This fall, it’s all up to Russell Payne.

When the first-year Army head coach leads his team into battle in a season-opening showdown at Marist next week, he knows all eyes will be fixed on him -- and not just the 5000 or so watching from the lofty Tenney Stadium stands.

Payne has the hopes of all of West Point riding on his shoulders.

He was dealt a difficult hand when he took over a Black Knights team that stumbled to a 4-28-1 combined record in 2008 and 2009. Now, as he tries to create a winning culture, he faces the daunting task of building a soccer program from the ground up.

“The terminology somebody threw my way is you feel like you are drinking from a fire hose,” he said. “It involves seeing how everything works at this school, meeting your players, learning the facilities – plus my wife and I have moved here and had a baby this year. But saying all that, it’s been extremely exciting.

“We are almost starting from scratch with this program. I’ve inherited the majority of the team. After starting last December, we had just two months to recruit before the admissions window closed, and were able to bring in five new players and inherit a couple of kids from prep schools. The mentality of players and the culture here has been our focus – the attitudes and culture of the program is what we are trying to get right.”

To turn the culture around, Payne has drawn inspiration from those he represents – the men and women of the U.S. Army – and he doesn’t let their lessons go to waste.

“Our principles are true to the principles that make the backbone of our U.S. Military,” he said. “We’re working on things like punctuality, how to present ourselves as a team, our behavior in all aspects, our accountability and loyalty to each other. Things like discipline and teamwork and making the guy next to you better are the backbone of this place. That attitude is refreshing. I wouldn’t say it’s easy, though. Applying those things in the realm of sports can be difficult. When you add pressures of performance and the technical aspects involved, it doesn’t always translate. So that’s been the challenge."

It isn’t easy to change the culture of a program that failed to earn a single conference win in 2009, and Payne talked specifically about how he must turn the tide.

“You do it by example, by talking about it, by setting standards,” he said. “An example came when we started here last winter. There is a misconception that every student at West Point is fit as a fiddle, that you have kids who are already athletic and fit. To be honest from a Division One athlete’s standpoint that couldn’t be further from the truth. We have to work on endurance as much if not more here than anyone else. For example, the guys take shuttle buses and vans all over campus here to our practice facility, which is not that far away on campus. Now in the off-seasons we jog to those. We leave the locker room together. We do that as a group and don’t leave anyone behind. You’re only as strong as the weakest guy and we are making sure everyone understand that. So we’ve set a foundation and standard for how we do things here.”

When Payne took the Army position in December, he achieved not only a personal goal, but broke another barrier on a much grander scale. With only a tiny percentage of major college soccer coaches being African American, Payne talked about what it means to him to join that exclusive rank.

“(The lack of African American representation) is a major disappointment,” he said. “There are many factors in our society have to do with that. There are assistant coaches around and if they are not earning opportunities to be interviewed, all those types of things need to be looked at. (The low number) is not representative of the game at the college, national team or especially the club level, but when you look at coaching staffs from the top down you don’t see it. Something definitely needs to change. There is quality out there. The chance has to be earned but there has to be a place where guys are given a chance to show what they can do.”

For Russell Payne, that chance is now.

And we’ll all be watching when Army clashes with Marist on Wednesday, September 1 at 6:45 p.m. on College LIVE!.