New year, new players, same standard for the USL Champion Colorado Springs Switchbacks

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (KKTV) – Last November, the City for Champions became the City of Champions. It’s a new year, and the standard is the standard in Colorado Springs.

“We have principles, we have basics, we have a foundation that we want to build off and it’s making sure that even the return on players and the new players and the staff were all aligned with all of that sort of stuff and making sure that we have all that stuff nailed down and then we can start to move forward. If it’s a cast of not putting the horse before the car,” said head coach James Chambers.

“Accept anything else at this point. The staff is worth hard to get guys into our locker room with a lot of character and guys that fit our system, style of play but 1st and foremost are good people. So, when you bring those guys in the locker room and we keep the guys that have been in our locker room. it’s very easy,” Captain Matt Mahoney said.

Colorado Springs hasn’t clicked the first three games, a main reason is self inflicting mistakes..

“Simple mistakes, individual errors at moments and that happens when half the team is new as well. So, we are trying to figure stuff out, that’s how it was in the beginning of last year and not an excuse but we’ve got two more points than we had last year and we are trying to improve,” said Mahoney.

For newcomer Levonte Johnson, a big thing he noticed is actually the elevation advantage.

“Just being in the stadium itself, the elevation. I first came here it was tough to play in. I think that definitely plays a big part in the success here and just teams mentally not even so much physically just mentally coming to try to prepare and play us and just knowing it’s going to be a tough game with our press and trying to impose our will on the other team,” said Johnson.

For every championship programs, once you get a taste of winning, you always want more.

“Winning is addicting. We want to win and so, it’s a mentality. This club is not going to set up just for a championship. We’re going to try and go win it back-to-back this year and that’s been our goal to do that. Honestly, we have kind of forgotten about last year. We can’t keep speaking about last year, it’s a brand-new year, new teams, new players. We have to go out and show that we deserve to be champions again,” Mahoney said.

Copyright 2025 KKTV. All rights reserved.