In 1993, it was the end of the soccer season and the team was at the “end of year team banquette.” When the coach, moving to the U.S. from France only a few years before, called Matt Tracy up and kissed him on the cheek; leaving Matt with a mark that still resides today. “That was the first encounter I had with a foreign soccer player and I have been hooked ever since,” Tracy said.

Flash foreword to the 2006 California State University, Northridge Matador Men’s Soccer season, Matt’s third season in college play, one would see differences in the team. Not only in players but in style as well. “We’re a young team and still learning,” head coach Terry Davila said.

Matt Tracy is 20 years old, defender and number 12 for the Matador Men’s Soccer team, and is a Junior Business Law major, with hopes of going into professional soccer; although law school would be great as well. “Soccer brought me to CSUN,” Tracy said. Coming from Newport Beach, California, Tracy has been playing soccer since the second grade with “a love for the game beyond most other things in life.” Continuing with, “I don’t like to loose, except in Nintendo.”

Outside of practice and soccer games, Tracy does homework like every good college student, goes to the beach with friends and, of course, watches soccer; “we have Fox Sports World [at home] and watch the English Premier League all the time, not much [U.S.] Major League Soccer, though.”

Matt’s Head Coach, Terry Davila, said that Matt has a “passion for the game that will get him far, even professional. His emotions, however, are his weakness. Once he gets control of his emotions, the sky is the limit.”

The Matadors finished the regular season game play on Saturday, November 4 with a win over second place California State University, Irvine; CSUN is third in the Big West. Tracy was also presented with a Big West Honorable Mention for the season.