Striker Saul Iwowo ’26 had a unique journey to becoming the starting striker and top scorer for Dickinson Men’s Soccer.

Iwowo was born in Beckenham, 15 minutes from Central London. He started playing soccer at a young age, with dreams of making it to the professional level.He bounced around top soccer academies before putting his serious soccer career on hold to focus on basketball. Iwowo followed his brother to the US, going to the Brooks School in Massachusetts as a high school freshman. After a strong freshman soccer season, Iwowo made the choice to prioritize soccer again. 

The decision paid off. He followed up his strong freshman year with an even better sophomore year, catching the attention of Dickinson head coach Jorge Chapoy. Soon, Iwowo was one of twelve new members of the team from the class of 2026.

Iwowo made it clear that he thought through the decision to play at a U.S. college carefully. “I felt like playing here in America. There’s a lot of opportunities to carry on academics and also play sports. And I think for me, obviously I would love to be a professional soccer player, like that’s every kids dream but, being on a more realistic, conservative view I felt like having an opportunity to get a really good education and come out with something and also be able to pursue sports was something I was very interested in but with all my friends being home it was very hard to make that decision because, on the other hand, I did want to go to school with my friends.”

You wouldn’t know it, since he plays striker so comfortably, but Iwowo never played the position before he got to Dickinson. When he was younger, he played a less attack-focused role as a center midfielder, later moving to attacking midfielder in high school before making a final change to striker. 

“Playing striker now is definitely what suits me the most, sort of my game plan,” Iwowo said. “Back to goal I feel like I can hold off many defenders, but I’m also quick enough to run through and I love to, to score goals. Being in opportunities to score goals as a striker is what I want to be doing.”

During the recruitment process, Coach Chapoy made it clear he wanted Iwowo in the striker role and had a vision of him using his size to score goals and hold up the ball to start attacks. Iwowo spent the summer prepping for his new role and it has clearly paid off. 

Along with his impressive shooting, one of Iwowo’s strengths is his passing ability, which is unique for a striker.

“It’s definitely very important – getting goals is the goal of course but you do want to get assists too. And I do like to string play together and I think my vision of the game is something as a striker I’m not able to show as much because I’m more focused on scoring goals and linking up play so any opportunity I get to kind of thread the needle with a pass or run down the wing and cross a ball in, those are things I like to show off, so I definitely think that having vision as a striker is very important.”

Dickinson’s team is much improved from last year’s. Iwowo and his fellow first-years are a huge reason why.

He said “Coach Chapoy did a really good job recruiting a lot of strong players in this class. So coming into this season I was optimistic. From practice one, you could see the intensity was there, the energy was there, the belief was there.”

Iwowo also touched on the excitement of having so many contributing First-Years, saying “ I really wanted to come into a class with guys that can play, guys I can play the next four years with. Playing with kids like Ethan [Jarden ’26], Jackson [Wolf ’26], seeing them start every game means a lot. It means I can depend on them now and in two years when we’re juniors. I can depend on them with my life, cause I know they are gonna be able to bring it because they’ve been bringing it every single day. Same with the people on the bench. We have a good, good core and it means a lot.”

Iwowo has started off his Dickinson career very well, collecting four goals already and Iwowo’s ‘Better Call Saul’ celebrations are quickly becoming iconic. Expect a lot more of them in the future.