Late in the second half Friday, Ryan Johnson, a midfielder who plays at North Carolina, and Mike Vidiera, a midfielder who plays at Duke, worked off each other as they tried to tally their team’s first goal and bring some life to an otherwise listless match.

If it were the fall, Johnson and Vidiera would have been wearing their respective shades of blue and attacking one another.

But this is the summer, and they are among 20 players from different universities who have come together in Cary to form the Cary RailHawks U-23s, who play in the USL Premier Development League.

The PDL has been offering college players the opportunity to continue playing in a structured environment throughout the summer without costing them their college eligibility since the mid 1990s.

“It’s great,” said Cary forward Zack Schilawski, a Cary High grad and rising sophomore at Wake Forest. “Any opportunity you get to play against some of the best players in the ACC at practice is a great opportunity you have to take advantage of.”

Twelve players on the roster attend North Carolina, Duke, N.C. State or Wake Forest, while others hail from Appalachian State, Coastal Carolina, UNC Wilmington and Elon.

“All these players are the best players in college,” said RailHawks goalkeeper Aaron Weant, who will be a senior at Coastal Carolina in the fall. “I play in a smaller conference, the Big South, and all these guys play in the ACC, so it’s good to play against them and learn from them. It’s improved my game.”

The team has an additional hometown flavor in that nine members played at Triangle high schools, including Schilawski (Cary High, Class of ’06), Brooks Haggerty (Cary High, Class of ’06), Kirk Hudgins (Cary High, Class of ’06), Michael Callahan (Green Hope, Class of ’05) and Weant (Green Hope, Class of ’04).

“We wanted a good balance,” said coach Sean Nahas of putting this team together. “We want to be able to get numbers forward. We want to have players out of the back attack, have the fitness, pace, athleticism, while in the middle having players that can be creative and dangerous, and guys up top that can get defenders unbalanced.

“At times it’s there, at times it’s not.”

The local franchise began as the Raleigh CASL Elite in 2002. Last year, the Capital Area Soccer League severed its ties with the PDL, and the team was taken over by Next Level Academy in Morrisville. Next Level is run by Damon Nahas, who is also a Carolina RailHawks assistant coach and brother of Sean Nahas.

In March, Next Level and the Carolina RailHawks announced a parternship and the team was renamed the Cary RailHawks U-23s.The team is operated jointly by the Carolina RailHawks and Next Level Academy.

It’s that relationship with the senior club, a member of the USL First Division, that gives playing in Cary extra appeal. PDL players get to train with the pros on some days, which only bolsters their development on the field, and the exposure to the professional environment shows them what they need to do to get to that level.

This is a rare arrangement.

Of the 63 teams competing in the PDL this year, only four have ties to professional outfits. They are the Colorado Rapids U-23s, Atlanta Silverbacks U-23s, Richmond Kickers Futures and the RailHawks U-23s.

“The whole experience — we’ve already had a couple opportunities where we get to practice with the [pro team] and we get to scrimmage against them — to see that example gives us an extra advantage against some of the other PDL teams around,” Schilawski said.

While the opportunity to play in the PDL was attractive for the players, so too was it for Nahas to coach them.

“With me, I’m with youth so much,” he said. “To come out and work with these guys gives me a challenge and allows me to connect with the older age groups. And it allows them to see a different coaching philosophy than they see in college. “When I was approached about doing it, it wasn’t a second guess. I wanted a professional challenge. I want to put myself out there and see how I’d handle it and see how these guys respond.”

Judging by the results, they’re responding well.

Carolina started the season with a loss and two ties, results that kept them out of qualifying for the 2007 Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup. Since then, they are unbeaten in their last five matches. The RailHawks enter the week, 4-1-3 and tied with the Central Florida Kraze with 15 points to lead the Southeast Division.

“Now everything’s coming together and we’re playing well,” said defender Andre Sherard, who plays collegiately at North Carolina.

The RailHawks reached the midway point of their season with a 1-0 win over Nashville last Saturday.

If the second half of the season plays out like the first, then they should qualify for the playoffs for the first time since the franchise’s inaugural year. The top two teams from each of the PDL’s eight divisions qualify for the postseason.

“In the begininning, all of us knew it was just a matter of getting some games and practices under out belts,” Schilawski said. “I think all of us knew we had the talent to get it done, and there’s really no excuse not to win. We’re finally just coming together well. It’s a great time.”