JAY, Vt. (WCAX) – The UVM men’s soccer team is just a few weeks away from its 2026 season opener, and they’re spending this week up at Jay Peak for their annual training camp.
Earlier this week, Vermont was ranked 13th in the preseason United Soccer Coaches national poll, but for the first time in three years, they were not picked to win America East. That honor instead went to rival Bryant, who the Cats defeated in each of the last two league title games.
Players suggested that could serve as a motivating factor, but everyone emphasized they’re more focused on their process of growing together with an almost entirely new coaching staff and heavy changes to the roster.
“It’s definitely like a big motivation,” said junior goalkeeper Niklas Herceg, who was also named to the preseason all-conference team. “But at the end of the day, like we don’t really care about like outside things, just like focus on us and then we’re hopefully gonna prove everybody wrong.”
“Yeah, honestly, I’m not worried about it,” said first year head coach Adrian Dubois. “I think the most important thing to us and to myself is just, it’s day by day and it’s creating an incredible environment. We’re all progressing, man. We’ve got to focus on what we can control and we can control high level sessions, championship habits and incredible culture, man. Those are the things that we’re working on. And if we do those things really, really well, the success is going to come. Success is going to come, but that other stuff is not going to bother us.”
The Cats will host Central Connecticut in a srimmage next Tuesday with the regular season opener slated for August 20th against George Mason.
