Bryce Jamison’s smile was impossible to miss. 

The 20-year-old forward has often found himself on the wrong end of heckling at Weidner Field.

“Whenever I played here against the crowd, it was horrible, horrible. It was so annoying,” Jamison said. “Finally having them supporting me, it’ll be great. Especially maybe when things don’t go my way, I know they’re there to cheer me on and especially if I do something on the field, then they’ll go crazy.” 

Jamison played for Orange County SC from 2022 to 2025. Shortly before his career with the California club began, he trained with the Switchbacks in 2022. 

“As he was coming through Barça Academy, we knew the old director there in Ged (Quinn) and Bryce had paid a visit and come out and trained with us in 2022 I believe. It was at the back end and we lost out in the race (to sign him) to Orange County,” McCann said. “We met his mother, we met his agent and they all came out and we got to know him a little bit more and then obviously when you’re playing against him … you then know from the football side what he can do in the league as well.”

Jamison, who signed with the Colorado Rapids in 2025, was one of two players lent to Colorado Springs last week and with only one training session under his belt, he made the start for the Switchbacks against Phoenix on Wednesday, where he recorded an assist. 

On Saturday, when Jamison makes his Weidner Field debut as the Switchbacks host El Paso Locomotive FC at 7 p.m., it’ll be with a full-steam-ahead, take-no-prisoners, “kill, kill, kill” mentality. 

The Switchbacks (8-8-4) will need all the confidence they can muster. El Paso (9-7-4) enters play on Saturday having shut out its last three opponents and has earned four clean sheets in the previous five contests. 

The Switchbacks, by contrast, have dropped three of their last five-regular season matches. Neither McCann nor members of his roster will ever use the schedule as an excuse. But the club has faced a steep challenge in recent weeks, having played four matches across all competitions since Aug. 8. Saturday’s home contest will be the fifth, completing the second straight week of having games on Wednesday and Saturday. 

Three of Colorado Springs’ previous four matches were played on the road, beginning with a cross-country trek from Rhode Island on the 8th to Spokane, Wash. on the 12th, back home against Birmingham on the 15th and then to Phoenix on the 19th for an evening bout in triple-digit temperatures. 

Wednesday’s match resulted in a 3-1 loss for the Switchbacks with signs of weariness clearly beginning to show. 

“That was the first game where I felt it was obvious, first half and second half,” McCann said of his team’s fatigue. “First half, it was honestly our type of half. We wanted it, we wanted it a little bit more stop, start. We did set a task of scoring in the last 10 minutes of the half because we knew that they give up a lot of goals then and we felt that we could bring on our subs and really punish them because we have a lot of pop with our subs but we were then 2-1 down. It looked maybe a game too far, but we also aren’t going to accept all of those pieces as an excuse why.”

McCann’s analysis of Wednesday’s contest provides good insight into how Colorado Springs needs to attack Saturday. The circumstances may be daunting, but El Paso will present chances for the Switchbacks to exploit. They need to make good on those opportunities. 

“Yes, they’ve kept shutouts, but they’ve also given up chances and they can be exposed in a few of those moments,” McCann said. “We know we have the pieces that can. It’s then about once we do create those, it’s taking them.”

However, the Switchbacks won’t be the only club with a potent attack on Saturday.

Colorado Springs and El Paso are tied for fourth in the USL Championship in goals scored with 32. The two clubs are the highest scoring teams in the league’s Western Conference. 

The Switchbacks will need as significant a turnaround defensively as the ones they’ve faced on the schedule in recent weeks.  

McCann had harsh words for what happened against Phoenix. 

“The previous game was our worst defensive display, on the eyeball and on the data, all year,” he said. “So things have to change. Personnel will change. We’re not going to accept that.” 

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Scoring Leaders

USL Championship regular-season stats only 

Goals

COS: Khori Bennett (11, tied for second in USL Championship) 

ELP: Rubio Rubin (10)

Assists

COS: Sadam Masereka, Sam Williams (3)

ELP: Rubio Rubin, Eric Calvillo (4)

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Switchbacks sign Jones for season 

On Thursday, the Switchbacks announced that they signed goalkeeper Sam Jones for the remainder of the 2026 season with an option for 2027. Jones was brought in on a 25-day contract back in July following an injury to keeper Christian Herrera. 

“Sam [Jones] has impressed everyone in the building both professionally and as a character,” McCann said in a release. “He has earned the extension from the 25-day contract, and that is exactly how we want to be.”