The new season will bring several new faces to the ASU men's soccer club.
The team, which made it to the regional semifinals last year, returns with just 11 players on its roster.
With the Sun Devils going through a huge roster overhaul after losing 12 players to graduation last spring, an open tryout was held on Aug. 20 to 24 to fill the vacant spots.
The week-long tryouts had a large turnout, with hundreds of student athletes vying for a chance to play on the team.
Among the many hopefuls was sophomore Mohamed Ali.
Born in Arkansas and raised in Saudi Arabia, Ali grew up idolizing soccer. He was just one of a handful of international student athletes who hoped to have a spot in the team's rotation.
Team captain Phillip Merek, a junior, said he was pleased with the talent he saw on the field during the tryouts. He said the team plans to focus on passing, slowing the game down and team confidence and unity.
As the season gets underway the Sun Devils will look to put together another successful year with a slightly different result. Although the team made it to the regional semifinals last season and finished with a record of 13-4-1, they have higher aspirations to win the region this time around.
Though it may be too early to tell if this team has better chemistry than its predecessor, Merek is convinced they have a better team.
"We have a solid group of six to seven players returning from last year," Merek said.
ASU will officially kick off its season on Sept. 9 in Flagstaff at Northern Arizona University.
The regular season consists of eight games, after which teams are seeded and placed in a postseason bracket where they battle it out to see which team will go to the nationals.
In addition to ASU, the other regional teams are NAU, New Mexico State, New Mexico Tech, University of Texas—El Paso, and the University of Arizona.
Intrastate rival UA won the region last year.
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