Harford Men’s Soccer Rounding Into Regional JUCO Power With International Influence

In January 2024, Bill Wardle attended a soccer showcase in Panama City, Panama, looking for recruits.

The Harford Community College men’s soccer coach had done this before. He was three seasons removed from setting a program record with 16 wins in 2021, when the team made its first appearance at the NJCAA DI National Tournament. It had been two years since six players were named to the MD JUCO All-Conference team in 2022. And one year since he notched his third straight season with double-digit wins.

These showcase events are common around the world, providing international players with an opportunity to show their skills to college coaches in hopes of playing soccer in the U.S. In the Panama heat, Wardle witnessed the incredible skill of Alfonso Gilleard Soriano, a versatile 5-foot-10, 165-pound Panamanian-American defender who had lived in the U.S. for several years as his father Alfonso played 15 seasons in Major League Baseball.

The younger Soriano showed immediate interest in playing for Wardle in Bel Air. He scored five goals for the Fighting Owls in 2024, then transferred to FIU.

“When he was telling me, ‘Yeah, I definitely want to come,’ I was thinking he was going to come for the following fall,” said Wardle, who has coached at Harford for nine years and has led the program for seven. “He was on campus three weeks later.”

This strategy — while still recruiting players from private and public high schools in Maryland and other states — has been Wardle’s approach for going on a decade. Each year, his squad is filled with an array of international players, plucked from showcases like the one he found Soriano or drawn from global sports agencies that work to place players in American colleges.

Harford has thus grown into a juggernaut in the NJCAA Region 20, which includes two-year colleges from across Maryland, western Pennsylvania and the West Virginia panhandle. In 2024, Harford finished 13-5-3, securing the program’s first Region 20 title in 50 years.

This year’s team, off to a 1-2 start, has players from Canada, England, Australia, Zimbabwe, Italy, France, Jamaica, South Africa, Brazil, Denmark and Chile.

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When Archie Bennett and Ethan Doukhan were looking for ways to continue their soccer career, Harford Community College likely wasn’t on their radars.

Bennett, a goalkeeper from England, and Doukhan, a defender from France, both sought out sports agencies in the U.S. to connect them with college coaches.

“These agencies, they’ll come watch you at your games and come up to you at the end and say, ‘Do you want to study in the U.S. and play college soccer?” Bennett said. “So, I went for an agency, he found Harford … and I came out here in August 2024.”

Wardle hasn’t found it difficult to recruit players. Many are eager to come to Harford because it means they can fulfill their dreams of playing sports and getting an education at the same time, something foreign colleges don’t always offer.

“Initially, I was surprised by this. I had no idea this was going on as I became head coach,” Wardle said of the international player market. “Next thing you know, I was getting emails … four to five emails a day from different international players or their agencies.”

For the players, finding a place to play in the U.S. can be a whirlwind process with their soccer futures tied to an agency working with coaches to find the right fit. A handful of calls and text messages are usually their only communication.

The international players credited Wardle with building an immediate connection with them that went beyond his plans on the field, surpassing how other coaches approached their recruitment. While some calls with other coaches lasted only 10 minutes, Wardle took hours to get to know his potential recruits.

“My first call was 90 minutes. The first 45 minutes, we didn’t talk about soccer, he just asked questions about me, my family, my past,” Doukhan said. “It helped me connect with him as a human being.”

Bennett and Doukhan played crucial roles in the Fighting Owls’ success last season. Doukhan scored three goals in 20 appearances. Bennett made 48 saves in 15 appearances, delivering two penalty kick saves in the Region 20 Championship win against Montgomery College.

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Wardle has coached at all levels, from middle and high school to club and college. He calls it a labor of love, not something he does for the money but for the human connections he makes on the field and in the locker room.

Wardle was raised in Washington, D.C., where he played soccer as a youngster with friends from all over the world. Those multicultural experiences molded him into the coach he is today. A father of three adult sons who have left home, Wardle throws his proud dad energy into his players instead.

Wardle quotes Nelson Mandela and stresses that the shared experiences of a soccer team go beyond wins, losses and trophies. That coaching young people is an exercise in guiding them to be better people. That the friendships they forge in these years will last lifetimes.

When he’s on the soccer field, Wardle turns into a polyglot, a speaker of many languages. He says “thank you” when his English goalkeeper makes a save and “gracias” when his Chilean midfielder prevents a counterattack. It’s “merci” to the French defender and “tak” to the Danish winger.

The coach is happy to learn a little piece of his players’ native language. After all, some of them have crossed oceans to play for him in Bel Air. The least he can do is to give them a taste of home.

“It makes me feel welcome and like I’m at home when he speaks my language,” said Tomás González, a second-year defensive midfielder from Chile. Gonzalez is one of about 16 international players on the Fighting Owls’ 2025 roster. “It’s a warm feeling when he tries to integrate your culture.”

Christian Lopez-Contreras, a second-year attacking midfielder from Chambersburg, Pa., has lived in an apartment with Brazilian and Spanish teammates. That extra time together has paid off in building connections.

“It was interesting having all of us in an apartment, all coming from different backgrounds and with different languages,” Lopez-Contreras said. “It’s pretty cool having a lot of internationals on the squad because they bring a lot to the team, not just soccer, but getting to see what part of the world they come from, you don’t see that every day.”

But even as Wardle piles up the wins, he maintains a perspective that his job goes beyond soccer, into life. He has at most two years with each of his players, but it doesn’t stop him from pushing them to learn and grow. Some players move on to four-year schools, while others start their lives in America or return to their home country. All that matters to Wardle is that his players grow as people and forge bonds that will outlast their playing careers.

“Our college years are amazing times on a lot of different levels,” Wardle said. “And one of the things you can take away from a situation like that is seeing a completely different worldview and mindset that really will benefit you.”

This summer, former Harford player Alexis Garcia texted Wardle that he had “scored the best goal of his life.” When the video arrived on Wardle’s phone, it wasn’t a free kick. It was a wedding proposal to Garcia’s girlfriend, whom he had met in Bel Air. Wardle was the first person he told and the first to receive an invitation to their wedding next year.

Wardle was thrilled to see his old player taking life’s biggest steps. It was also a reminder that while the bonds between teammates stay strong for many years, so too do those between player and coach.

Photo Credit: Sam Beall and Nate Newtown/Harford Athletics

Author: Brooks DuBose, PressBox reporter  |  September 3, 2025
See all posts by Brooks DuBose. Follow Brooks DuBose on Twitter at @b3dubose