The Lubbock Matadors soccer team put their 3-0 record – all road games – on the line at Friday’s home opener and want your help.
No soccer skills needed.
The semipro team wants to set a National Premier Soccer League attendance record.
“On average, we get just over 5,000 a game. We are trying to get 7,500. Which we think we can absolutely do, there is so much support in this community for this team,” new coach David Ormiston said.
The team enters its fourth season with a strong fan base, a history of community involvement and a vision to develop Lubbock-grown talent.
They also want to keep improving the team they put on the Lowrey Field “pitch,” starting with the new coach.
The first two coaches for the Lubbock Matadors lost their first two home matches.
General Manager Dustin McCorkle hopes that changes Friday night.
“I’m excited to see the tide change with the new coaching staff,” McCorkle said.
The new coach
“We were a point away from making the playoffs last season and needed a change there, so we got somebody who I believe will put a really good team together and contend for a national championship,” McCorkle said of Ormiston.
The new coach grew up in England – but the Matadors didn’t look far to find him. He coached West Texas FC in Midland last year, in the same NPSL conference with the Matadors.
Part of the attraction for Ormiston to move a couple of hours north was what he saw last season when Midland visited the Matadors. He was impressed by the crowd size and enthusiasm of the Lubbock fans.
“They managed to create that European experience in terms of the chants, smoke bombs and drums,” Ormiston said.
His earliest soccer memory was with his grandmother.
“We had these two double doors and my grandma couldn’t kick so she had this walking stick she used to hit the ball with and I was in goal between the double doors trying to make saves. I must have been three and I had these little blue gloves with black pads on the fingers and on the palm,” Ormiston said.
He played college soccer in America, transitioning into coaching.
His passion and leadership skills were on display at a recent practice at the Berl Huffman Athletic Complex where Ormiston loudly explained the effort level he expected of this year’s Matadors.
David Ormiston
• Lubbock Matadors head coach.
• Hometown: Chichester, England.
• Soccer career: Genesee Community College/New York (won National Junior Collegiate Athletic Association national championship), Eckerd College/Florida.
• Coaching: Eckerd goalkeeper coach, St. Mary’s University in San Antonio, Texas, assistant coach for Brazos Valley Cavalry FC (USL League 2), head coach West Texas FC.
Roster turnover means quick learning curve
The Matadors have players from 20 different nations on the team. Fans look at the roster on game days and buy flags to wave representing those nations.
The yearly challenge is having an almost new team every year – mostly made up of college players in between school years. That’s why the season runs from mid-May and ends in the summer.
They get a lot of their players from relationships they’ve built with college coaches.
The timeline means a fast learning curve, Ormiston said.
“It’s getting them to understand how each other plays as quickly as possible and getting them to understand what it is you are asking of them. That’s what is important about recruitment too. I need to recruit players that … have the soccer IQ to adapt to what I need, but also it’s down to me and the other coaches to bring in guys to fit what we’re doing,” he said.
McCorkle said, “We evaluate our roster every year to make sure we have the best competitive team on the field. … If you recruit guys from the biggest and best schools that’s great but they will get called back to their schools earlier. If you hit playoffs now all of a sudden guys leave you.”
“We are always going to try to bring back a core group of guys that understands what it means to play here so they can communicate to the new guys who haven’t experienced it,” he added.
Team captain Duvan Canchila has played pro soccer in Colombia, but he knows Lubbock.
“He is the assistant coach for LCU, so he knows what the culture is here. This will be the first year he has played as captain. … Our fans will get to see how cool, calm and collected he is on the ball,” McCorkle said.
Besides winning games, the goal for the Matadors and league is to develop players who can play at a higher level.
The NPSL is one of four leagues at the fourth level of American soccer. There are two levels above that and Major League Soccer is at the top. Teams at the levels above NPSL communicate with NPSL teams looking for players ready to move up.
Players can’t be paid for performance on the field, but they can be paid for camps, private sessions and player appearances, McCorkle said
“If players ask how much they get paid, they probably aren’t the right character guys for us, because when you come here it’s got to be about the mission,” McCorkle said.
The team has two players from the Lubbock area on the practice squad – but not on the team playing matches.
“That’s a big part of the mission of why we launched a youth academy, we want our coaches to begin developing local youth to the level of getting recruited to the big-time schools,” McCorkle said.
He’s seen more youth participation in soccer since bringing in the Matadors.
Fans and community outreach
One of McCorkle’s favorite games from the three previous seasons was the first.
“We were expecting 1,000 people and we got over 4,000 people to that game. There was so much work that went into this and building this club up, that was a moment of validation for me,” McCorkle said.
Fans created the kind of rituals that impressed Ormiston a year ago.
McCorkle said, “We have a whole section of fans, around 75 people, they do a march to the match, they come in with flags, one guy has a megaphone. They lead this group and stadium in chants, all game long.”
“Most of our audience is local, Lubbock folks, we focus our game days on not whether you like soccer or not, but try to engage and make it fun for the kids and families. We have some unique partnerships that make it a ton of fun for our fans,” he said.
The team has an 18-wheeler delivering Pepsi products around West Texas. They have Matador birthday cakes at United Supermarkets.
“We have all these fun things we do that creates unique relationships and fun with the fans,” McCorkle said, along with the team interacting with fans – especially kids.
“It starts with our main mission: Grow the game. When people speak about the Matadors what do they speak about? For us that needs to be community involvement first,” McCorkle said.
Another example is bringing in Texas Tech and LCU students as interns to get sports management experience.
One of McCorkle’s other memorable matches was the end of the second season when they lost in the conference title game against Brownsville in double overtime – in the final few minutes.
“We aren’t supposed to be in conference championship games in this tough conference in year two, but we made it,” McCorkle said.
“It brought me to tears that we lost, I feel like we put it all out there for our fans, we had 6,000 people watching us and we watched our fans cry with our players. It showed me that our players and fans care just as much about this as we all do, it was a special and sad moment,” he said.
Bringing soccer to Lubbock
McCorkle grew up with soccer in Dallas.
“Soccer has always been big in Dallas. I played as a kid and my football coaches made fun of me for playing soccer, but I always loved the sport,” he said.
McCorkle played soccer for two years at Dallas Baptist University until they cut the program, he said.
He transferred to Texas Tech, studying exercise sports science.
After college, McCorkle gravitated to the business side of sports, working for the NBA’s Atlanta Hawks, the NHL’s New Jersey Devils and New Mexico United soccer team.
One of his sports thrills while moving around was when his favorite player growing up – Landon Donovan – hired him to help launch a team in San Diego.
“So I got to work with someone I grew up watching at 2 a.m. during World Cups,” he said.
McCorkle and his family settled in Lubbock, which led to the Matadors.
Michael Hitchcock, involved in American soccer at many levels, including Major League Soccer, thought Lubbock would be a good place for a NPSL team. Contacts told him to call McCorkle.
“He reached out to me knowing that I lived in Lubbock and said ‘Hey, would you like to run the team?’ I said yes, and it allowed me an opportunity to let my family see me do this,” McCorkle said, adding Hitchcock saw Lubbock “as a really cool sports town.”
“My big thing is accountability. We start by being accountable to our mission, our fans and each other. Another big thing is believing, we got to believe in what we are doing,” McCorkle said.
