Sam Eccles, a senior forward for Eastern’s men’s soccer team, grew up in Sheffield, England. He played golf and track and field growing up, but he said by the time he was 11 he selected soccer as his main sport.
“I didn’t even consider coming to the U.S.,” Eccles said. “I was playing for my region of England and a coach from the U.S. came and watched me and at that time I had already committed to go to a university in England to do chemistry and he basically came and said do you fancy coming over playing on a soccer scholarship and I turned my head and I was like why not, I haven’t visited, I don’t know anything about the school, I’ll come over here.”
Eccles’ first stop in the United States was at Hofstra University. In his freshman season there he had 126 minutes in nine games played, and in his sophomore season he had 35 minutes in four games played.
“I wasn’t getting that many minutes and the whole reason I came over [to the U.S.] was to play, and I was getting like five to 10 minutes at the end of halves,” Eccles said. “Even though it was a good program, and we were doing well, I just wanted that college experience of playing every game.”
When Eccles decided to transfer, he was recruited by Eastern’s then coach Ronnie Bouemboue. Before Eccles was able to get to Eastern, Bouemboue stepped down as the head coach for the Panthers.
“I would give anything to play, so I jumped in the portal, Ronnie picked me up and then he left as I was supposed to join so it was kind of that, ‘Oh, I don’t know what’s going to happen here, maybe I won’t end up coming to EIU’,” Eccles said. “And then about four weeks before the semester started in the Fall of ’22 Coach Oakley was appointed and then reached out to me, and we sorted everything out and here I am.”
Eccles said that one of the things that Head Coach Josh Oakley said to him was “Would you rather lose playing well or win playing poorly?”
“I was definitely a ‘win playing poorly’ and me and him saw eye-to-eye on that and that’s what he’s trying to build here,” Eccles said. “If we don’t play well, we can still grind out results like we did at Lindenwood, and it’s starting to show through I think.”
In Eccles’ first season at Eastern he led the team in points (11), goals (five), shots (40), and shots-on-goal (17). This year he is the team captain and is doing the same, leading the team with eight points, three goals, 19 shots, and 13 shots-on-goal.
“Sam has been able to really take kind of what I’m selling as a coach and plug that into the rest of the team,” Oakley said. “His attitude after big wins and really, really close losses doesn’t seem to change much which is awesome, so we have somebody that’s a great player that the team looks up to for a lot of reasons, that’s even another reason that you can add on that, he doesn’t let the emotions get control of him, he stays focused, he’s very, very cool under pressure, and that’s what you got to have from your leadership, from your goal scorer.”
Eccles said that it’s unusual for the captain to be the team’s striker, saying that it is harder for him to see what’s happening on the field.
“I’m concentrating on trying to get in the right spots going forward whereas the defenders might be able to shout to people, put them in positions, communicate a bit more than I can,” Eccles said. “So, it’s been a tough adaptation from going to [focusing] on just scoring goals and creating chances to trying to lead the entire team. I’m just trying to lead with actions rather than words and it’s been a good learning experience for me.”
Luther Yoder can be reached at 581-2812 or at lyoder@eiu.edu.
