For the first time at UNA a men’s club soccer team will be a Recognized Student Organization this fall.

There may not be an official men’s soccer team at UNA, but the club team is in a league called the Southeast Collegiate Soccer Alliance.

The team is in the Gulf Coast Division, which features seven other schools including the University of Alabama and Auburn University.

“We’ve never officially been an RSO, and we’ve never officially been in a league and now we’re in both of those,” said team captain Brandon Brown.

The team has six games on its schedule including three home games before the regional tournament. However, the team does not officially have a home field to play their games.

“We’re still looking for a place to play (home games),” Brown said. “We’ve asked the city; we’ve asked to use the practice field at UNA, but no luck so far.”

There is not much time to find a home field as the first home game is Sept. 19 against Mississippi State University.

Despite the issue, it will not alter the team’s goals this year, Brown said.

“Our first goal is to stay together and be official, we’re in a league now and we want to be competitive,” he said. “Our second goal is to support the women’s team and promote their home games for people to come. We also want to do a clinic later on for all the youth kids in Florence.”

The team’s coach, freshman international student from Saudi Arabia, Majed Al-Majed, said he wants to help promote the game of soccer as a whole on campus.

“We really hope to get an official men’s soccer team here at UNA,” Al-Majed said.

Brown said he already sees the popularity of soccer growing in Florence.

“There’s people every Saturday, every Sunday out here (North Florence Park) playing soccer,” he said. “The YMCA, the turf field at UNA — different groups are always playing.”

Al-Majed said that since so many international students like to play soccer he’d like to see more support from UNA.

“We’ve tried more than one time to get a soccer team at UNA and they didn’t really help us,” AL-Majed said. “I hope now that we’re an RSO that we will get the support we need.”