Charlotte has soccer on the brain.

The Charlotte Independence third USL season arrives on the heels of Speedway Motorsports Inc. President CEO Marcus Smith’s bid to bring MLS to Charlotte, which has raised the game’s local profile.

“Soccer has been in the news lately,” coach Mike Jeffries said. “We feel like we’re in a great spot to take advantage of that, and to sell ourselves as the current soccer in Charlotte. The ability to move to the Sportsplex in Matthews is huge for us. That presents a really good opportunity for us to continue our growth as a team and as a franchise.”

The Independence held the second session of open tryouts to wrap up offseason preparations. Over 120 players are expected to participate in the second session at OrthoCarolina Sportsplex today and yesterday. Former Independence trialists who made the roster include strikers Asa Kryst, Norberto Ochoa and Jack Thompson, who scored the franchise’s inaugural goal against Charleston in 2015.

“This is the third year we’ve conducted the trials, and I felt like the overall quality of the group was higher than it has been,” Jeffries said. “You get to the sort of showcase game, or the final game, and I thought the pace was pretty good. There weren’t a lot of places where it broke down, which had happened in previous years.”

Said general manager Tom Engstrom: “We’ll see if a couple of them might come into the training camp. The coaches are working through that process right now. Between the dialogue with the Colorado Rapids [Charlotte’s MLS affiliate], and a few other players we are talking to, we’ve got a few pieces to put together, but we’re almost there.”

Said assistant coach Troy Lesesne: “We’ll probably have about six or seven trialists in. The Colorado guys are still in preseason, so they’ll make their decisions whenever they get closer to the regular season. As we prepare going into next week, we’re trying to talk about tactically how we want to approach the season in the first couple weeks, and what we want to work on. We’ll do a lot of that this weekend.”

With the departure of goalkeeper coach Phillip Poole and strength and conditioning coach John Lytton, the Independence brought in Joel Tyson.

“He’s got a good goalkeeping background, [and] good goalkeeping knowledge as well,” Jeffries said. “He fits in staff-wise with our group, and he’ll be able to contribute not just with the goalkeepers, but [he] has a good soccer sense and is able to contribute to how we play and what we do in the group and the discussions about the team. Hard to follow Poole’s footsteps, but confident Joel can do a great job and will do that.”  

Said Tyson: “I’m just looking forward to working with [keepers Cody Mizell and Kyle Renfro] on a day-to-day basis and the intensity that they bring each day.”

While the Independence return three of their four starting defenders in Joel Johnson, Henry Kalungi and Bilal Duckett, they have not added a striker.

“We have a U-20 national team left back that’s signed and will be announced pretty soon from a foreign national team,” Engstrom said. “We just have to go through the process before we announce that. That person will be competing for a spot as well. We have another announcement of a defender/holding midfielder that’s been signed, but again, just got to go through the paperwork to make that announcement.”

Charlotte begins preseason training on Feb. 20 at STAX, and open the season at home against the Charleston Battery on April 1. They have announced the return of 14 players from last season’s roster.

“Every year we’ve continued to grow and have a better starting base of where we are,” Jeffries said. “Last year, we started preseason with maybe eight or nine guys under contract. This year, we’re not quite double that, but close. Clearly we’re in a much better place coming off a year that was a very good year. We feel like we have a good core group soccer-wise.”

Said Engstrom: “We have a very good nucleus coming back. We have most of our team coming back, which was a team that was consistently good throughout the year—obviously a playoff team. We’ve still got a couple pieces to put together. The roster will generally be between 23-26 players.”

Independence preseason schedule:

Feb. 25 vs. Columbus Crew (at Charleston, S.C.)

March 4 vs. North Carolina (at Wingate)

March 11 at North Carolina FC

March 19 at Atlanta United

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