Getting the ball rolling
New Mexico United on the road in season restart
The key word here is “fluid.”
As in things are in a constant state of motion.
As in everything can change in a heartbeat.
As in everyone should buckle up for a wild and unpredictable ride.
Just two days after Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham pulled the plug on high school contact sports and said she’d ask the state’s Higher Education Department to do the same with college athletics, professional soccer springs back to life as the New Mexico United relaunch their United Soccer League Championship season on Saturday in Colorado Springs, Colo.
Several times during interviews this week, team owner Peter Trevisani and United head coach Troy Lesesne stressed the need for caution amid a world of uncertainty in the expanding global pandemic. Trevisani’s staff has outlined extensive return-to-play protocols while Lesesne has created a tight bubble for his players and coaches to operate in.
“I know the Governor’s Office and the United want the same thing, which is, how do we keep people healthy, how do we allow ourselves to operate and function but do so in a way that really minimizes the risk of catching COVID?” Trevisani said.
In short, the team is banking on the idea that it leads to a fruitful USL season that has every team in the coast-to-coast league playing a 15-game sprint to the finish between now and late September. A playoff participant in its inaugural season, New Mexico is back with a team that replaced two of its top three goal scorers.
Gone is Kevaughn Frater and Santi Moar, who combined for 25 goals as the United earned a play-in berth to the USL postseason. Returning is the franchise’s hometown player, Albuquerque product Devon Sandoval, following a 13-goal run last season.
Sandoval and returning midfielder Chris Wehan will provide plenty of scoring punch and Cody Mizell will be back in goal but with fresh faces everywhere he looks. Lesesne sees a team that will look and feel a lot different than the 2019 United.
The most impactful newcomer should be Kalen Ryden on defense at center/back, but youth will be served with a slew of newcomers like former New York Red Bulls system player Armando Moreno at forward.
The team’s greatest advantage might have been the pandemic. With the entire roster arriving in Albuquerque in January and the season starting with the opening match in March before the shutdown, the club has spent the last four months training at the team’s practice facility south of town in the growing Mesa del Sol soccer complex that will eventually house 32 fields.
Lesesne said playing all or most of the USL season in empty stadiums will take some getting used to. The United, which took the league by storm by leading in attendance, will play all (or most, anyway) of its home matches at the University of New Mexico’s Track and Soccer Complex across the street from its former home at Isotopes Park.
The baseball stadium will be used exclusively by the Colorado Rockies’ taxi squad once the Major League Baseball season starts July 23, leaving the United with options to play at multiple venues. Trevisani said that if and when fans are allowed to return, the team could play at Isotopes Park, the UNM soccer stadium or inside Dreamstyle Stadium to accommodate social distancing.
Until then, everything is up in the air. That includes the team’s travel plans, which will see the team charter buses to travel to the seven road games in Utah, Colorado, Oklahoma and Texas.
“It just feels safer and smarter, really, to not put a team on an airplane,” Lesesne said. “We’ll just have to find ways to keep the guys’ legs stretched and keep them as fresh as possible on an eight- or 10-hour bus ride.”
Trevisani said the fundamental difference between the United and the amateur sports that have already been postponed or canceled by the coronavirus is professional franchises are not unlike any other business. To maintain a chance of surviving the shutdown, they have to field a team, take every precaution, follow the governor’s mandates and find a way to make it work.
“This is the hand we’ve been dealt and it’s our job to keep pushing forward,” Trevisani said. “Folding’s not an option.”
Trevisani said before the team’s first game last year that to keep the franchise financially viable would require an average of 8,000 fans over 18 home matches. It far exceeded that, giving rise to the possibility that state and local governments would collaborate on building a soccer-only stadium for the club.
Those plans began this year when the city got a $4 million allocation from the state to review potential sites and draw up tentative plans. Trevisani envisions a stadium that includes living and retail spaces, cultural centers and restaurants that allow the area to remain active 365 days a year rather than just game days.
“My personal feeling is that we need some projects like this to push through these difficult times,” he said. “That we all have some hope on the other side and we’re not in just a state of decay. That we’re going to be pushing forward, and this is one of many projects that can do that.”