Alumnus shares insights about collegiate soccer experience

Throughout his high school and club soccer career, Class of 2015 alumnus Samuel Junqua was the dominant player in most of his games. However, when he joined UC Berkeley’s Division I team this fall, Junqua soon began to face tougher opponents and found himself challenged as never before.

“Going from playing 90 minutes every game to really fighting for any playing time at all was a tough change,” Junqua said.

Last spring, Junqua was recruited to play on Cal’s soccer team. He plays as a left back and has been playing for approximately a half during most games. Junqua received a partial scholarship to play for the Bears.

The regular season began in August, and will be coming to an end on Nov. 12 as the Golden Bears take on Stanford in their final game. Cal has an overall record of 9-5-2 as of Nov. 6.

Prior to joining Cal’s team, Junqua played only one year of high school soccer; instead, he played at a higher level for many competitive club soccer organizations such as the De Anza Force Academy for three years and the San Jose Earthquakes Academy.

“Playing for [the Earthquakes] was an interesting experience because you would sometimes see teammates or players being pulled up to the [professional] team,” Junqua said. “[The experience] felt professional because mostly everything was paid for.”

Nevertheless, Junqua has found that college sports are much more exciting than high school sports since everybody at the collegiate level is serious about their participation on the team.

He said that the main difference between college and club athletics is the amount of supervision the players receive.

As a D1 athlete, Junqua devotes much of his time to soccer. The team trains, competes in games, meets for video sessions and lifts weights six days of the week. On game days, he said players stretch and jog together in the morning, meet for a pregame meal and have a pregame meeting before going out onto the field.

“You know exactly what you should be doing [at] what time during the day since the coach sends out a timeline to keep us on track,” Junqua said.

Yet, Junqua emphasized the morning of any game is not the first day of preparation for the match. The team begins its intense preparation in the practices and strategy sessions leading up to a game.

Given how many hours he spends thinking about and practicing soccer, Junqua said being on top of his school work is crucial. As a result of playing soccer, Junqua said he has had to make sacrifices such as not being able to join a fraternity. Even so, he sees these sacrifices well worth it.

“Soccer has always been my passion so I can't imagine not playing,” Junqua said. “It was never a question if I would want to play on college.”

Junqua is hoping to get into the Haas Business School at Cal. In order to achieve this goal and balance his school work and his soccer schedule, he has been carefully planning where his time goes by avoiding things he could “cut out.”

Although Junqua’s schedule is demanding, his teammates have made the transition to this new lifestyle easier.

For instance, he remembered one teammate volunteering to drive him to Oakland for a physical at the start of the season. All he had to do was ask..

“That kind of camaraderie helped me get acclimated,” Junqua said.

Junqua has been thrilled with Berkeley so far.

“Playing college sports is such a great experience so I highly recommend it to anybody who has the opportunity or is interested,” Junqua said. “I think it's unique and worth what you need to sacrifice to get there.”