It's All About the Mindset

It happens in every sport, every season; to almost every player, and sometimes it’s inevitable. Sometimes there’s no escaping it; everything that happens seems to not be going your way. Lady Luck just isn’t calling your number. 


This is what it felt like last season for the Saint Martin’s University men’s soccer team when they went 3-15 overall and 2-12 in Great Northwest Athletic Conference play. “Last year our games were close, we just ended up on the wrong side of it,” senior forward Dylan Gaydosh noted. The Saints struggled to put points on the scoreboard last season, only scoring 19 goals in 18 games. This season alone the team has 11, with nine of those goals coming over the last six games. During this span, SMU is 3-2-1 with one of their losses coming to nationally ranked Simon Fraser in a 2-1 loss.

However, the Saints started out of the gates slow this season, falling in their first four games while being outscored 12-2. But something started clicking for the squad in mid-September.

“The biggest change is our mindset,” said senior midfielder CJ Chu. “We had some mental laps’ that hurt, but after we won a few games, we got the mindset we can win every game when we step on the field.”

Gaydosh added that one of the biggest differences is “Being opportunistic and taking advantage of situations we had been in before.”  

Both Gaydosh and Chu agreed on the same time frame of the team’s shift. “Our first conference win against the University of Mary in overtime was definitely our team’s turning point because it was our first win of the season and conference,” Chu said. “Being able to grind out an overtime win was huge for us,” Gaydosh added.

That match in particular was indeed a grind out match like Gaydosh stated, with both teams unable to score in the first 90 minutes. The game went into overtime with SMU down to only 10 players due to an ejection.  However, with only 2:39 on the clock, UM was issued a red card that resulted in a Saints penalty kick. On the kick, it was the senior co-captain Chu who found the back of the net to secure the victory for the Saints.

Since that game, the team has been playing its best ball of the year and riding high, “The feeling after getting that first win was so great, that we go in (to every game) with the mindset now that we can win,” Chu said.

“We’re just trying to take advantage of the situations we have had this year,” claimed the other co-captain Gaydosh.

With eight conference games remaining, the two seniors are looking to finish out their collegiate campaigns on a high note. “If we keep on playing the way we have been and keep the same mindset every time we have practice or a game, I feel like we can compete with every team in the conference and hopefully have a chance to sit at the top of the table at the end of the season,” Chu said. “We can definitely get as good as results as did we in the first half of the season,” Gaydosh added.

By looking at the recent trend of the Saints, it’s scary to think of what kind of run they could go on and how that could impact the team and the program. A couple different plays and the Saints could have upset the nation’s number one seed in Simon Fraser a few weeks ago.

Whatever happens, throughout the course of the year, both players are looking to leave the program as individuals who have had an impact and contributed to creating consistency. Either way, the program’s mindset is in a different direction that looks to be sticking around for quite a while.