If there’s one takeaway from the April 5 matchup between the ASU men’s club soccer team and Southwest League champions GCU, it’s this: Mason Snailum is a Division I-caliber player, regardless of where he currently plays.
The former Phoenix Rising Academy youth player showed his level above the Lopes early in the match, and it only took 10 minutes to see it.
Snailum walked through the league’s best defense into a shot from outside the box. It went stinging off the crossbar with the kind of violence that made people freeze. That hollow, reverberating clang—leather crashing against iron rang out like a warning bell.
That’s exactly what it was. A warning. A premonition of sorts. Don’t let him get that close again, or next time you won’t get so lucky.
Three minutes later, GCU failed to heed that warning.
They let him get that close again.
A deft interplay of passes from ASU ended with a ball sitting idle atop the box with Snailum running onto it. Defenders weren’t close enough to stop him from blasting it, with his weaker left foot, 20 yards straight into the roof of the net.
An emphatic statement against the league champs: even though they earned silverware, he was operating at a different level than they were.
1-0 ASU.
Snailum, 19, wasn’t even supposed to be in Tempe. He wans’t supposed to be playing club soccer. The aforementioned former professional youth academy player had offers from Division I programs like UNLV and UC Davis. He took a visit to Northern California to see Davis in the fall of his senior season.
The college town, coined “the Bike Capital of the World,” sits just 15 miles from California’s state capital of Sacramento. As a Sacramento native myself, I could have told him the title of being the Golden State’s capital city is more glamorous than the city and its surroundings actually are in reality.
“I honestly didn’t really enjoy the campus that much,” Snailum said. “The city itself was alright—it didn’t grab my attention.”
The love of the game, of course, was always the most important thing for Snailum. So while the city lacked Phoenix’s glamour, that wasn’t what drove Snailum away from pursuing a Division I future in Davis.
“They wanted me to play defender,” said Snailum, who—as GCU now knows—is best suited as a dangerously creative attacking midfielder. “That was a negative. Plus, the scholarship they offered me was only a partial one. I still would’ve had to pay a lot of tuition to play a position I’m not that comfortable in.”
And so, much to the chagrin of GCU on this early April meeting, he opted to stay home at the cheaper ASU and play for the club team. Despite never donning an NCAA jersey, his ability, by definition of being offered, was at the same level as the top college players.
Now, GCU had to find that out.
Just 21 minutes after his thunder shot opened the scoring, he maneuvered past three Grand Canyon defenders, leaving each one grasping for more air than the one before. A curled shot fired into the box took a fatal deflection off a Lope defender and found the back of the net.
2–0 ASU, and Snailum had wrecked the game on his own.
The score would hold until the final whistle, and ASU knocked off the champions on the final day of league play. GCU was still awarded silverware, having already clinched their title weeks prior, but the celebrations had been tainted.
Snailum walked off the field with a knowing smile on his face. His statement had been made, and everybody had seen it.
Yes, he’s here playing collegiate club soccer. And yes, GCU got to lift the trophy. But everyone knew one fact after the display he put in:
Mason Snailum is a Division I player.
