For the first time in six years, the Pitman High boys soccer team has lifted the trophy that bears their namesake.
On Saturday afternoon, the boys in green defeated Pacheco (Los Banos) by a 1-0 score to win the 18th annual Pride Cup, which they hosted over two days beginning Friday morning.
“Six years, that’s a long time for a program not to go without their own tournament championship,” Romero said. “It’s great to have that feeling, and I know that the program is very happy to get this.
The title-clinching score came by way of junior Noah Shamoon in the 35th minute of play. On the other end of the pitch, senior goalkeeper Isaac Padilla further elevated his dominance by tossing four straight shutouts as the Pride outscored opponents 14-0 over their four games at the tournament.
But in the opener Friday, a 6-0 throttling of Grace Davis, he had little to defend against his teammates, preventing the Spartans from attempting a single shot on goal. Scorers were Giancarlo Nakamura, Davian Lizarraga, Sergio Moran, Alonso Stephens, Zach Looney and Giovanni DeCasso. Later that day, DeCasso knocked in both goals in their 2-0 win over Ceres to advance to the semifinals. Padilla had two saves.
Similar results were produced against Delhi, as Padilla again had to block just two attempts while the offense took care of the rest, scoring five times courtesy of two goals from DeCasso, Nicolas Rodriguez, Everest Colnic and a pair from Nikamura.
Particularly happy with the defensive effort was assistant coach Ricky Rosas, who has played and coached with Romero at UC Merced while being teammates at Turlock’s Academica SC.
“Defensively, we pride ourselves, because obviously in order to be a great team, you have to keep a zero in the back as much as you can,” he said. “I’m proud of the boys this weekend who showed they can understand and implement our structure.”
The Pride are now 5-0 for the first time since the 2018-19 campaign that saw them finish as runners-up in the Sac-Joaquin Section Division I playoffs. That was also the last year they won the home tournament.
Romero believes that familiarity between him, the school and the players has been beneficial. He enters his third year at the helm alongside mostly the same cast of players. The weekend proved that consistency and longevity brings results.
“I’ve been coaching these same players hard for three years,” he said. “Me and Coach Ricky have been able to implement our style, and they’ve adapted to our style. So three years of playing our style, it was at one point bound to work out and get us results. And I think this is going to be the start of something very special with this team.”
