COLUMBUS, Ohio-The 66th season of Ohio State men’s soccer is underway with the start of Fall camp this week.
The Buckeyes are under the direction of second-year head coach, Brian Maisonneuve, who has a young team training for the three exhibition contests and the season-opener later this month.
The Buckeyes will play host to Xavier Saturday (5:45 p.m.) and Mt. Vernon Nazarene (7 p.m., Aug. 20) at Jesse Owens Memorial Stadium on the Ohio State campus. The Buckeyes will play its final tune-up at Butler Aug. 24 (7 p.m.)
The season gets underway vs. Cal State Northridge in the 14th annual Bert L. and Iris S. Wolstein Classic Aug. 30 (7 p.m.) and Sept. 1 vs. Illinois-Chicago (3 p.m.) at Jesse Owens.
Maisonneuve said there is a level of comfort heading into this season compared to a year ago when he left Indiana to become a Buckeye.
“It’s a world of difference,” Maisonneuve said. “To come in last year at this point, never working with these guys, they’ve never heard my voice. I joked around about it that I was the only coach in the country that had to introduce themselves because some of these guys had never met me before.
“Then you throw in a quick preseason and timing was tough last year,” he said. ”This year it’s totally different. I was able to work with these guys through the fall and the spring. We had a lot of turnover from last year’s fall roster to this year’s fall roster, but a lot of them joined us in the spring and we were really able to work with them and get on the same page technically and tactically. We are really excited, it’s a much different feel going into this season than last season.”
Parker Siegfried, a fifth-year goalkeeper, said the attitude of the 2019 Buckeyes, with all its new faces, has been encouraging.
“I think we had four transfers in the spring, and one that just came in, they were huge for us in the spring,” Siegfried said. “The freshmen have been good in the captain’s practices already, a lot of them came in early for some workouts that we had so it has been really good and we have done well accommodating them.
“This is my fifth year and I haven’t been more excited for a season yet,” he said. “I really love the group of guys, really love the program as a whole with the coaching staff, so I’m excited.”
