Jan. 14, 2009

LOWELL -- Soccer is the world's most popular team sport, and a coach looking for players can easily find them just about anywhere on the planet without having to turn over a single rock.

So about the last place UMass Lowell men's soccer coach Ted Priestly expected to find the Northeast-10 Conference's All-Star midfielder -- and perhaps a future pro -- was at a table tennis tournament three years ago.

"That's one of my great recruiting stories ... and I can't take any credit for it," Priestly laughs.

"I took the team over to the campus rec center for one of those team-building things, a table tennis tournament," he relates. "I was watching the games, and I started talking to the person who handed out the paddles and the balls. He was a student, and that was his on-campus job.

"He said he had grown up in Kenya and, like most people from that part of the world, loved to play soccer. He had already been in school for more than a semester, but he didn't know we even had a soccer team. I told him to come over and kick the ball around with the guys, and he did.

"It didn't take long before one of my players said: 'Coach, he's got great feet!' "

That was early in the spring of 2006. Three years later Jamie Wangia was the only Division II college player invited to a special tryout conducted by the New England Revolution, one of Major League Soccer's perennial powerhouses.

The Revolution were impressed. The club told him they were interested in selecting him in the MLS draft in mid-January. But if they didn't, he shouldn't worry because they usually sign a number of free agents in the spring.

"It went really well," says Priestly, who attended the tryout at Gillette Stadium. "The beauty of a tryout like that is that once you're on the field, the divisional differences are gone. They're all just players.

"Jamie was one of the guys who really stood out, along with a striker from Syracuse and a goalie from UMass Amherst."

Studies came first

Until recently the idea of playing professional soccer was about the furthest thing from Jamie Wangia's mind.

"I played soccer all my life," he says. "But it wasn't very well organized. I never had a coach. The team captain would come up with ideas for plays when we practiced."

Wangia stopped playing during his senior year in high school at the age of 16.

"We had some huge exams to take, and I wanted to concentrate on my studies," he explains.

Like his older sister and brother, who had attended UMass Lowell, Wangia wanted the same thing: a good education. He is a finance major and plans to attend graduate school if a pro career doesn't pan out for him.

Wangia freely admits that he was hardly the best player on the River Hawks when he joined the team as a sophomore. He hadn't played soccer in three years, and because he'd had no coaching as a youth his skills were extremely raw.

"I was pretty horrible my first year," he remembers. "I wasn't as polished as the other guys. I played forward, and I had so much to learn.

"I was always good at keeping the ball in the air, because after my brother went to boarding school I only had myself to practice with. So the next summer I worked and worked on touches, keeping the ball against the wall, and it finally started to come to me. And coach put in a lot of time with me and taught me a lot of stuff.

"I owe a lot to the coach," Wangia continues. "He's a very technical coach, and he was the key to me getting better. And my teammates were also very encouraging all that time."

Switched to the midfielder's position as a junior, the 6-foot-3 Wangia helped the River Hawks qualify for the NCAA Division II Tournament. This past fall he scored eight goals and assisted on six others as the River Hawks shared the NE-10 crown with a 9-1-3 record, went to the NCAA Tournament again, and finished with a 13-4-4 record.

In addition to being named as the midfielder on the All-NE-10 team, Wangia was a second-team selection on the All-East Regional squad.

Pro soccer on horizon

And then came the invitation from the Revolution.

"It was like, wow!" he says. "I did better than I expected. I didn't feel like I prepared well enough going into it because I was concentrating on exams and finals."

If the Revolution doesn't draft or sign him, Wangia has had an offer from the Wilmington (N.C.) Hammerheads of the United Soccer Leagues, a development league affiliated with MLS.

"I might take them up on that," he says. "I'll have my degree at the end of the spring, and that is first with me. But I'd like to try pro soccer and go as far as I can.

"If nothing else, I can always say I had a tryout with a professional soccer team."

Whatever Jamie Wangia chooses to do after he graduates from UMass Lowell, Priestly is absolutely convinced he'll be a success at it.

"Jamie has great leadership qualities," Priestly says. "If soccer doesn't work out for him, I'm sure he'll be a CEO someday."