Rio Grande Valley FC entered its first season in the USL with a pair of familiar names to the league’s fans, with Devin Perales and Calle Brown both on the roster as the Toros kicked off the season.

As the year progressed, though, it was rookie Callum Irving who emerged as another talented ‘keeper in the club’s ranks. The Canadian, who went undrafted in the 2016 MLS SuperDraft despite a solid career at the University of Kentucky and in the PDL for Vancouver Whitecaps FC U-23, came to the fore as the Toros set a USL record with eight consecutive shutouts in their push up the Western Conference standings.

“I think it was a culmination of a lot of things,” Irving told DynamoTheory.com’s Carson Merk of the streak in a wide-ranging interview this week. “We encountered a bit of luck, however, I really feel as though we earned those small moments of luck with how hard we had been working all season. The defensive principles really started to click with the group as a whole as well. Once we saw the results we also had the added motivation and belief within the group that nobody was going to score on us.”

Irving finished the season with a 0.65 goals-against average, a mark that would have put him in line for the USL Golden Glove award had he seen slightly more action. Irving fell 109 minutes short of eligibility for the award, which required a goalkeeper to have played 50 percent of his team’s minutes in the regular season. With the quality of Perales and Brown alongside him, though, Irving understood that there would be rotation among the group as all three tried to push their games forward.

“As a goalkeeper, you know that only one guy can play at a time, so I guess I was prepared for being on the bench from time to time,” Irving told Merk. “If you're not mentally prepared to deal with that as a goalkeeper, then you won't make it far in this game.”

Irving also got the chance to make the trip to Houston on a regular basis to train with the Dynamo, and veterans Tyler Deric and Joe Willis – a player who was previously in Irving’s position on loan with the Richmond Kickers. The opportunity to learn from the MLS veterans, and Dynamo goalkeeper goal Paul Rogers – the former U.S. Women’s National Team goalkeepers coach – was an exciting one for the 23-year-old.

“Training with Houston was great,” Irving told Merk. “To have the opportunity to get the call-in as many times as I did throughout the year was great, and I felt very fortunate to get that level of training on a semi-regular basis. Paul Rogers is a fantastic goalkeeper coach, one of the best I've ever worked with, and so for me to be able to get games with RGV and have sessions with him, I'd say it was a pretty good year of soccer.”

• Year in Review: Rio Grande Valley FC

Irving will head back to Vancouver for the offseason to try and build on the lessons he’s taken away from his first season with the Toros. After his emergence in Rio Grande Valley, Irving’s second professional year has a lot of promise to live up to.

“Adjusting to the pressures of the pro game and the disappointment that can come with that pressure was difficult,” Irving told Merk. “However, I had a very strong support group around me in the form of my teammates, and so I think that after this year, I'm much more prepared for my second full professional season and look forward to the challenges ahead.”