Pima College is a favorite to win a national title this week.
At precisely the moment Pima College scored to take a 5-0 lead over Glendale Community College on Saturday morning, there were 83 people in the grandstands at the Kino North auxiliary soccer facility.
At $5 per head, that’s not going to pay a lot of bills, but money has nothing to do with the Aztecs’ continued excellence in men’s soccer.
Coach Dave Cosgrove’s team won the outright ACCAC championship two nights earlier, stunning league giant Yavapai College 3-2 in overtime. The NJCAA soccer community has noticed.
Pima is ranked No. 2 in the United Soccer Coaches poll and No. 3 in the NJCAA men’s soccer coaches association rankings. Over the last five seasons, the Aztecs are 97-19-7, and, for my money, the leading sports program in Tucson over that period.
“I can’t say I saw this coming,” said Cosgrove, whose team won 5-0 Saturday to finish a school-record best 18-2 in the ACCAC, which is looked upon as the nation’s top JC soccer conference. “We lost all but about four guys from last year’s (19-5-3) team and as you know, this conference is as good as it gets.”
Indeed, in the two soccer polls, Phoenix College entered the week No. 8, Yavapai No. 9 and Arizona Western No. 15. But PCC swept Phoenix College and Yavapai in the space of three days.
“Our best record in the league had been 16-2-2, but this year we won 18 of our last 19,” said Cosgrove. “It has humbled me. I have learned that it’s not always talent — and we have talented kids — but also that character is a big part of it. This team has the talent and character.”
To combat Yavapai’s decades-long success, Cosgrove has wisely gone outside Southern Arizona to fill a few roster spaces. This year the Aztecs’ leading scorer is sophomore Hugo Kametani, who scored 21 goals, No. 2 in the league. He is from Japan. He wound up at PCC almost by a fluke; Kametani initially enrolled at a JC in Kansas in attempt to take courses for English as a second language. But he discovered Pima offered a better ESL program and moved to Tucson.
“We asked if he could work out with us and we saw how talented he is,” said Cosgrove. “He just fell into our lap; sometimes you get lucky.”
Pima has three Japanese players; goaltender Nils Roth, who leads the ACCAC in goals-against average at 0.5 per game, is from Switzerland.
The annual end-of-season tango with Yavapai College will renew itself this week. In the Region playoffs, hosted by Pima, the likely championship game will be Pima-Yavapai. Both are expected to advance to the district playoffs a week later, also in Tucson.
“We set all sorts of team records and had a lot of firsts this year,” said Cosgrove, whose team was 10-0 at home for the first time. “But now we start over again.”
