PVCC Puma Press: April 2006

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	Photo by Kristine Francis
	The retooled men's soccer team searches for their first playoff birth in two years. They are off to a good start with a 6-1 record.
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The PVCC men’s soccer team bolted to a great start in the new season with high hopes of reaching the playoffs for the first time in two years.

The Pumas are currently tied with Pima Community College with a 6-1 Arizona Community College Athletic Conference record. The only loss of the season was to Yavapai College, which is currently ranked number two in the nation.

“The stellar play of the Pumas has already garnered some national attention,” says the new men’s soccer coach, Tim Marchisotto. “We were talked about being ranked nationally. If we continue our winning ways, we have a good opportunity to be ranked in the top 15 in the country.”

The Pumas are led by freshman Caesar Mexia, the ACCAC Men’s Soccer Player of the Week for Sept. 16. Mexia currently leads the nation in goals and points, netting 19 goals and 42 points. His 19 goals set a new school individual season scoring record in only eight games. The previous record was 17.

Rounding out the core group of players on the team are Captains Eric Lespron and Cory Norris, freshmen Vlastimir Davidovic, Dyson Larricq, Erik Soto, Brandon Wimberly and Austin Dowd, and sophomore Juan Mendes.

“We are a very deep team,” says Marchisotto. “It seems as each game goes by another player steps up. We’ve got the depth to have other players come in and not miss a beat in what we are doing. I would say that we are a team right now that is pretty much 15–16 players deep.”

Marchisotto, who is in his first year coaching at PVCC after eight years at Grand Canyon University, says that coming to PVCC was a completely different challenge because when he arrived in January there basically was no team. Only three players returned from last year’s team.
“We basically had to build a team from scratch and do it in a very short period of time,” says Marchisotto.

Since Marchisotto got a late start on the fall recruiting period, he went after transfers, including guys who were red shirts at Division II programs and National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics programs.

He also went after some players who had not competed in a season but were somewhere within the Maricopa Community College system if not at PVCC. Despite the late start, Marchisotto was still able to do “really, really well” in recruiting top freshmen from the top clubs in Arizona.

“We’ve got a team right now that consists of talented young freshmen, some experienced players who came in via transfer, and a couple of older players who hadn’t been to college yet who were playing high level men’s teams,” says Marchisotto. “It’s a nice mixture of young, experienced and older guys who bring in leadership. So far the formula is working, and the chemistry is great on the team.”

The Pumas have set very high goals for this season, which include winning a national championship. To achieve that goal, they have to be one of the top six teams to go to the conference playoffs, which Marchisotto stresses is the most important thing. If the Pumas can finish first or second in conference play, they will earn a bye in the first round.

“Our goal is to finish the regular season No. 1 or 2 in the conference,” says Marchisotto. “If we don’t achieve that, then we’ll just have to get to the finals by winning one more game.”

The team prepared for the season by attending a two-week training camp that began on August 1. The camp includes three training sessions per day. The early morning session consists of strength and conditioning. The midday session incorporated classroom “chalk talk” or sometimes special stretching such as yoga. The afternoon sessions were reserved for soccer training.

The Pumas played three preseason games during that time, with two against four-year schools. The Pumas wrapped up training camp with a 3-2 victory over Emery Riddle University, an NAIA school. Marchisotto says the victory was a nice way to gain momentum heading into the regular season.

For now, the Pumas are trying to improve with every game. Marchisotto stresses the importance of peaking at the right time of the season and having the players continue to develop as a team.

“Sometimes you can have a player at a very high level above everybody and then he fizzes out,” says Marchisotto. “With us, it seems to be going right. We hope by the time of our rematch with Yavapai we are running at all cylinders so we’ll have that final push going into the playoffs.”