JAMAICA, N.Y. -- While most of his classmates were finishing final exams and most of his teammates and fellow athletes were participating in a season-ending awards dinner, St. John's University junior men's soccer player Chris Wingert (Babylon, N.Y.) was in Mexico.

Wingert wasn't seeing the sights or laying on the beach, however. The Red Storm captain was training for a match tonight against Mexico, where he and the other members of the United States Under-23 National Team will play. The match will be played at 8 p.m. (ET) in Guadalajara at Estadio Tres de Marzo.

The United States U-23 National Team is the team that is expected to make up the country's next Olympic squad.

Wingert in the pool of 25 players for consideration and was named to the 18-man roster during the first week of the month. A first-team All-American last season and the BIG EAST's Defensive Player of the Year, Wingert is the only college player on the team's roster, which features 18 players who compete in Major League Soccer, including United States World Cup standouts Landon Donovan and DeMarcus Beasley.

The team arrived in Guadalajara on Sunday and practiced on Monday the Los Olivos training facility, a six-field training area that is the official home of two Mexican professional clubs as well as the national team when they are in town. The game will be televised locally, but will be competing with a Mexican all-star game at the same time.

This is the second time this year the U-23 team played together in 2003, posting a 1-1-3 record during a training period in Portugal. . The U.S. was 1-1-1 in a three-game series against reserve teams from the Portuguese First Division before posting a pair of hard-fought 1-1 draws with Portugal and Russia as part of the Vale de Tejo International Tournament. After beating Russia 4-1 in penalties, the U.S. fell 4-1 in the PK shootout to the host nation to finish second in the four-team tournament.

The U.S. Under-23 MNT will begin qualifying for the 2004 Olympics in November, as they enter the tournament in the second round and will face the winner of a first-round match-up between the tiny nations of St. Kitts & Neves and Dominica, who will meet in a home-and-home series in September and October.

Wingert led St. John's to a 13-3-5 record last season and helped guide the team to a No. 1 national ranking during the regular season, the first time the SJU program had been ranked that high during a regular season. The Red Storm were selected to the program's 11th-straight NCAA Tournament and advanced to the Sweet 16 for the seventh-straight season.

A defender, Wingert has led a Red Storm defensive unit that has ranked among the NCAA's elite in the last three seasons. This year, the team ranked first in the nation in goals against average and posted a school-record 13 shutouts.

He was a first-team All-BIG EAST selection this season, the only player unanimously selected to the first team, and was named the league's defensive player of the year. In addition, Wingert was a first-team NSCAA All-American, a first-team All-Northeast Region selection, a finalist for the Hermann Trophy as the National Player of the Year and was a first-team Verizon Academic All-American, carrying a 3.83 grade-point average in communication arts.