Catalina High School’s boys soccer team will be playing for a berth in the state tournament on its home pitch Saturday, the first time they’ve hosted a postseason game in recent history.
The Trojans went 7-1 during the shortened season which almost didn’t happen, and with very little room for error due to a tight roster, this is a year that the Catalina community won’t soon forget, said athletic director Tim Bridges.
The team will take on Goodyear Trivium Prep in a Class 3A state play-in game, with the winner advancing to Tuesday’s first round. And although excitement has been building in the Catalina community, no spectators will be allowed at Saturday’s game. Should the Trojans host at any point beyond Saturday, the school has been given the go ahead to open the stadium at 25% capacity.
“It would be fair to say it’s been a long haul for Catalina to host,” Bridges said. “This year certainly encapsulates a culmination of hard work Catalina and coach (Gabriel) Rocha have been doing to build a program that can be sustained through the pandemic.”
The soccer team has been the sole representative of Catalina athletics since school resumed in the fall. The Trojans are seeded No. 12 among the state’s Class 3A teams.
“To have success with the one program we’ve been able to start and have ongoing competition is just great,” Bridges said. “It’s exciting to have just a little bit of a taste of seeing our kids compete and have some success. It’s been hard to come by this year.”
Wednesday’s 5-3 win over Tanque Verde marked senior night for the Trojans. The team has six seniors representing six different countries.
Rocha continued with Catalina’s senior night tradition of giving the seniors custom FIFA cards. He had one other addition, too.
Each senior was presented with a 3-foot-by-5-foot flag from his home country. The flags will remain at Catalina after the boys graduate and fly along the edges of the stadium during every home game.
Rocha, who is in his third year as coach, said the new tradition will serve to “continually honor and embrace” the team’s international culture.
“My dad is a youth coach, and the impact he’s made to the young men and women he has coached is something I aspire to achieve,” Rocha said.
His efforts haven’t gone unnoticed.
“Coach Rocha, he’s a teacher and he’s from another country himself, so he’s involved in so many different facets of soccer,” Bridges said. “He makes for a great fit at Catalina.”
Catalina is a true melting pot: Students from 42 nationalities attend the school, speaking 45 different languages.
The Trojans’ six seniors all hail from different countries: Boniface Ekenya is from Kenya; Prosper Kaskile was born in Tanzania and raised in Democratic Republic of the Congo; Tore Machnow is from Germany; Arno Souadia is from France; Martin Miguel Jose is from Guatemala and Mahmoud Almustafa is from Syria. The remaining players on the team all have international roots.
“It really makes for a lot of excitement at our games,” Bridges said. “There are lots of languages, lots of dialects. That’s a psychological advantage sometimes.”
While on-campus staff is still limited at Catalina, Bridges said the excitement about the Trojans’ season is palpable.
“The buzz is out. Everyone wants to come to the game, especially since we’ve been ‘no fans’ all year,’ Bridges said. “There’s an excitement that’s present that people know what’s going on.”
Advance or not, Rocha said he feels blessed to have experienced this team and this season.
“I’m lucky to be coaching the kids I am, where I am and walking these guys through this. The way that my coaching path has taken me, Catalina was my only offer,” Rocha said. “It wasn’t necessarily my first choice, but it ended up blossoming for me.”
Rocha said he wouldn’t want to be coaching anywhere else, and that he’s excited to see what his team will accomplish.
He’s not the only one. Bridges and others will be watching with pride.
One of Rocha’s favorite parts of this particular team is the players’ deeply entrenched love of the game.
“They want to be here, they want to play soccer,” Rocha said. “They don’t need me to love it for them.”
And he’s not the only one who’s observed that. Just like the excitement about state is palpable, so is the love.
“They’re really just having fun out there, laughing and joking with each other. You can see it at practice in lightness that they have. But they’ve also really made it successful through their work together,” Bridges said of the team, adding that it has served as a beacon of hope for the rest of the school.
“We need to have some success as we wrap up and we need to carry everything we can into the summer and fall.”
