NC State men’s soccer wrapped up its pair of exhibitions on Saturday, Aug. 21 with a win over Duke in Durham, improving the Pack to 2-0 in the preseason. The win over the Blue Devils and its win prior, against No. 15 Virginia Tech, have certainly set a tone for the season to come.

The Pack hopes to find its footing far sooner this year than it did last year, when the squad couldn’t hit its stride until late in the season. After suffering a winless fall in 2020, NC State began to string together some inspiring performances later on in the spring. Unfortunately, it was too little, too late to save the Pack from its 3-8-4 (1-7-4 ACC) record, the program’s worst since 2001.

If the pair of preseason matches played over the past week are any indication of what’s to come this year from Pack men’s soccer, it’s shaping up to be another solid year for the program, and an opportunity to get back to winning ways. With the regular-season opener just days away, a breakdown of the team’s schedule has plenty of information to give on how the Pack can manage to return to its former glory.

One of the biggest detriments to the Pack a year ago was the lack of out-of-conference matchups, forcing NC State to compete against top-tier ACC teams on a basis more regular than it would have liked. With only three nonconference matchups over the entirety of the 2020 season, building any sort of momentum to carry into big matchups was nearly impossible for the squad.

Fortunately for the Pack, the upcoming season features plenty of diversity as it pertains to the schedule. In even better news for this NC State squad, the first four games of the season will feature opponents from outside of the ACC. The regular-season opener kicks off the year for the Pack on Thursday, Aug. 26 against USC Upstate, a program that NC State rarely faces but has historically fared well against.

Following the opener, the Pack moves on to face UNC-Asheville on Aug. 30 before competing in the George Tarantini Classic against both Seton Hall and UCF on Sept. 3 and Sept. 6, respectively. All four of these games to start out NC State’s schedule will be in Raleigh, giving the Pack plenty of opportunity to comfortably transition into the season in a familiar environment with friendly faces in the stands.

Without being thrown into the fire that is the ACC right away, the Pack also has the opportunity to get a feel for the identity of this year’s team. Despite there being plenty of returning faces for the program this season, a new year always brings new challenges. Regardless of how those challenges pan out, players like senior forwards Kuda Muskwe and Ivy Brisma as well as redshirt senior goalkeeper Leon Krapf will certainly appreciate the opportunity to understand how this team will mesh together over the course of the season. 

Play in the ACC opens up for the Pack after the George Tarantini Classic with the team’s first conference matchup of the year coming against Clemson on Sept. 10, a program that NC State did not get along well with a season ago. The Pack dropped both of its matches against the Tigers last year in 0-1 fashion. Despite strong showings from the Pack in both games, the Tigers proved to be a hump that NC State wasn’t prepared to get past in 2020. However, a new year brings a new mentality going into matchups such as this one; let’s just hope things don’t get quite as chippy between the squads as it did a year ago.

The Pack then matches up against James Madison on Sept. 14 in a short pause from conference play before hitting the road to South Bend, Indiana the following Friday. The Fighting Irish hold a slight margin of victory over the Pack in terms of their all-time record against NC State, but this matchup will give the Pack the challenge it so desperately needs before facing off against Wake Forest in the ensuing game.

NC State’s lone matchup against the Demon Deacons this year comes on Friday, Sept. 24 at Dail Soccer Field. This matchup has not been kind to the Pack historically, who have only managed to beat Wake Forest once in 22 matches against the program. This matchup is normally one of NC State’s hardest in any given year, so expect for this one to be no different. One bright side for the Pack in this season specifically is the matchup against the Demon Deacons comes eight games into the regular season, giving the team a solid amount of time to develop a desperately needed identity.

Win or lose in its matchup against Wake Forest, NC State will get another break from the intensity of conference play with a matchup against Longwood in Farmville, Virginia on Sept. 28. In six meetings between the programs all-time, the Pack boasts a 5-0-1 record against the Lancers. If history is any indication of the future this game should provide the Pack with potentially a much-needed victory if things against Wake Forest go south.

That break from ACC play might not be as long as head coach George Kiefer would hope, however, with NC State moving right back into conference matchups with a game against UNC Chapel Hill to start out its October. UNC is another historically challenging program for Wolfpack men’s soccer, which is 3-10-3 all-time against the Tar Heels. Regardless of the all-time record, rivalry games always bring the best out of each team producing some of the most competitive environments in sports. This matchup is no different, with no team winning by more than one goal since 2012.

NC State will then travel to Syracuse, New York to face off against the Orange before getting another break from conference play in the form of a matchup against High Point University on Oct. 12. Despite not being an ACC opponent, High Point and NC State have a history of being a fair fight in each game between the two sides, with their all-time matchup record tied at three apiece.

To round out the rest of its schedule, the Pack will then continue on with conference play against Virginia at home on Oct. 15 before moving on to its final nonconference game of the year against William and Mary. To finish it out for NC State is Louisville on Oct. 22 followed by Boston College on Oct. 29. Both squads have historically been on par with NC State in any given year and will likely shape up to be hard-fought competitive matches for the Pack to end its regular season.

It’s obvious that last year was not the norm in any aspect of the word, from COVID-19 affecting the structure of the season to the intensity of an ACC-loaded schedule, but now the Pack has a golden opportunity to leave that 2020 season in the rearview mirror this year. Only time will tell whether the program is prepared to make that jump back to where it once stood.