The Birth of a Partnership

This team was born out of necessity. The founders, Milad Gueramian (CS 16') and Jonathan Montesdeoca (EE '18') were driven to create this team by an unending passion for the sport and for USC. Milad Gueramian started dabbling with the idea of creating a team back in 2013 before his first week of classes. He learned that there had been no students groups actively lobbying for this team so he started a petition to gauge student interest for NCAA D1 men's soccer team. After a few months, 1,300+ students were on board with the idea. Luckily, in the Fall of 2015, Jonathan Montesdeoca found Milad's petition while independently searching for ways to bring soccer back to USC. The two joined forces and the rest is history.

Current Org/ Team Status

2017-2018: Our organization’s primary goal this first year was to build our administrative team. Though our admin team was mainly focused on managing the soccer team, we also catered to the social and service aspects of our organization. In the fall, we organized one Fifa Tournament Fundraiser which brought about 20 people together to connect over soccer. We also helped VGSA livestream part of their annual spring soccer tournament and participated in a soccer-camp with LAFC supporter groups Wings of Troy (USC) and Black and Gold Lions (LMU).

2018-2019: In our second year, we have made extraordinary progress as an organization. To begin the year, we were the only college-based soccer team to compete in the Lamar Hunt US Open Cup, beginning an annual tradition that hope will take us further and further into the tournament as the years go on. We revamped our team, adding 20 new players and 2 new administrators - including an assistant coach. These efforts have propelled us to 3rd in the league by the end of November, 4 spots ahead of where we were this time last year. We look forward to competing for promotion as the season continues.

Future Goals

Our ultimate goal is to have several teams, the first of which would be a well funded, USC backed, semi-professional team competing in the PDL. BYU’s team has been competing in the PDL for more than a decade; we want to utilize their model and improve and advance upon it, hopefully buying our own professional USL franchise in the distant future. We want to be able to recruit players internationally and on scholarship (since we are outside of NCAA jurisdiction we can have boosters too). We also want to give opportunities for community based players to participate in our club at all team levels. Our organization strives not only to bring competitive men’s soccer back to USC, but we hope to help bridge the gap between our community and the students at USC.