The University of Akron are preparing to retain last year's NCAA Division One championship title and Oliver Slawson, part of the coaching staff, took time out of their intense pre-season schedule to share their secret of success with Simon Williams of tribalfootball.com.

  The English tactician serves as second in command to Coach Caleb Porter and has been involved in Akron's well reputed soccer programme for over five years. The Zip's triumph last December proved to be Akron's first NCAA championship in any sport and led to seven of their players being snapped up in the MLS Draft 2010.

tribalfootball.com found out what it meant to be finally engraved on NCAA silverware.

"Akron's programme has a rich history from over a course of 56 years, we have advanced to the NCAA Tournament 25 times, including an appearance in the final the past two years, so it was nice to be a part of a team that finally made the breakthrough and win one," said Slawson.

Slawson continued to describe feelings after their momentous 1-0 victory over Louisville.

"It's been more a sense of accomplishment than achievement. We have prepared to be National Champions every year in our approach to a campaign. How we train, schedule (fixtures) we put in place through the regular season is all part of the process.

"And of course we'll take the luck we get along the journey but we believed we were capable of winning it and set out from day one with that mindset knowing we had the talent to control where the season would take us."

Coach Porter's wingman revealed what he believed is the key ingredients in their formula for success.

"Scoring more goals than the other team certainly plays a part!

"The program's identity plays a big part, our brand of football and how and why we play this way. For those who have not seen us, we have been described as the 'Barcelona' of college soccer. Certainly a lofty comparison but we do try and model certain aspects of our game on what they do and the success it has brought them.

"Regardless of whom we play or where and why we are playing, we have certain standards that must be met for a player to make it in our programme and these standards and culture is what has enabled us to develop as we have in recent years."

The tactical mastermind explained how Coach Porter orchestrates his side

"The coaching style in my view from Caleb Porter has remained constant, he wants his teams to put the ball on the floor and play attractive football but never to a degree where it's at the detriment of winning!

"We will never die in beauty so to speak.

"He has a vision of how he wants his teams to play. Through the process of recruiting the talent to be able to play the way we do and organizing the team on both sides of the ball, we certainly have a style of play that is now synonymous with Akron soccer."

Akron will pull up their socks to face Sasho Cirovski's University of Maryland on Saturday at 2.00pm ET.