Emotions were bubbling inside of Pau Santanach (Barcelona, Spain/Collegi CreaNova) as he arrived on the University of New Haven campus for the very first time.

Sure, he had a year to prepare himself to leave familiar surroundings and embark on the next chapter of his life nearly 4,000 miles from his Barcelona, Spain home. Santanach was taking in all the sights and sounds during his first four days on campus but it wasn't until day No. 5 when everything seemed right in his world once again. 

Any feelings of doubt or anxiety as he tried to adapt to a new country subsided when he stepped foot on Kathy Zolad Stadium on a sunny mid-August afternoon.

Each touch of the ball during the Chargers' men's soccer team's first practice of the season made Santanach feel right at home. The sport that he first played at age 5 had given him the opportunities to experience so much and he was set to embrace this next chapter as a soccer prodigy.

If his new teammates didn't realize what Santanach was capable of on that day, there was no questioning that the dynamic freshman was ready to make an immediate impact when New Haven played its 2021 season opener 2 1/2 weeks later.

Santanach unleashed his first shot as a Charger just 58 seconds into the game at the University of Bridgeport. He scored the game's first goal in the 18th minute and added the game-winning tally in the 81st minute to lift the Chargers to the 4-3 win.

"It was pretty good for me because after that game I had a lot of confidence," Santanach said. "I thought I can really help the team by scoring goals and after that, I had my teammates who were going to help me and help me to score goals."

And he certainly continued to score goals. Santanach had at least one goal in each of the Chargers' first six matches including another two-goal outing against Nyack.

Santanach heads into Wednesday night's showdown at rival Southern Connecticut State with eight goals, the most by a Charger since Rob Poirer scored eight times in 17 matches during the 2016 season. Santanach has a chance to become the first UNH player to hit the double-digit mark in goals since Frantz Charles had 10 in 2004.

Santanach, who ranks in the top 10 among Division II players in shots, shots on goal, game-winning goals, and goals per game, is quick to credit his teammates for his individual success.

"My goals, it is a team award," Santanach said. "I need my team to score the goals and thanks to them, I am scoring the goals. I think I have a good shot, a good right foot and I have good teammates so that combination is really good and that is why I scored what I have scored."

The original plan was for Santanach to continue his soccer career at New York Tech but in August 2020 the school announced it would be suspending activities for all its Division II programs for at least two years. New Haven coach Brian Quinn reached out to the New York Tech coaching staff in a gesture of goodwill and by the end of the phone call, Quinn had a new player on his recruiting radar when he was told, "I might have a player if you are interested. I said I am very interested and that was kind of the catalyst to get it going."

With no season in 2020 due to COVID-19, Santanach spent a year preparing for his arrival at UNH. He kept in contact with Quinn and worked on his game. When Santanach arrived on campus, Quinn had a pretty good idea that the Chargers had a player who could provide an offensive boost.

"We knew he was going to be an impact player for us right away," Quinn said. "We knew coming in that he was a player of some ability but once we saw him, we could see the poise, the touch, the confidence. We could see that pretty early on."

Scoring goals is something that comes easy to Santanach but the real adjustment was adjusting to life on a campus that he had never visited until he arrived in West Haven a couple of months ago.

"It was all new to me and I was emotional," Santanach said. "It was a new experience playing my favorite sport but it was not that difficult. It is true that when I was in class, it was a little bit more difficult because it was a new language for me, I have to improve my language but soccer, it is easy because it is an international language."

If Santanach had any doubts about how international the game of soccer is, that all ended when he met his UNH teammates. While there are 12 Connecticut players and 19 from New England, New Jersey, and New York on the current UNH squad, the roster also includes natives of Argentina, Cyprus, Germany, Iceland, Norway, Portugal, and Sweden.

"That surprised me because I came here and I felt that most of the people would be from here [Connecticut] or the United States," Santanach said. "I just saw the roster and I was surprised in a good way because we have a lot of different types of soccer on the same team, it is good because you are playing with different visions of the game, different ways to play it so I think that is a good thing for the team."

It didn't hurt that the Chargers have two other players from Spain on the team to help him adjust to life in the United States. When Santanach is dealing with any sort of homesickness, he knows his family is just a phone call away. He speaks to his mom on a daily basis and credits her with helping him more than she will ever know.

"My family, I love them so much," Santanach said. "They are always having my back, they are always right there. I am talking with my mom every day, talking with my brother and two sisters so I am always talking with them and they are always watching my games. Sometimes I feel a little sad, my mom would call me and she gives me energy so without them I would never be where I am now.

"Usually I talk before games, my mom gives me energy. She tells me, 'good luck, you are doing well, don't worry about the result and just have a good game.' My uncle is always watching my games because he was a soccer player. He is always trying to correct me, trying to tell me things he is seeing. Looking at the same from the outside, you can see things that you can't see from the inside so he is always telling me that maybe here you can do these things, he is a huge help for me."

Growing up in Barcelona, he knows a thing or two about soccer rivalries including the captivating Barcelona-Real Madrid showdowns. Santanach will be introduced to another rivalry game when the Chargers make to short ride to face Southern Connecticut.

The Owls dominated the series going 31-0-3 since a New Haven win in 1984. That streak came to an end with a 2-0 UNH victory in 2019, the first season that the Chargers were coached by Quinn, a former player and assistant coach at Southern Connecticut.

So does the game have special meaning for Quinn?

"Only because I have a lot of friends there," Quinn said. "It is just another opponent and you are going in trying to get three points. I love those guys over there, it is a good, healthy rivalry with them but also you have friendships that are equally as valuable. You always know when you play them it is going to be a good soccer game, that it is not going to get ugly, it is not going to be physical or dirty, it is going to be a game when both teams are trying to go in and try to play a good brand of soccer."

The game has added significance as the Chargers are tied for fourth in the Northeast-10 Conference standings with a 2-2-1 record and could improve their overall record to 6-2-1 with a win, the program's best mark through nine games since the 1998 season.

The strong start means more to Santanach than his goal-scoring prowess because whenever he spoke to Quinn over the last year, invariably the conversation centered around helping Quinn turn the Chargers' program around.

"Since last year I have been in contact with him, talking to him about how things have been going with him, how things are in Spain," Santanach said. "We said next year I am going to come and let's try to improve the soccer team and let's see what we can do.

"We have a great team so we can do good, good things this year."