High school teammates reunite at IU

It can be scary.

New school. New team. Nervous jitters because you don’t know anyone, if you’ll get along with the people around you or if it’s really the right fit.

But several players on the men’s soccer team haven’t had to make the transition to IU’s campus and soccer program alone.

Eleven of the 28 players on this year’s roster played at least part of their high school careers with someone else on the team. Four schools around Indiana and one in St. Louis contributed multiple Hoosiers to the team.

It’s not necessarily a goal of IU Coach Todd Yeagley’s staff to bring pairs of players in together, he said, but it helps.

“When we recruit, we recruit the best players from around the state and the country according to our needs as a team,” Yeagley said. “But it’s worked out that there’s more talent from around here, and that’s boded well for us.”

Senior Tommy Meyer and redshirt juniors Chris Haffner and Luis Soffner can trace their playing days back to their early teens when they played U-10 club soccer together in St. Louis. The trio joined forces with former IU soccer star Will Bruin at the club level when they were 14, and the bonds began to form.

But Bruin played for De Smet Jesuit High School while the other three played for St. Louis University High School, so when it wasn’t club season, the three players from SLUH grew even closer, learning how each other played and learning their tendencies both on and off the field.

When senior year rolled around and it came time to start narrowing down college choices, the three shared the same sentiment about whether they should all chose the same school or part ways.

“We talked about it a little bit, because IU was after all three of us, but it wasn’t a deciding factor,” Soffner said. “IU was the only school we all had in common, but it turned out to be the right fit.”

Each player took separate college visits to other schools around the country, but when it came time to visit IU, they made the trip together.

That was when they realized they had to take advantage of a great opportunity.
“After our trips to IU, we started saying, ‘Would you guys really want to do this?’ Haffner said, “It was obvious to us that IU was an opportunity you couldn’t pass on.”

For Meyer, Indiana meant something more to him than it did to the others.By committing to IU, he followed in the footsteps of his father, who also played IU soccer.

“There was just that tradition,” Meyer said. “My dad played there, and I pretty much grew up around it, and once I had an opportunity, there wasn’t any turning back.”

Bruin was the first to declare his college choice during the players’ senior year.

Knowing in advance that he was one of the best players they had ever played with or against, the three SLUH players all knew that joining forces with him again could be pretty special, Soffner said.

“Will kind of pulled the trigger,” Soffner said. “We knew he was one of the best, and his commitment was a helpful hint that IU might be the place. We all narrowed our vision, and it was almost a chain reaction.”

For Soffner, as he was narrowing down his choices between IU and two East Coast schools, it came down to not only where his close friends were going, but what was right for his family.

“Both my parents work, and with being only three or four hours away, it was a lot easier on them to come and see me, and they could travel with the other families, “ Soffner said. “It just felt like home.”

When they all arrived at IU, they realized they had made the right choice.

“When we came to IU, with the tradition of the program, it was really pretty overwhelming,” Haffner said. “But having those other guys with me, going through the same thing together, it put me a little more at ease and made everything much more comfortable.”

Yeagley said he worried, though, that forming another team with groups of players from the same high schools might be a tough task.

“There could often times be a problem with guys not getting along or only associating with guys they’re familiar with, but not this group,” Yeagley said.  “These are all personable kids, and they all get along with the entire team.”

After three years in Bloomington, the feeling is the same.

Although working with a different set of players and coaches than they did in high school may have changed each of their games a little bit, they said they still feel that coming here together has always given them an edge on the field.

“When you’ve been playing within twenty yards of someone for six, seven, eight years, you really get to know them,” Soffner said. “We’ve got that inner connection, that family feeling, and it’s great to know you have guys to fall back on.”