Fernando Barboto, who built the Iona College Gaels into one of the top Division I men’s soccer programs in the area, led men’s soccer at New Jersey Institute of Technology, in 2016.with their six honorees.
The Highlanders, under the leadership of Barboto in his first season, reached eight wins, marking the second-highest win total, since competing as an NCAA Division I program (first season 2004). The record stands at 10 set in 2012.
NJIT made its first ASUN Men’s Soccer Championship appearance in the teams’ first season (2016) as a member of the school’s new multi-sport conference, the ASUN Conference. Men’s soccer, which played the previous two seasons as an associate member of the Sun Belt Conference, is competing in the ASUN a year later than the other NJIT programs, which began play in the ASUN in 2015-16.
The Highlanders, who began Division I competition in men’s soccer in 2004, ranked 10th in the latest NSCAA Southeast Region men’s soccer poll (as of November 1). NJIT has been ranked regionally at other times in the past, including 2014, when the Highlanders ranked as high as 7th in the Southeast Region, due to its affiliation with the Sun Belt Conference, a Southeast-based league, and 2012, when the Highlanders were in the Top 10 of the North Atlantic Region poll for most of the year, finishing 8th in the season-ending regional poll.