Gabriel Pacheco built a healthy habit of winning while playing for the Bethel University Pilots men’s soccer team. That drive, which earned him the gold in Decatur, Alabama, gave him the courage to enter the transfer portal and leapfrog from NAIA to NCAA Division 1, landing him at Hofstra.
“I don’t think that I was ready [to transfer to Division 1], I just tried,” Pacheco said before chuckling. “Sometimes you never know if you’re [going to] be ready for something if you don’t try to do it, so I just tried.”
Pacheco and Teddy Baker were both picked up in the transfer portal from non-Division 1 institutions by the Pride this past off season, and the soccer team is reaping the benefits, given their 9-1-3 start to the season. But it’s a unique journey with its own set of challenges.
“[At Bethel,] the coaches were very supportive; they were very good on the mental side of the game, so it helped me a lot. I feel like [here,] it’s more physical and requires a more of your focus,” Pacheco said. “The small details. Sometimes you switch off during the game, and I feel that here, if you switch off, it can cost you the game. It happens to me sometimes.”
“Every game is a really competitive match, even with teams that are lower in your conferences or aren’t expected to do as good, you’re in a game with them for 80, 90% of the time,” Baker said. “It’s a dogfight, and I feel like those levels are the main difference, that kind of intensity.”
With considerable minutes in every game so far this season, both athletes have upped the ante to stay up to par.
“Defensively, you got to be aware of everything that’s going on around you all the time, so if you’re too tired or fatigued and just stop thinking, you misread a situation and open space for [opponents],” Pacheco said. “During the game, I think that there’s not much of thinking when you’re playing, it’s mostly instinct, so you need to be well trained so you make the right decisions with your instinct.”
Technique and footwork go far, but sometimes it’s a lot simpler than that; for Pacheco, one of the biggest battles for him was in the weight room.
“The conditioning is more serious on the D1 level,” he said. “I was tired the first couple of months, [but] it helped me develop as a player.”
Baker saw most of his development stem from a different arena: the locker room.
In his former school, Lake Erie College, he and his team had one, but it was out of the way for most of his teammates. It made more sense for everyone to just take their gear straight to the pitch. Now with a locker room across the street from the field he practices on, he has grown on multiple levels.
“You only really get to talk and sit down or have those moments with the people in your house rather than the entire team, so it definitely has impacted me,” Baker said. “[The locker room] definitely gets you closer to a lot more of the team. If we didn’t have the locker room environment, I feel like [I] wouldn’t be as close to other people on the team because [I] would only really see them on the field or on trips. People that haven’t been at that level would take [it] for granted.”
Baker attributed the time and literal space to build relationships as one way he cemented his soccer skills.
“You create relationships on the field as a player, but off-the-field, relationships are just as important to do with your team,” Baker explained. “If you’re friends with someone off the field, you’re definitely getting on the field happier rather than if you hardly talk to the rest of the team.”
In the same breath, it also breeds friendly competition.
“It leaves you with a little bit more desire and motivation; everyone’s fighting for that space,” Baker said. “If you’re not going to work hard enough, then you can’t sit there and complain about something. You can’t sit there and be upset [at] the other person who’s starting ahead of you; you have to prove yourself.”
Overall, he’s grateful to be here because he knows what else there is and isn’t.
“When [players] come straight to D1, they haven’t seen the other aspects of what college [athletics] can be like, being at a smaller school or a less funded school,” Baker said.
The consensus is that leveling up was another form of iron-sharpening-iron, becoming a new and improved version.
“Our locker room is very friendly,” Baker said. “Seeing that, it makes you a lot more determined and motivated when you get here to use everything to your advantage.”
In the grand scheme of things, there are similarities between the respective former and current institutions.
“I feel the winning culture in both programs are very similar,” Pacheco said. “They wanted to win there, they want to win here, and I think that’s great. Everyone’s very ambitious about the future here like they are there, so it’s very similar, actually.”
The hustle doesn’t stop here, though.
“I feel like I belong here,” Baker said. “I worked to get to this stage, but I have to work hard enough so that I can then go to the next level and go to the next level as a person.”
“I felt that I belong here,” Pacheco concurred. “Here, the level is higher, but that’s just another incentive. Having good people around you makes you better … Just put yourself in the situation. If it goes well, it goes well; if no, try again.”
Photo courtesy of Hofstra Athletics/Evan Bernstein
