being very excited for the signing class.

The purpose of these signings are to bring more players with leadership qualities and experience into the CCU soccer athletic program, who are used to winning in a competitive environment.

The latest recruits are Jaiden Fortune, Lance Da Silva, Jacob Seeto, Raul Ruiz, Langston Blackstock, Paulo Pita, Oliver Gerbig, Paavo Riihijarvi, Luke Williams, Alex Brown, Kahsay Sahlu, and Paul Odendahl.

Not only has Coastal men's soccer been successful on the pitch, they have also been successful in the classroom.

Russell talked about the importance of academics and how they go addressing that to recruits during the recruiting process.

“Academics are important to us in recruiting players, we want to continue getting team academic rewards and want to excel on and off the field," said Russell.

While last season ended in the round of 16 against Stanford, who would go on and claim their third straight national championship, Russell sees big things happening for this team in the upcoming season.

“The next step for our team is to get past that sweet sixteen," said Russell. "Although we’ve been there many times, we’ll need the personnel in terms of players. I’m hopeful with who we have now and the players we just committed that we can achieve that."

The men’s soccer team recruits based on the belief of being contenders for the top 25 soccer schools in the nation, which they have been at for the past eight years. This has made this program very appealing to high profile recruits who want to play competitive soccer and receive a college degree.

In the coming months, Coastal Carolina’s coaching staff will fill the last three spots to complete the list of the 2018 roster for men’s soccer.