RICHMOND, VA \u2013 Officially kicking off the season on Thursday, August 21, VCU will play host to No. 21 Akron at Sports Backers Stadium. A year ago, VCU also opened its campaign with a top-25 team, taking down No. 15 Wake Forest on the road, 2-1, on opening night.<\/p>\n
VCU looks towards its 2025 season with the 11 freshman and transfer additions to their roster. Read more about the incoming Rams:<\/p>\n
Brendan Dobzyniak<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 Dobzyniak is a 5\u201911\u201d defender from Midlothian, Virginia. He is a member of Richmond United and the Kickers U-20 Academy team, and also spent this\u00a0season on an academy contract with the Richmond Kickers professional team. Coming into college with a championship resume, he was a 2023 ECNL All-American and won the\u00a0U-17 National Championship with Richmond United in 2023.<\/p>\n Pedro Salmon<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 Salmon is a 6\u20191\u2033 left back or left center back from Santander, Spain.\u00a0\u00a0He spent his first two years playing at William Woods in Fulton, Missouri, where he was named first team all conference as well as an Academic All-American. He started 39 of 39 games played with 3 goals and 8 assists from left back for the Owls.<\/p>\n Luca Estabio<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 Estabio is a 5\u20195\u2033 attacker from Buenos Aires, Argentina, who arrives at VCU after competing with Lanus u20 and the reserve team. He appeared in several preseason matches with the first team in the Argentinian Primeira.<\/p>\n Parker Simkins<\/a>\u00a0\u2013\u00a0Simkins is a 6\u2032 defensive player from Pascagoula, Mississippi, who has been a two sport standout at Montverde Academy in Montverde, Florida.\u00a0He was not only a soccer standout with Montverde, but won a Class 2A state title with the track and field team. He joins current Ram and former Montverde standout\u00a0Mohammed Ibrahim<\/a>.<\/p>\n Manuel Monteiro<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 Monteiro is a 6\u20191\u2033 goalkeeper from Lisbon, Portugal.\u00a0He was a member of Casa Pia\u2019s U19 team as well as a training member of the first team of Casa Pia in the Portuguese\u00a0Primeira.<\/p>\n Kishin Togashi<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 Togashi is a 5\u201910\u201d midfielder from Virginia Beach, Virginia, Kishin received multiple All-Mid Atlantic Conference ECNL Awards while playing\u00a0for Beach FC. He was a four-year varsity letter winner and two-year captain at Princess Anne High School and won the VHSL 5A State Championship with the team as a sophomore. Highly decorated in high school, he earned first-team All-Region twice, first- and second-team All-State honors, and was named first- and second-team All-Tidewater by The Virginian Pilot.<\/p>\n Fabi\u00e1n Garita<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 Garita is a 5\u201910\u201d center back from Heredia, Costa Rica. A member of Futbol Consultants Desamparados in the Costa Rican 2nd Division.<\/p>\n Afonso Taborda<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 Taborda is a 5\u20199\u2033 central midfield player from Lisbon, Portugal. He was a teammate of\u00a0Manuel Monteiro<\/a>\u00a0with Casa Pia U19\u2019s and also joined the first team in training.<\/p>\n Emmett Shea<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 Shea is \u00a0central midfielder from Concord, New Hampshire, who comes to us from Eture in Spain after spending his first two years in college in the USA at Lehigh and Wofford.\u00a0He attended Brewster Academy in high school. He was named to the 2024-25 Southern Conference Academic Honor Roll at Wofford and appeared in all 18 games as a true freshman at Lehigh.<\/p>\n Ty Johnson<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 A former\u00a0Richmond United standout, Johnson joins VCU as a graduate transfer from North Carolina after spending three years with the program. As a sophomore, Johnson was tabbed to the ACC Academic Honor Roll and appeared in the Tar Heels\u2019 victory over No. 11 Duke. In his last year before college Ty also signed an academy contract with the Richmond Kickers\u2019 professional team.<\/p>\n Hakim Musabbah<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 Hakim is a 6\u20190\u2033 striker from Kampala, Uganda who led AMUS College and the all of the Ugandan high school league in scoring in 2024.<\/p>\n The Rams newcomers will don the following numbers in Black & Gold: The Rams open their 2025 campaign with a trio of exhibition matches, playing two at home against Elon and Patrick & Henry Community College at 7 p.m. on August 9 and 11, respectively, before closing their presesaon at North Carolina on August 15.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"RICHMOND, VA \u2013 Officially kicking off the season on Thursday, August 21, VCU will play host to No.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":53077,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[440],"tags":[49,48,561,82],"class_list":["post-53076","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-soccer","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-soccer","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53076","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=53076"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53076\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/53077"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=53076"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=53076"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=53076"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
Brendan Dobzyniak<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 2
Pedro Salmon<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 3
Hakim Musabbah<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 7
Luca Estabio<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 8
Parker Simkins<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 12
Manuel Monteiro<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 13
Kishin Togashi<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 15
Fabi\u00e1n Garita<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 16
Afonso Taborda<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 19
Emmett Shea<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 20
Ty Johnson<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 27<\/p>\n