2025 Big West Defensive Player of the Year and captain Parker Owens is out for the 2026 season with a torn ACL. 2024 All-Big West First Team honoree Diego Guerra has spent more than a year recovering from a knee injury. 2025 All-Big West second-team member Quinn Mahoney tore his ACL near the end of the 2025 season. 2025 All-Big West Freshman team selectee Michael Vick was sidelined in a boot early in the 2026 season.
This list of losses and injuries just goes on for the Cal Poly Men’s Soccer team. Incoming players like junior transfer Devin Bening fractured his foot before the 2026 season even began.
And yet, the Mustangs have found success early in the 2026 season.
On Sept. 25, Cal Poly beat UCSB for the first time in almost two years, 2-1. They won in front of a sold-out crowd at Mustang Memorial Field without Guerra, Owens, or Vick, and with Mahoney playing only 38 minutes and not taking a shot.
It raises the question: how has Cal Poly found consistency and success through this unpredictable storm of injuries?
For Head Coach Oige Kennedy, it comes down to the “next man up” mentality that he has instilled in his team.
“We have to create a culture where it’s ‘next man up,’ and we never want to see guys get injured but we do want to see guys that take advantage of the opportunity that comes by,” Kennedy said.
When you zoom out, you can see how this mentality has been embraced in every line of the Mustang starting lineup.
Young Talent Leads Defensive Rebuild
In goal, redshirt freshman Mathew Guerra has already stepped into the starting goalkeeper role after two-time Big West Goalkeeper of the Year Nicky McCune graduated at the conclusion of the 2025-26 year.
Mathew Guerra had to fight against sophomore goalkeepers Dylan Glowaski and Ben Oetman to earn that starting position, with Glowaski being the only one of the three to see field time before the 2026 season, playing 12 minutes in one match. In the 9 games of pre-conference play, Guerra helped his team earn three shutouts and four wins.
“My first season was definitely a learning start,” Mathew Guerra said. “With big goalkeepers ahead of me, like Nicky McCune, it definitely inspired me. His record of getting scored on was very low, so I really look up to that now.”
Both the depth in position and level of competition across all lines is reflected in this Cal Poly squad.
Without Owens leading the back line from the center back position, sophomore transfer Michael Baumgaertel has held down the position. Seeing the field often this season, the German native has become an integral part of the Mustang defense in his first season with the team.
Additionally, 2025 Big West All-Freshman team honoree Tanner Casey and redshirt freshman Marlow Buettner have split time at the other center back position, with Casey starting more in the front half of the season, and Buettner earning that spot during the back half.
“He [Buettner] had been out, and he didn’t have a preseason. He’s coming back from an injury so we have to be careful, but we have great competition at those center back positions,” Kennedy said, “It’s a competitive group.”
Returning Midfielders Find Success
In the center of the lineup, junior Colin Pearce and redshirt junior Rylan Firouznam, along with Cole Aman, have stepped up to help lead the team in the absence of Diego Guerra. After redshirting in 2024 due to injury, Firouznam has earned a spot in the Cal Poly starting 11 this season as a captain and vital piece of the Mustang midfield. As for Pearce, he has been Cal Poly’s top producer, notching four goals and four assists to lead the Mustangs with 12 points.
“They [Aman and Pearce] have played nearly every minute for the program [this season], and they’ve really attacked that opportunity that’s opened up for them. I think that’s all they can really do,” Kennedy said.
Diego Guerra continues working his way back into the lineup, first appearing in a Sept. 10 win against Utah Tech, and five games since, for a total of 165 minutes.
Exactly one month after his first appearance, Diego Guerra recorded his first point on Oct. 10, an assist in a 3-1 loss to UCSB. Then, just four days later, he earned his first start of the season and played a season-high 58 minutes on Oct. 14, showing how much another month of training can impact his time and performance on the field.
“It felt so good just stepping out on the field again,” Diego Guerra said. “Everything that I’ve worked for and everything I’ve done in the process has come out to be worth it for that moment. There’s so much more to come, and I am so excited.”
Depth in the Attack
Up front, junior Finn Linas was another player to step into a larger role for Cal Poly. During the 2025 season, he appeared in all 20 matches but started only eight, scoring two goals and recording one assist. Through 12 matches of the 2026 campaign, Linas has started every match, including the full 90 minutes against rival UC Santa Barbara, and has already scored four goals this season.
Alongside Linas, Bening has become an off-the-bench weapon for Cal Poly. Bening has started only two games, yet currently sits second in team points with 9. He has scored four goals and one assist while playing about a third as much as some of Cal Poly’s starters.
Bening has been on both sides of Kennedy’s “next man up” mentality. An injury left him sidelined early, but he recovered and worked his way back onto the pitch, becoming the next man up on the Mustang front line. He has scored two game-winners this season and continues to make the most of his limited minutes.
“I had broken my foot. I came back, and now I think I’m better than ever. I’m getting back to where I was and surpassing it,” Bening said.
Mahoney is another player on limited minutes as he continues to work his way back into the Mustang lineup. In 2025, he co-led the Big West in goals and led Cal Poly in shot attempts as a sophomore, appearing in all 17 matches before tearing his ACL in a conference game late in the 2025 season.
“The doctor called me the next day saying my MRI came back and I fully tore my ACL. It was devastating; [I] kind of collapsed on the floor and called my parents right away,” Mahoney said.
Mahoney spent the next nine months rehabbing and supporting the team from the sidelines, instead of contributing on the field as he had grown accustomed to. Two months into that rehab, his best friend died from a brain aneurysm, and Mahoney credits him, his family, and carrying his legacy as his motivation that got him through the rest of the recovery process.
Five minutes into Mahoney’s first match back, Cal Poly’s Aug. 27 home opener against San Jose State, he scored his first goal back from injury.
“[I was] praying before the game, saying ‘God give me the strength to carry on his legacy’, and in the first five minutes scoring a goal, I just felt him there with me, which was an amazing feeling,” Mahoney said. “Not a lot of people get to say they experience something like that.”
While players like Linas and senior Jack Civitts continue to play the majority of the minutes on the front line, Mahoney and Bening continue to add value as substitutes, embodying Kennedy’s saying for this 2026 season.
Across the roster, players have stepped up into new roles to make the most of opportunities as they arise. With injured all-conference players seeing more minutes and inching closer to full strength, the Mustangs have embodied the ‘next man up’ culture, continuing to find success on the field whenever their number is called.