Over the past year and a half, the Trinity men’s soccer team has lost two games total between the regular season and playoffs, making it all the way to the final 16 teams of the NCAA Division III playoffs last year. Meanwhile, this year’s seniors were a part of the first team under Head Coach Paul McGinlay to fail to make the national tournament since 2001, not including the shortened 2020 season.
There are a lot of reasons why Trinity has seen such a transition over the past four seasons, one of those being significant roster cuts, according to McGinlay.
“It was out of necessity,” McGinlay said. “It’s hard to run a program with that many players. We’d be on away trips, with 24 players and 18 left at home. It doesn’t bring a group of players together.”
However, to make the team smaller, the coaching staff needed to let some players go. McGinlay said that to the best of his knowledge, many players knew it was coming. Some of them even saw it as a relief that their time could be spent elsewhere, not practicing for a game they’d never play, he said. Emiliano Aguilar, senior finance and accounting double-major, was released from men’s soccer in August.
“If I weren’t a senior, I would have been frustrated,” Aguilar said. “I wouldn’t feel free or happy. The juniors and seniors could get relief and see the positives that Trinity brings. But if you’re a freshman or sophomore and your main goal was to come and play, it’s tough to try and come at it positively.”
Until last season, men’s soccer kept a substantial number of players on their roster. At points, the program was basically split into two teams, according to Aguilar.
“There was ‘September Squad,’ a squad for people who didn’t make the first team but wanted to be on the team,” Aguilar said. “Mentally, it was hard to be there. You came to training to play and to get minutes, and we were not even considered.”
This situation, according to Aguilar, was a less-than-ideal playing environment, and McGinlay knew it.
“Everyone wants to be on the squad [by] Labor Day weekend,” McGinlay said. “But when it comes to that third weekend in October, and they haven’t played and haven’t traveled, there’s no way of keeping that enthusiasm and competitive edge. It becomes a drag to practice, and it shows.”
The challenges of leading such a large squad go further than managing the time and involvement of all the players. Team culture takes a hit as well, Aguilar said.
“There was segregation between [first-year] classes and senior classes because there were so many of us,” Aguilar said. “There were so many players that there was always competition, and sometimes it turned toxic.”
For the 2024 season, McGinlay and his staff decided to give players the option to redshirt, where a student athlete delays a year of participation to preserve one of their four years of eligibility. The coaching staff encouraged players to take that option, and some did, while others didn’t. Players who weren’t even presented with that idea also decided that a year off would be better for them, according to junior defender Luke Mayfield.
During the year McGinlay adopted redshirting, the Tigers went undefeated through the entire season until the third round of the NCAA Division III playoffs, winning the SCAC for the first time since 2018 along the way. McGinlay said he wasn’t satisfied, though. During spring exit meetings with players, McGinley pitched the idea to release players to reach a specific roster size.
“There wasn’t one person who went through a spring individual meeting and didn’t agree that smaller was going to be better,” McGinlay said.
Under the smaller system, Trinity has won nine of 10 games to begin the year. However, Trinity’s record wasn’t the only thing that improved. Mayfield said the team culture improved, too.
“It’s fewer people who need to hop on board with the team mentality,” Mayfield said. “If everybody’s on the same page in the locker room, then we’re going to be on the same page on the field.”
Meanwhile, some form of culture still exists between the team and some of the former players, like Aguilar. Now a senior, he says he often still goes out to watch his former teammates.
“In my first years, it was tough, because I felt like I was supposed to be out there,” Aguilar said. “That’s where you want to be, where you train every week to be. Now I go to support my friends, my brothers that I trained and played with. I was part of the team for three years.”
Despite no longer being in the program, win or lose, Aguilar said he will always be there for his teammates.
*Disclaimer: Scott Lebo spent a season with Trinity soccer before quitting
