All that I know I learned after I was thirty. ~Georges Clemenceau

The Carolina RailHawks recently lent the name of Kupono Low, the lone remaining original RailHawk, to a locally brewed craft beer. But given the age of Low and many of his new RailHawks teammates, a 30-year-old Scotch would have been the more appropriate libation.

The RailHawks kick off their ninth season in club history this Saturday at 1 p.m. at WakeMed Soccer Park against the Ottawa Fury. If there’s a theme to the outset of Carolina’s 2015 campaign, it’s “experience.”

“It wasn’t a conscious thing where we needed to sign six or seven players who are 30 years of age,” says RailHawks manager Colin Clarke. “It just happened that the players who most interested us and came available at the right time were more experienced.”

First a few facts and figures. The average age of the current 18-player RailHawks roster is 28.4 years, the oldest in the North American Soccer League (NASL) and up from an average age of 24.4 for the 23 roster players for last year’s home opener. The 2014 season-starting roster comprised two players 30 years or older – this year six players are 30 or older, one-third of the roster. And two more players – Ty Shipalane and Simone Bracalello – will turn 30 midseason.

“Technically, the philosophy of the team is the same concept,” Shiplane says. “Obviously the players we have now are more experienced players, people who have been around the league compared to the past couple of years when we didn’t have as many experienced players as we do now.”

Experience is simply the name we give our mistakes. ~Oscar Wilde

When Clarke became the RailHawks’ manager in 2012, he promised to finally bring the club a league championship. The team has enjoyed notable successes during Clarke’s tenure. In 2013, it finished with the best regular season record in the NASL. Last year, it fell two points short of securing the fourth and final berth in the NASL Championship playoffs.

The RailHawks advanced to the quarterfinals of the Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup the last two seasons, dispatching the LA Galaxy from the Open Cup three straight years and the erstwhile Chivas USA twice. Last year’s Open Cup quarterfinals loss to FC Dallas ended a 23-match home unbeaten streak.

However, the RailHawk still don’t have a championship (whether of the full- or half-season variety), and more teams in the NASL are spending more money to accumulate player talent than Carolina with each passing year.

“The price of players has been driven up by others teams in the league,” Clarke says. “There are certain players you’d like to go after, but as soon as you start talking numbers it doesn’t make sense. Not to say we haven’t spent good money—we have. But we have to be fiscally responsible to put a squad together. It’s not about just putting four or five players together. It’s about having 18 to 22 players who will compete and have a chance to win a championship.”

Nine players on this year’s roster are new to the club, not counting returning prodigal sons like Austin da Luz and Chris Nurse. One of those newcomers is Neil Hlavaty, a veteran NASL midfielder who sees value in his teammates’ maturity as they race to gel as a unit in time for the start of the regular season.

“There’s no immaturity in the sense of youth on this team,” Hlavaty says. “We have a ton of fun and the locker room’s great. But I’m happy about the fact that we’re not bringing anyone up for the first time. We don’t have to coddle anyone through a situation.”

Indeed, Clarke contends that the makeup of this squad is very much by design.

“Believe or not, we wrote on the board at the end of [last] season the players we would like to add this group. And we’ve added pretty much everyone we had on the board.”

Indeed, while many of the newcomers are RailHawk hatchlings, they are familiar faces to U.S. pro soccer observers. Hlavaty spent the past four seasons with the Minnesota Stars and FC Edmonton. Midfielder Mark Anderson was a standout with the Fort Lauderdale Strikers since 2012. Mamadou “Futty” Danso spent the past four seasons in Major League Soccer, mostly with the Portland Timbers. Likewise, Winston-Salem native Wells Thompson spent seven season in MLS before playing for the Charlotte Eagles in 2014.

Bracalello comes to Carolina after five seasons in Minnesota, just as goalkeeper Hunter Gilstrap spent the past five years with the USL’s Pittsburgh Riverhounds. Fullbacks Blake Wagner and Wes Knight were teammates on the Vancouver Whitecaps during 2010-11, and then the San Antonio Scorpions in 2012.

In youth we learn; in age we understand. ~Marie Ebner-Eschenbach

As a longtime competitor in this league, Hlavaty says that the RailHawks’ tactical philosophy not only hasn’t changed, but it was also a major factor in his decision to sign with the club.

“I’ve never played under this coaching staff and this style of play,” Hlavaty explains. “They have a reputation of keeping the ball and quick passing and everyone having the ability to play [on the ball], not just the midfielders and a few strikers. We can play out of the back, and can play to anyone because they’re good with their feet.

“When you played Carolina before you were afraid they would hurt you with that. And I wanted to be a part of that.”

Experience is a comb which nature gives us when we are bald. ~Proverb

Perhaps it’s the rose-colored prism of preseason optimism, but the new flock of RailHawks say they have found what they were looking for when they signed with Carolina.

“In Fort Lauderdale last year,” Anderson says, “[our] philosophy was to defend first and attack from there—we get in our shape and sit back, and then once you win the ball play from there. But here they want us to press and express ourselves, and I’m a fan of that.”

“The thing I think we’ve brought in [is] everyone’s good with their feet but everyone’s going to put it in [on defense], which I think in the past here was something you could really take advantage of when you played Carolina,” Hlavaty admits. “So the mentality already here in preseason is that we’re going to defend and we’re going to defend together, and when we have the ball we’re going to be great with it.”

As for that elusive championship, Clarke believes the RailHawks’ successes the past two years demonstrate that silverware is still within their reach.

“The league is just very, very competitive,” Clarke says. “We had a very good chance to win [the championship] two years ago, and we were disappointed not to get to the championship last season. This year, we have a team that’s going to be ready to compete and certainly will be good enough to win a championship. That’s our goal.”