What a great weekend in Santa Barbara - we sent 9 teams (our largest tournament ever) and we had incredible results and a ton of fun! We won three championships (the most of any program in the entire tournament) - our U10 Boys, U12 Boys, and 2021 Boys went undefeated and prevailed in the Championship games!. 

Overall our boys and girls youth and middle school and 9th grade record was 22 wins, 3 losses and one tie! That is one of our best performances ever.  

Congrats to Jonny Glazier, who led his U10 Gold Boys team to its first tournameent victory this year with very convincing wins against every team in the Division.  This is the third time in the last 4 years we have won the U9/U10 Division in Santa Barbara.

Steve Harman led his army of U12 Boys to their third title this year - prevailing 6-4 in the final in a back and forth championship game versus the Santa Monica Dragons, always a perennial powerhouse program.

Our Girl's 2022/23 U14 Gold team came in third place, and firmly established our Girls program led by Colleen Niklaus as one of the best in California, beating Bay Area teams from The Wave, Tenacity, Verve and NorCal Rize.  

Our Girls Silver U14 2022/23 team went undefeated 4-0-1 yet the tournament managed to mess things up and not get them in the Championship bracket (boo!)

In perhaps the most emotional game of the weekend, our 2021 9th grade Boys team, led by Goalie Gavin Gannod,  convincingly trounced Empire 2021 twice in a row, and grabbed their fourth title of the year.  Led by interim coach Greg Hollingshead and Kyle Schneider, the team played very strong defense and kept solid control of the ball thoughout the tournament.

The High School teams had very respectable performances as well.  Perhaps the highlight of the weekend for the Boys HS Select teams come from behind last minute victory over OC Crush 5-4, whom they had lost to 8-3 earlier in the tournament, and the Girls HS convincing victory over NorCal Rize.

The team social events were without a doubt once again a success.  We had 150 people for pizza/wings/salad on Friday night, and over 225 people for a great BBQ/tritip dinner on Saturday.  The Santa Barbara Hospitality Tent is traditionally our most bountiful.  A new parent from Tiburon - with extensive experience in youth sports, had this to say about the Santa Barbara Hospitality Tent "the Team NorCal Hospitality Tent goes on record as the finest hospitality tent I have even seen from any Club in any sport'.  We agree!  Steve Harman did a fantastic job pulling all the catering events together and deserves a round of virtual applause.

Look for more pictures that we will post to Facebook, our website and Instagram in the coming days.  Lots of championship photo's and happy teams, and well fed families.  The setting was spectacular and the weather was perfect.  My favorite moment was being the first person to arrive at the Polo Field at 5:30AM on Saturday morning and watching the sun rise over the mountains......