One chance to make a dream come true, and there may not be any opportunities after that to take part in the sport an athlete has participated in his entire life.

That is the situation about 10 men’s soccer hopefuls are in right now as head coach Adam Howarth leads a two-day tryout period in an attempt to fill any holes on his roster that he might have.

To do so, Howarth drilled the players who are trying out, thus giving them a chance to impress him over a matter of only a couple of hours.

This highly stressful and telling time gives Howarth a glimpse at what these players are going to be able to do.

This is something that the coach does not take lightly, considering he expects a high level of play from those who might have a chance to make the team.

“Each year the tryout process is a little different,” Howarth said. “It depends on what our needs are and what that group of players can accomplish.

“If we have somebody from tryouts who ends up making the team, that person needs to be able to contribute right away.”

Last year was Chad Dumonceaux’s senior year, and he came to the Panthers through the tryout procedure.

Dumonceaux was a midfielder who developed into a player that Howarth came to depend on as he played alongside such talented scholarship players as Jason Thompson, now of the MLS, and freshmen Jimmy Klatter.

“If one thing is obvious about the tryout process, it is that anything is possible,” Howarth said. “Sometimes you find a player like Chad (Dumonceaux) who finds his spot on the team and works his butt off to keep it.”

In fact, at this point in time, talent may take a back seat to work ethic when a coach considers what he is looking for.

Many of these players come off from a fairly uneventful summer in which they may have worked to maintain only a few of their skills, but chances are their workout was not anything like that of the soccer players who are already on the team.

For the last couple of weeks, the Panthers have been working through their preseason, a time in which players bond and become familiar with one another while honing their skills and conditioning.

While the overall time of the preseason may not be that long, it is a time that the players take very seriously and may be the biggest hurdle for a walk-on to work through.

“For them, one of the hardest things for them to work through has got to be cracking the team bond,” junior forward Jimmy Klatter said. “What we gain as a team then is hard to make up.”

But Klatter understands that hard work is all that is needed for a walk-on to become a teammate in a hurry.

To Klatter and the other players, respect is gained through the work that is done when the spotlight isn’t on during the game.

The work that is done when nobody is looking, when the team is just practicing and preparing for the game, is the time that the team becomes a team and new players can prove themselves in a hurry.

“There is no doubt that all the players who come out for tryouts have a passion and a love for this game that we all do; they wouldn’t be out here trying if they didn’t,” Klatter said. “They might have to fight for a spot, but we see the hard work they are putting in, and that is the important part if they make the team.”

The players who came out figured the same thing, but they were more focused on just doing the work that was ahead of them instead of focusing on what could be.

“There is a lot of pressure on us out here, but we are just trying to play as hard as we can,” junior Mark Brown said.

Brown transferred to Eastern this year after playing two years as a forward and midfielder at Parkland in Champaign.

Brown, from Gibson City, hopes that his soccer career will continue, but uncertainty clouds his near future.

“I’m not looking to make just one play; I’m just here to play overall,” Brown said. “If things work out, that would make this all worth it.”

But for many, the reality is that Thursday’s competition may be the last opportunity they have to step onto a soccer field in hopes of becoming a soccer player at the collegiate level.