It’s a joke on the Syracuse men’s soccer team that the Canadian players have their own section of the Manley Field House locker room.

It’s more coincidental than intentional, but for Chris Nanco, Alex Halis, Jordan Murrell and Skylar Thomas, the arrangement makes sense.

“Chris and Alex look up to Jordan and Skylar,” SU recruiting coordinator Mike Miller said. “We’ll continue to get more Canadian players from Ontario and all of Canada in here and we’ll continue that pipeline.”

At the beginning of this season, Halis and Nanco joined Murrell and Thomas in Syracuse, thus bolstering what is already a strong pipeline of players from Ontario.

Since 2005, there have been 11 Syracuse players from the province. And with Syracuse’s move to the Atlantic Coast Conference, Canadian players are coming in greater numbers and bringing others with them.

“Maybe it was an underachieving school in the past,” said Bobby Smyrniotis, who coached Halis and Nanco with Sigma FC, “but you can really see that the new staff has an idea of where they want to take the soccer program.”

Smyrniotis attended a Syracuse-Connecticut game last season, and often watches his former players through an online video feed. He said he’s happy that he sent his players to Syracuse, and that it was all because of the relationship he developed with Miller.

He got to know Miller in his last season at the University of Evansville in 2009, and the two have become close friends since Miller joined the SU staff the following year.

“We’ve got a great relationship with Coach Miller on various levels,” Smyrniotis said. “And that helps because you know the coaches and you know what kind of environment they’re going into.

“When he went over to Syracuse, the one great thing that he did was he realized the very good potential in players in this market.”

Getting Nanco and Halis paid huge dividends for Syracuse this season. Halis was second on the team in goals scored with six. Nanco was third with four. Thomas and Murrell were two cogs in a defense that often anchored the team.

Thomas and Murrell played with each other on the U-18 Canadian National Team, and Halis and Nanco were teammates with Sigma FC and on the same high school team at St. Edmund Campion Secondary School.

And while Halis and Nanco were making their college decisions, Thomas made an effort to strengthen the Orange’s reach in the area.

“I played against them for two years in high school soccer,” Thomas said. “I was talking to both of them when they were going through the recruiting process, and letting them know how good of a school Syracuse was.”

All of the players are very close. They hang out at school, all live within in an hour of each other at home and travel back together for the holidays.

They, as a group, have worked to bring in new, Canadian players into the SU program, and Miller sometimes asks them to reach out to athletes that he is recruiting.

Nanco said he’d been talking with several players from Sigma FC that might be interested in coming to play for the Orange.

“They talk to us and tell us who they’re looking at, and if we know this guy or this guy from Canada,” Nanco said. “Sometimes we do know them and we talk to them and see if they’re interested and what they’re looking to do.”

Syracuse head coach Ian McIntyre said that, now, with Canadian players seeing the success that their countrymen are having, it’s fostering their interest in SU.

“In today’s media network, the success of our Canadian players has been pretty evident,” McIntyre said. “Nowadays players are aware of success of other Canadian players in the States.”

McIntyre said that his team’s ability to recruit these top athletes from Ontario is a reflection on where his program is headed.

With a trip to the round of 16 in 2012, followed up by a solid first season in a brand new conference, it’s not just about developing a pipeline of players north of the border.

It’s about getting the top Canadian talent.

“I think we’re in that conversation with the caliber players of both Chris and Alex, who were extremely highly recruited student-athletes,” McIntyre said.

“The fact that they were attracted to Syracuse suggests that we probably are moving in the right direction.”

Published on April 22, 2014 at 1:16 am

Contact Sam: sblum@syr.edu | @SamBlum3