Move-in Day: the day students flock to Charleston from all over Illinois and beyond. Their journeys were all different and their reasons for coming were varied.

However, Jake Plant could only describe his specific journey as a bit strange.

Plant is a senior midfielder for the Eastern men’s soccer team and he is serving as team captain after just one year since transferring.

“Jake Plant is a senior captain for a reason,” coach Adam Howarth said after Plant scored twice against St. Xavier on Aug. 17, leading his team to 4-2 victory.

But the reason Plant found his way to Eastern is more complex than just scoring goals.

Plant is from Birmingham, England where he is a supporter of the local team Birmingham City Football Club, a second tier side in English professional soccer.

Plant would make the 50-minute drive up the M6 to Stoke-On-Trent where he played in Stoke City’s youth system.

“With the way the academy systems are set up over there they have professional scouts that go out actively searching for these players when they play for their hometown teams,” Plant said. “When I joined Stoke I signed when I was 13.”

Stoke has been a first division premier league side since the 2008-09 season thanks to England’s promotion and relegation system, but while Plant was with club it was yet to be promoted from second division soccer.

“I spent a good six years under ex-professional coaches, some of the legends of the game,” Plant said. “That helped me to develop as a youth player.”

Plant said when players turned 17 at the club, they were either offered an extension contract with the club or were helped to find a new team.

It was then that Plant moved to Shrewsbury Town where he played until he came to the United States.

“I had a bit of a strange journey, I suppose,” Plant said. “I went through a third party company that put on an exhibition game and coaches would come and watch you.”

Through that scrimmage, Plant ended up at Waldorf College in Forest City, Iowa.

Waldorf is a four-year liberal arts school of less than 1,000 students where Plant spent his first year of college.

While Plant was back in England during the summer between his freshman and sophomore year, he received a letter and an email from Waldorf indicating that the school had lost its SEVIS license; the permit an institute of higher education must obtain to have international students on campus.

Due to a clerical error, Plant and all his fellow international students were unable to return to Forest City for the next term.

“It was heartbreaking for us,” Emily Angstman, the Marketing Media Coordinator at Waldorf, said. “We found a lot of them other places to go. There were some other local colleges that were willing to take them at the same tuition rate. We made accommodations for as many as we possibly could.”

For Plant, those accommodations led him to Northern Iowa Area Community College in Mason City, Iowa.

“My coach at Waldorf was really helpful,” Plant said. “He knew Mike Regan who was the coach at NIACC.”

Regan has since moved on to be the assistant soccer coach at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa. He said he remembers Plant perfectly fit his team’s need at the leftback position.

“I think the position he played for me was a real need for us, in terms of him being naturally left footed,” Regan said. “We already had established players in the positions of centerback and also center midfield.”

It was Plant’s background in England, he said, that has allowed him to play at positions all over the field, just as he did at NIACC.

“I played center defense and left back and I also played central midfield (at Stoke and Shrewsbury Town),” Plant said. “I think that also helped me develop my game because I learned what was going on all over the field.”

When NIACC suffered injuries at central defense, Plant even moved over to fill those gaps, Regan said.

Through Regan’s connection with Howarth at Eastern, he was able to find a place for Plant after his one year stint in junior college.

“About halfway through the season, we knew that we needed to help Jake get a move on to a Division I school,” Regan said.

Through this connection with NIACC, Regan said, Eastern has been able to pick up players frequently during Howarth’s tenure at the university.

Plant’s skill set was never in question for Regan; the element that really helped the Englishman move to division one soccer was his maturity.

“It became very clear to me that he had the full package,” Regan said. “He’s a good student and the way he trained his body and looked after his body is something that was needed at Division I.”

Following his transfer to Eastern in the fall of 2012, Plant scored two goals for Eastern in his new role at central midfielder and was selected for the Summit League’s Fall Academic Honor Roll.

In the spring of 2013, less than one year removed from NIACC, his fellow teammates selected him to be their captain for the fall season.

“It’s a great feeling, to be fair,” Plant said. “I was really, really happy, just to get the opportunity to actually lead these lads because they’re a great set of boys, a great team.”

Plant has three objectives for this season: he wants to score ten goals, get five assists and be selected for the all-conference team.

He is not sure where his life will go after college, but Plant wants to keep his options open, just as he has for the last three years of his college career — but to continue a career in soccer would trump everything.

“If there’s an opportunity I’ll always chase it, because essentially this is what I’d love to do every day-in and day-out,” Plant said. “It’d be a bit of a dream come true, to be honest.”

Michael Spencer can be reached at 581-2812 or tmspencer@eiu.edu.