Juan Camilo Salazar (24) first started playing soccer for his parents. As a highly energetic child, his parents were initially looking for a way to burn off his extra energy after school. After a few seasons though, it became apparent that Salazar loved the game and wanted to continue improving and playing beyond the youth sport level.
“When they put me in soccer, I ended up staying in it and loving the competition and the challenge,” Salazar said. “I really liked the lifestyle soccer gave me. It’s brought me friends and helped me stay healthy.”
Born in Medellín, Colombia, Salazar was playing and celebrating the sport of soccer from a very young age. He knew he wanted to play professionally, but after he and his family moved to San Marcos in California, he wasn’t sure exactly how he was going to achieve his goal.
Not only was he facing the typical challenges teens encounter in high school, but he was also acclimatizing to the culture in the United States and learning English. Even with these challenges present, Salazar never wavered in his goal to become a professional soccer player. And by the time he was a senior in high school, Salazar had multiple offers to play at various Division II schools.
Salazar ultimately chose to start his collegiate career at California State University San Marcos since it was closer to home. He spent his days training with the Cougars and studying to earn his degree in business. And while he enjoyed the campus culture and his classes, as he approached his last few semesters of class, he realized he wanted to make a change.
“It’s a great school and super nice, but I wanted to try and pursue professional soccer on my own,” Salazar said.
Salazar continued to study at San Marcos but was no longer on the roster with the soccer team. Instead, he used the time he had to try out at the combines. Much like other professional sport combines, professional soccer combines give players a chance to show off their skills in front of professional team staff and scouts. Evaluations take place after the combines finish and teams make their offers to players.
“I went to a lot of tryouts and combines in 2022,” Salazar said. “And I was close to signing with two different teams, but neither of those opportunities worked out.”
Salazar returned to classes feeling like his goals were more out of reach than ever. He wasn’t playing professionally, and he wasn’t returning to play at the college level.
“I was working two jobs, restaurant jobs, and playing for a league on Sundays,” Salazar said. “But I wasn’t happy because I didn’t feel like I was doing anything that I really wanted to do. I felt like I was going backward and I thought maybe I just won’t play anymore.”
“I was working two jobs, restaurant jobs, and playing for a league on Sundays. But I wasn’t happy because I didn’t feel like I was doing anything that I really wanted to do. I felt like I was going backward and I thought maybe I just won’t play anymore.”
Convinced his soccer career had come to a somewhat abrupt end, Salazar continued working and taking his final classes until one day in the spring of 2022, Salazar got a phone call from the PLNU men’s soccer team assistant coach, Brett Evans. Evans invited Salazar to attend a practice with the team and consider using his final year of eligibility to play for PLNU and help the Sea Lions earn a conference title.
“I was super excited about the opportunity,” Salazar said, who saw his dreams of professional soccer suddenly back on track. He attended practice and breakfast with the coaches and walked away with an offer to join the team in the fall.
After leaving the team at San Marcos, Salazar went into the NCAA Transfer Portal. The Transfer Portal, simply known as the “portal” in college athletic circles, is similar to a waiting room for collegiate student-athletes. The student-athletes who are in the portal are individuals who might be interested in transferring to different universities or they may go in the portal to see if there are any better offers elsewhere. When a student-athlete enters the portal, they are signaling to the broader NCAA community that for that sport, they are interested in making a change and can be contacted by coaching staff from other schools.
As a student-athlete at San Marcos, Salazar competed in three seasons of play, leaving him with one season left when he entered the portal.
As long as the student-athlete enters the portal academically eligible and in good standing, coaches from other universities can sign them immediately. Generally, to be considered academically eligible when they enter the portal, student-athletes must be enrolled in at least 12 units at their university and maintain a 2.0 GPA. Like many universities, San Marcos has a counselor within the athletics office who helps student-athletes, such as Salazar, plan their class schedules to ensure they remain eligible for each season.
During his time as a student-athlete, Salazar benefitted from this advice, however, once he stopped playing for the team, he was left to choose his own classes.
“I had never chosen my classes before,” Salazar said. “I didn’t know what I was doing and I just took what I thought I needed without paying a ton of attention to it.”
Unbeknownst to him, Salazar had only selected 11 units of class for the spring 2022 semester, leaving him one unit shy of the required 12 to be eligible to play in the fall of 2022.
“It was in August, probably only a few weeks before I was supposed to report for training camp, and I got this call,” Salazar recalled. “It was [the PLNU men’s soccer head coach] Phil Wolf telling me that I wasn’t eligible to play.”
“I just broke down about it,” Salazar said. “I was so angry and upset because it felt like things were falling apart again. I didn’t know what I was going to do.”
Wolf and Salazar spent the next few hours of that day trading phone calls, looking for a solution together.
After some back-and-forth and exploring the options available to him, Salazar and Wolf came to the conclusion that he would have to wait another semester before joining the team in 2023. The NCAA rules around full-time enrollment are ironclad. Fielding a player who is not eligible is a critical violation and can result in a program being asked to forfeit games and the individual player losing further years of eligibility.
While he was certainly disappointed by the turn his journey had taken, Salazar knew that Wolf still wanted him for the program.
“I was the type of player he was looking for to join them that season,” Salazar said. “So we were both motivated to find a way for it to work eventually.”
Salazar spent the fall 2022 semester at San Marcos finishing his undergraduate degree while researching graduate programs at PLNU.
“I made a bunch of phone calls to learn all I could and make sure the program would work for me,” Salazar said. He decided to move forward with the Master of Arts in Organizational Leadership (MAOL) program and enrolled to begin classes in spring 2023.
In addition to teaching students effective leadership skills, the MAOL program has flexible online classes and only takes one year to complete; an ideal scenario for Salazar who had finished his undergraduate degree but still needed to be enrolled full-time in a program in order to play his final year.
“I really liked the program and learned a lot,” Salazar said. “Even though it was an online program, I met a lot of people and still felt like I had those relationships when we would meet up for projects.”
“I think I was always meant to attend Point Loma,” Salazar said, who thrived on the field and in the classroom during his one year under Wolf.
During his time with PLNU men’s soccer, Salazar led the PacWest conference in shots on goal (25), assists (8), and game-winning goals (3). He earned PacWest Newcomer of the Year and was a First Team All-PacWest selection.
“It was my best season of soccer personally and athletically,” Salazar said. “I loved the players and the friends I made and training on the field.”
Salazar’s best personal season was mirrored by a history-making season for the team, which earned its first-ever PacWest Conference championship in 2023.
“It was exactly how I wanted to end my college career,” Salazar said.
“It was my best season of soccer personally and athletically. I loved the players and the friends I made and training on the field.”
Since graduating from the MAOL program, Salazar has achieved his dream of playing professionally. After completing his final college season and master’s degree, he was drafted to play for the San Diego Sockers, a professional indoor soccer team.
Through Wolf’s connections to the club, Salazar had the opportunity to try out for the team and sign a pro contract to join the 2024-2025 roster.
“The best part of the team is the way everybody accepted me,” Salazar said. “From the captains to the veterans, they’ve made me feel so welcome.”
After his first season with the Sockers, Salazar has continued to grow as a player and learn more about the indoor game.
“[San Diego Sockers] is the best setting because it’s very professional on the field when you play, it’s like going to war, but after you leave, it’s all love between the players,” Salazar said. “And over the next few years, my goal is to become the best professional indoor soccer player I can be.”
“I’m also working hard and saving and investing my money, making it grow for now while I play,” Salazar added. Like many professional athletes, he knows that eventually he’ll need to hang up his cleats, so to speak, from professional sports and look for new opportunities.
“I don’t have a specific job in mind, but I know I’m in a place where I can continue connecting and making relationships, so that’s what I’m going to do,” Salazar said.
