{"id":112343,"date":"2026-01-06T04:38:08","date_gmt":"2026-01-06T04:38:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/112343\/"},"modified":"2026-01-06T04:38:08","modified_gmt":"2026-01-06T04:38:08","slug":"smu-soccer-star-signs-homegrown-contract-with-fc-dallas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/112343\/","title":{"rendered":"SMU soccer star signs homegrown contract with FC Dallas"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"body-text-paragraph\">A key member from <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dallasnews.com\/sports\/smu-mustangs\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.dallasnews.com\/sports\/smu-mustangs\/\">SMU<\/a>\u2019s 2025 soccer team is staying in the Dallas area.<\/p>\n<p class=\"body-text-paragraph\">Slade Starnes, a defender and captain from the Mustangs\u2019 2025 ACC Championship team, has signed a homegrown contract with <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dallasnews.com\/sports\/fc-dallas\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.dallasnews.com\/sports\/fc-dallas\/\">FC Dallas<\/a>. The Dallas native played his high school soccer at Frisco Lone Star and came up through the FC Dallas Academy and captained the FC Dallas U19 team.<\/p>\n<p class=\"body-text-paragraph\">Starnes and the rest of the SMU backline was dominant throughout the 2025 season, holding opponents to an average of just nine shot attempts per game. The Mustangs recorded seven clean sheets. He was a MAC Hermann Trophy Semifinalist, United Soccer Coaches second-team All-American and ACC Championship MVP while at SMU.<\/p>\n<p class=\"body-text-paragraph\">Prior to his time at SMU, Starnes starred at Furman and was an All-Southern Conference player.<\/p>\n<p>Sports Roundup<\/p>\n<p class=\"dmnc_features-cta-social-article-cta-social-module__3beff secondaryRoman secondaryRoman-20 text-center text-gray-dark\">Get the latest D-FW sports news, analysis and opinion delivered straight to your inbox. Plus, Kevin Sherrington&#8217;s A La Carte.<\/p>\n<p class=\"body-text-paragraph\">According to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mlssoccer.com\/news\/fc-dallas-sign-homegrown-defender-slade-starnes\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.mlssoccer.com\/news\/fc-dallas-sign-homegrown-defender-slade-starnes\">the announcement from FC Dallas<\/a>, Starnes is under contract through June 2027 with options through the 2028-29 MLS season.<\/p>\n<p class=\"body-text-paragraph\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.dallasnews.com\/sports\/smu-mustangs\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Find more SMU coverage from The Dallas Morning News here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"body-text-paragraph\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.dallasnews.com\/sports\/fc-dallas\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Find more FC Dallas coverage from The Dallas Morning News here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A key member from SMU\u2019s 2025 soccer team is staying in the Dallas area. Slade Starnes, a defender&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":112344,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[732,3688,102,104,103,2124,7284,731,154],"class_list":{"0":"post-112343","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-dallas","8":"tag-article","9":"tag-colleges","10":"tag-dallas","11":"tag-dallas-headlines","12":"tag-dallas-news","13":"tag-fc-dallas","14":"tag-smu-mustangs","15":"tag-soccer","16":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/112343","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=112343"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/112343\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/112344"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=112343"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=112343"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=112343"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}