Marcelo Chapa enters his senior season as a part of the men’s soccer team at Our Lady of the Lake University (OLLU) in 2014. Chapa has played a total 48 games over the span of three seasons as a Saint which includes both a Red River Athletic Conference regular season and tournament championships in 2012.

The senior from San Antonio is already thinking about the upcoming season in hopes that it is a memorable one on his part and it seems like soccer never stops in his life.

“I’m excited to get back in season,” Chapa said.

Over the summer, Chapa has helped men’s soccer coach, Shane Hurley, run and operate a summer league at OLLU for high school students and he coaches a local soccer club as well.

“Running that summer league made me want to come back and get started already,” he said.

Chapa is excited at the opportunity to get the ball rolling and sharing the field with his teammates. This year OLLU has recruited several international players to be a part of the Saints men’s soccer team.

“This is a different team,” he said. “We have people coming from different areas and they come in with the right attitude. That’s the exciting part.”

Captaincy is nothing new to Chapa. In fact, he has been a captain of the team since his sophomore season, but he knows that this year it will come with a different role.

“I’ve been a captain for three years now, but when I was a captain as a sophomore it was tough to get some of the seniors to follow your lead,” he said. “Last year Luis [Flores] was the senior so it was more of his show, but this year it’s up to me to set the tone.”

Chapa understands that he has to lead this team by example and put in the work in order to get to another championship like they did in 2012.

Last season the Saints jumped out to a 6-0 start as defending RRAC champions before losing two games in a row and finishing off the season 11-3-1. In post-season the men’s soccer team failed to make it past the first round of the conference tournament.

“We’ve had team meetings and discussed the problems that caused us to fall short last season,” Chapa said. “Last year we came in and thought we would win it again, but we hit a plateau and didn’t better our game.”
For 2014 he doesn’t want to commit the same mistake.

“This is a completely different team, and winning conference is our first goal, but we have to take it step by step,” he said.

Chapa has enjoyed his career at OLLU and is looking forward to his last season as a part of the team.
“It’s been great,” he said. “I’ve done a lot of great things here.”

The OLLU men’s soccer team will kick off their 2014 season at home when they face Texas Lutheran University in a scrimmage Aug. 22.