Men's Soccer Team Remains Hopeful For Second Half of Season

Wright’s men's soccer team started their new season playing at their new location the Read Dunning field at 4139 N Oak Park Ave. The Rams started the season 1-8 and are last among City Colleges teams. Gabriel Billings, Wright’s athletic director and coach of the men’s soccer team, shared how the team plans to turn things around.

“We’re working on it right now, we’re just looking to find points when we can,” Billings said. 

When asked what the team needs to focus on moving forward sophomore defender Luis Rivera said better chemistry. "Just everybody not giving attitude if we’re down we can always come back up, any team can come back up if everybody has the mentality of going forward and pushing through,” Rivera said.

Coach Billings said, “A lot has changed in our players attitude, a lot has changed in our work rate, sure enough the results are coming and they’re getting a lot closer.” Freshman midfielder Christian Mejia said, “Our discipline and our work rate I think that’s one of the key factors we should have when we play.”

Billings said a standout of the season has been the way the freshmen are progressing. “The group of freshmen are very strong and they’ve just come together a lot more,” Billings said. Freshman forward Jorge Valle said, “There was no established hierarchy within the team, everybody was new and that kind of helped us develop a certain level of camaraderie that other teams might not have.”

Freshman goalkeeper Leandro Esquivel said about the season, “It’s not going as we expected but we’re trying to change that, but it all comes with our own momentum so we’re trying to win games to start building momentum to hopefully make it to the playoffs.” Esquivel said he is competing to have the top saves in the region.

Esquivel said, "I'm trying to get that first, second, third place so for me that just means obviously saving as much shots as possible on goal that’s kind of what I’m going to focus on but in addition to that I’m focusing on getting wins and starting to build a name for this program.”

The Rams next game is a home game on September 30 against Kishwaukee College at 4 p.m.

Katherine Wolske contributed to this article.

The Rams practice on Sept. 25 at Read Dunning Field. Photo Credit: Kyle Chmielowski