Men's Soccer 6/21/2017 3:05:00 PM Mike Miranto, Associate A.D. For Communications

McColl Announces 2017 Men's Soccer Schedule

AMHERST, N.Y. - The Daemen College men's soccer team officially kicks off the 2017 season by hosting Le Moyne College on Thursday, August 31 as head coach Bobby McColl announced his team's upcoming schedule today.

The 18-game docket includes eight home games at the newly-renovated Karrer Field which became the home venue for the Daemen men's and women's soccer teams in 2016. The field, located on the campus of The Park School of Buffalo at 4625 Harlem Road, has seen an ongoing construction project take place recently to improve its drainage, widen it to NCAA specifications and eliminate a 10-foot pitch covering the entire length.

"I am very excited about the 2017 season and I believe the schedule we have put together shows our intent to compete at the NCAA Division II level," said McColl who enters his second season roaming the Daemen sidelines this fall. "The schedule includes all Division II opponents for the first time in team history, and we have a number of tough games against teams from inside and outside our region. We are particularly excited to play eight home games on our new field. The goal is to make our home field a very tough place for our opponents to play."

Construction is expected to be completed in time for the 2017 season which gets underway with Le Moyne's first trip to Daemen since 2004. It'll be the third meeting in the last five seasons between the Wildcats and Dolphins, and the first since a 4-0 Le Moyne win in Syracuse on September 10, 2014. The Dolphins represent the first of eight opponents on Daemen's 2017 slate that advanced to their respective conference tournaments last season, and the first of four who ended the year ranked in their respective regional polls. Le Moyne went 14-5-2 overall in 2016, earning a No. 4 ranking in the final East Region poll before advancing to the Northeast-10 Conference Tournament finals where they fell to nationally-ranked Adelphi University.

DAEMEN MEN'S SOCCER 2017 SCHEDULE BY THE NUMBERS
Total Games	18
Home Games	8
Road Games	10
East Coast Conference Games	9
Games vs. East Region Opponents	12
Games vs. Atlantic Region Opponents	4
Games vs. Midwest Region Opponents	2
Game vs. Northeast-10 Conference Opponents	3
Games vs. Pennsylvania State Athletic Conference Opponents	3
Games vs. Mountain East Conference Opponents	1
Games vs. Great Lakes Intercollegiate Athletic Conference Opponents	2
Games vs. 2016 NCAA Tournament Qualifiers	2
Games vs. 2016 Conference Tournament Qualifiers	8
Games vs. 2016 10-Game Winners	5
Games vs. 2016 Regionally-Ranked Opponents	4
Games vs. 2016 Nationally-Ranked Opponents	1

A second NE-10 Tournament qualifier awaits as Daemen visits Assumption College on Saturday, September 2. It'll mark the first-ever meeting on the pitch between the Wildcats and Greyhounds. Assumption went 7-10-1 overall and 6-6-1 in NE-10 play, ultimately bowing out in the quarterfinal round f their conference tourney with a 1-0 loss to Le Moyne.

Daemen plays its third-straight game against an NE-10 opponent two days later on Labor Day (Monday, September 4) when the Wildcats visit Stonehill College. They'll be looking to avenge a 3-2 loss in Amherst during the 2014 season in what was the first-ever meeting between the two teams. The Skyhawks are coming off a 7-10 campaign in 2016, including a 5-8 mark in NE-10 play to finish just outside the conference tournament picture.

McColl's squad returns home to renew its series with Walsh University on Saturday, September 9. The Wildcats and Cavaliers will be meeting for the first time since 2011, both teams' final season as members of the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA) and the American Mideast Conference. Walsh, now an NCAA Division II member and affiliate of the Great Lakes Intercollegiate Athletic Conference, went 6-10-2 overall in 2016.

Exactly 24 hours after kicking off with Walsh, the Wildcats host Bloomsburg University of the Pennsylvania State Athletic Conference. Daemen will be looking to snap a five-game slide against PSAC opponents in what will be their first-ever meeting with the Huskies who went 3-12-3 in 2016.

East Coast Conference play begins with Daemen visiting St. Thomas Aquinas College on Saturday, September 16. The Wildcats and Spartans played to a one-goal game (3-2) in Amherst last season with the latter coming out on top. The win was the first of three in league play for STAC (8-5-5 overall, 3-2-4 in conference games), propelling them to their first ECC Tournament berth since 2010.

Three days later on Tuesday, September 19, Daemen returns to non-league action by making the 90-mile trek southwest to face Gannon University in Erie, Pennsylvania. It'll mark the fourth-straight season that the Wildcats and Golden Knights have met; Daemen won the first-ever meeting between the two, 3-1 on September 16, 2014, but Gannon has rebounded to take the last two. The Golden Knights went 11-6-1 in 2016, including a 7-6-1 mark in PSAC play, and finished the season as the No. 6 ranked team in the Atlantic Region.

Things really heat up when perennial powerhouse Long Island University Post comes to Karrer Field on Saturday, September 23 for an ECC contest. The Pioneers spent time as top-ranked team in the country last season, skating through the year unbeaten until a 4-0 loss to Adelphi in the third round of the NCAA Tournament ended their season with an 18-1-1 overall record. LIU Post's dominance included a 61-15 differential in goals scored vs. goals allowed en route to their fourth ECC Tournament title in the last five seasons, and a No. 8 ranking in the final national poll.

Another first-time opponent - the third of the season - is Shepherd University which Daemen will visit on Monday, September 25. The Rams, who compete in the Mountain East Conference, are searching for their first winning season since 2010 and are coming off a 1-16 campaign last season.

The Wildcats close out September by visiting New York Institute of Technology on Saturday, September 30. The NYIT Bears went 10-4-4 last season, their fourth-straight 10-win season and their 11th in the 16-year tenure of head coach Carlos Delcid. A 5-2-2 ECC record was good enough for them to earn the No. 3 seed to the ECC Tournament, but they went no farther than the semifinal round.

The renewal of the Thruway Rivalry between Daemen and Roberts Wesleyan College takes place on Wednesday, October 4 under the lights at RWC Stadium in Rochester. The two former American Mideast Conference rivals followed similar paths to NCAA Division II and East Coast Conference membership, and the rivalry has heated up of late as four of the last five meetings have gone to overtime. After going 10-7-2 in 2015, the Redhawks slipped back to 4-11-1 in 2016, including a 2-7 ECC mark which placed them ninth in the league standings.

The Wildcats kick off a season-long three-game home-stand on Saturday, October 7 with Mercy College trekking to Karrer Field. The Mavericks' 9-4-3 overall record gave them the fourth-most wins in the league last season, but a 3-4-2 ECC record put them just shy of conference tournament contention.

The home-stand continues with the University of Pittsburgh-Johnstown visiting on Tuesday, October 10. The Wildcats and Mountain Cats will be meeting for the fifth-straight season. UPJ erased a 2-1 halftime deficit to break into the win column in the series last year, getting a 3-2 overtime decision at home in mid-October.

The University of Bridgeport invades Karrer Field to close out the Wildcats' home-stand on Saturday, October 14. Bridgeport holds a 4-0 lead in the all-time series, but all four meetings have been tight affairs, including a 1-0 decision in the Wildcats' 2016 season finale. The Purple Knights have qualified for the ECC Tournament in eight of the last 10 seasons, but missed out last year after going 3-11-2 overall and 3-4-2 in league play.

McColl's squad plays a pair of ECC contests the following week, visiting Queens College on Wednesday, October 19 before hosting the University of the District of Columbia on the weekend (Saturday, October 21). Queens went 6-7-4 overall and 3-4-2 in league play to finish among the three-team log jam for sixth place in the final ECC standings last season. UDC finished 5-11-1 overall with four of their wins coming in ECC play (4-4-1).

The Wildcats' final non-league game of the 2017 season comes on Tuesday, October 24 when they visit GLIAC member Lake Erie College. The Storm are coming off an 8-7-4 campaign last season which saw them advance to the GLIAC Tournament semifinals. The October clash will be the first-ever meeting between the Wildcats and Storm.

The regular season concludes on Saturday, October 28 with Daemen heading to Long Island to face Molloy College. The Lions climbed to second in the league last season and a No. 7 ranking in the final East Region poll, finishing the year with an 11-5-1 overall record and a 7-2 ECC mark. Molloy advanced to its first ECC Tournament finals in dramatic fashion, winning a penalty kick shootout with NYIT 4-2 after the game went 110 minutes without a goal.

The Wildcats will be playing for one of four ECC Tournament berths at stake this season. The ECC Tournament, which determines the league's automatic qualifier for the NCAA Tournament, gets underway on Wednesday, November 1 with the Nos. 1 and 2 seeds hosting semifinal games. The highest remaining seed will host the ECC Tournament finals on Friday, November 3.

Daemen is coming off a 2016 season in which they went 2-15 overall and 0-9 in ECC play. McColl's team returns 10 players from its 2016 roster, including veteran starters Logan Podrebarac (Burlington, Ont./Tiffin University) and Zackery Elliott (Bolton, Ont./Humberview), both midfielders. The team also figures to receive a boost with the return of red-shirt senior Alex Reid (Lockport, N.Y./Lockport) who posted 13 goals, seven assists and 33 points from 2013-15 before missing all of last season with an injury. McColl and his staff hit the recruiting trail hard and they'll enter preseason training camp on August 14 with more than 20 newcomers on the roster, including 19 freshman.

For continuing coverage and breaking news surrounding the Daemen men's soccer team follow@DaemenAthletics and @DaemenMSOC on Twitter.

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Players Mentioned

#19 Kyle Tracy: M; 5' 10"; Sophomore

#18 Zackery Elliott: M; 5' 9"; Junior

#12 Logan Podrebarac: M/D; 6' 1"; Redshirt Senior

#22 Alex Reid: M/F; 5' 7"; Redshirt Senior

Players Mentioned

#19 Kyle Tracy
: 5' 10"; Sophomore
: M

#18 Zackery Elliott
: 5' 9"; Junior
: M

#12 Logan Podrebarac
: 6' 1"; Redshirt Senior
: M/D

#22 Alex Reid
: 5' 7"; Redshirt Senior
: M/F