Season three for the W.V. Highlanders FC men’s team is nearly underway.
Head coach Ryan Wall and his team are set to travel to Canton for a Saturday afternoon friendly with Ambassadors FC.
A week later, the Highlanders will drop the ball on the 2023 Ohio Valley Premier League’s summer season, at home, against the Erie Commodores. That match is slated to begin at 1 p.m. at the Highlands Sports Complex’s outdoor turf field.
Wall’s charges have put together two impressive seasons since their 2021 debut.
Season one saw the Highlanders finish runner-up in the OVPL’s Valley Division. Last season, they won the Valley Division and faced River Division champion 1927 FC for the OVPL championship.
A six-hour bus ride to Fort Wayne, Indiana did the team little favors, but even Wall admitted the Highlanders didn’t play their best ball.
“They beat us 3-0 in the final and we just didn’t show up,” Wall lamented. “It was a 6-hour bus drive overnight, and a few of our (key) players just didn’t play well.
“But we finished runner-up, a year after finishing runner-up in the (Valley division) so we’ve progressed two years in a row and hopefully we can continue.”
There will be no chance at revenge as the team from Fort Wayne has moved on to the Midwest Premier League.
With a solid nucleus returning, might that mean Highlanders FC is the presumed favorite this summer in the OVPL?
Possibly, but the club is not alone according to the coach.
“In our conference, I would say that Ohio Premier out of Columbus will be a team to beat,” Wall said. “Their first year, they won our (division) and last year, they were the runner-up.
“Their roster is deep with Division I talent. They’d be the team to beat I’d say.”
Filling the Roster
That is one of the challenges of fielding not only a competitive team but a winning one, for the Highlanders—location.
Unlike OPS and some of the other OVPL teams based in or near larger cities, Highlanders FC doesn’t have that surrounding base of Division I schools and talent to pool from.
“We’ve got to be creative,” Wall admitted. “I have to leverage a lot of contacts that I have in collegiate soccer and attract players to come.
“Fortunately, we have two things working in our favor. We have two colleges locally with good programs—West Liberty and Wheeling—and in addition, the Wheeling area itself has the most talent locally that I can recall in the 20-odd years that I’ve lived here.”
That’s not just Wall paying lip service to the club’s home base. Look at the team’s roster. It’s littered with homegrown talent.
Nine players call Wheeling home, including Taylor McFarland, Cameron Neighoff, Will Carson, Brody Wall, Luke Lenz, Alex Canestraro, Matteo Gattesco, and keepers Dannen Foraker and Gavin Border. A 10th player, Devin Cipoleti, is from Wellsburg.
“These are homegrown and Wheeling developed,” said Wall, whose been involved in the local soccer scene for decades and has helped train and bring up many of his current players throughout the years.
That takes care of the majority of the roster. There are a number of international players, many of whom play for local colleges. But playing for the Highlanders isn’t without its merit, or advancement opportunities.
Take former Highlanders FC player Mohammedi Alkhateeb, who played on the inaugural team and built tape and enough interest to warrant being signed by KF Trepca, a professional team in Kosovo.
“He played professionally in Europe and we’ve had guys go on and receive professional tryouts at different places,” Wall said. “It’s a great platform that we think we’ve put together, the whole process. We can take footage of our games, and send out tapes to scouts and they can get picked up.
“It’s a great opportunity to showcase their skills.”
Eyes on the Future
As the head coach, Wall has his eyes on the current season and the impending friendly with Ambassadors FC. But that doesn’t mean he’s not planning for the future.
The team is in its third season. It’s shown promise. It’s shown resolve. The on-field product is solid and shows no signs of lessening.
Wall noted it’s the business side of the club that now needs beefing up, per se, if Highlanders FC is wanting to take that next step into a more prestigious and competitive league.
The professional soccer structure in the United States shares some similarities with both MLB and the NHL.
Division I teams, like the Columbus Crew, play in MLS, soccer’s version of the NHL. The USL Championship League (USLC) is similar to the AAA level in hockey.
USL League One (USL1) is Division III and is comparable to the AA level in professional hockey.
Those are the professional clubs. There are semi-pro leagues that function as a sort of Division IV, the NPSL, and USL 2. It’s this level that Wall envisions the Highlanders one day advancing to.
But there’s still work to be done for the team to seriously partake in that journey upward.
“We have to be a little more dynamic as a business, bringing in more revenue and in different ways,” Wall admitted. “We have to ramp up the business side of the club, but I think that’s the next step.
“On the field, I don’t feel there’d be any problem being competitive. It’s just the business side where we have to ramp it up a bit.”
That’s why Wall and other members of Highlanders FC leadership are in talks and have formed a good working relationship with the Wheeling Nailers’ organization.
If the club wants to make that leap to the next level, learning more about the business side of running a team, the ins and outs, and all associated processes, will become paramount.
“We’ve had some good conversations about how they operate,” Wall said. “We’ve learned some lessons and received some great guidance. They’ve been extremely helpful.”
For more information on Highlanders FC, check out its Facebook page or follow along on Twitter.
