Pacifica Christian boys’ soccer earns first league title
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Pacifica Christian had never been much for soccer, its admittedly mediocre boys’ teams mostly ignored in the shadow of the Newport Beach school’s powerhouse boys’ basketball program. Short on players, short on results, little prestige.
Meet the new Tritons, who punctuated their first league championship run with a measured 3-1 victory Tuesday afternoon over Santa Ana’s Magnolia Science Academy, ensuring sole possession of an Academy League crown they’d never before considered possible.
Sophomore Dylan Streiff created the penalty kick for Pacifica Christian’s first goal, then nodded home Reed Cleary’s precise free kick for the second in a comeback triumph that lifted the Tritons (10-6-3, 7-1-2 in the Academy League) five points clear of second-place Tarbut V’Torah (8-2-4, 5-2-3), the only Academy side they failed to conquer.
“Pacifica’s never been a team to do that, to win a league championship,” said Cleary, the Tritons’ senior back-line marshal, free kick specialist and long throw-in menace. “To come this far and to go through this many [seasons] without winning, finally winning feels really good.”
Credit head coach Johnny Marmelstein arrived in 2022 as the school’s first dean of students and, with some prompting, agreed to take charge of the soccer team. He was a decorated coach with three-plus decades’ experience, guiding eight teams into CIF finals and winning two Southern Section titles with Palos Verdes Peninsula Chadwick’s boys and four with St. Margaret’s girls. St. Margaret’s, in his 19-year tenure’s final game, captured a 2019 state championship.
“When I came here, I wasn’t sure I wanted to coach, because I’d done pretty much everything,” he said. “My wife, Lara, was the one that really convinced me. She said, ‘You know, Johnny, they could really use your help.’ And that’s all it took. She knows I’m a coach at heart, and that I love coaching. ...
“I’m so happy that I didn’t miss this. This was worth it. In the grand scheme of things, it doesn’t mean a whole lot. There’s a lot of stuff going on in the world that’s way more important than a high school soccer game. But for this moment and this time, it was great for these guys to win this.”
The Tritons went 5-11-3 in Marmelstein’s first season but reached the playoffs for the first time since their 2019 postseason debut, then last year posted the program’s first winning record, at 14-9-1. Wild-card losses ended both campaigns.
“The first year, we just worked our tails off,” Marmelstein said. “I’d never missed the playoffs in the winter time, and I thought we weren’t going to make it. We managed to get in, and then we got hammered and said, ‘Hey, we got to build on this. That’s what we’ve got to look like.’ ...
“We changed the mindset. For whatever reason, the guys on the soccer team didn’t think anybody cared about the sport or them. It’s untrue, but they felt that way. It was bringing coaches in that build them up and care about them ... get the guys used to playing harder and faster and tougher. ... Last year, we had our first winning season; I thought we were a year away from that. So I thought a league championship’s within reach.”
Pacifica Christian prevailed through a five-game unbeaten streak, wins in the last four, after a Jan. 21 loss to Tarbut V’Torah left it seven points behind in the standings. Two games in hand helped, and successive TVT losses last week opened the gate.
The Tritons caught up at 17 points on Jan. 28, with a 1-0 win at Avalon on Cleary’s goal, and clinched a share of the title with Thursday’s 2-0 victory over Legacy College Prep, with goals by Jordan Balbuena and Shaun Sandhu.
The Southern Section playoff pairings will be announced Saturday, with Pacifica Christian expected to be placed in Division 7 or the new Division 8. A first-round victory would be the program’s second, following the first by six years.
They’re a fast, tall counterattacking team that can build through possession, expert at exploiting space in the attacking third through Streiff, Sandhu and John Peterson IV, all sophomores, and junior catalyst Aiden Lynch, who can drive the attack in the middle or from the flanks. The “heart” of the team, Cleary says, foundational holding midfielders Balbuena and Abraham Abbasi. Owen Macpherson partners Cleary in central defense ahead of transformative freshman goalkeeper Kasper Batley, with fellow senior Devin Wang at left back and sophomore Cruz Alarcon on the right.
Pacifica Christian started slowly Tuesday on Vanguard University’s expansive field, and Magnolia Science Academy (6-5-3, 4-3-3), headed to the playoffs as the Academy’s No. 3 team, took advantage of a turnover in the box in the 10th minute, an easy finish for Alper Keskinturk.
The Tritons, who had the better of play the rest of the way, pulled even nine minutes later. Streiff made a weaving 30-yard run, then played a give-and-go with Sandhu and went down in a tussle with Pirates defender Edgar Cuevas reaching for the return pass. Abbasi put the PK away.
Streiff provided a lead in the 34th minute, towering to get his head to Cleary’s serve from the left flank. Lynch’s cross from the right flank produced an own goal in the 61st minute.
The most riveting strike — Sandhu’s 58th-minute blast to the right-side netting from a 50-yard run through several defenders — didn’t count: The linesman’s flag was raised, the ball having crossed out of bounds early on Sandhu’s sprint.
The playoffs are another step in the program’s evolution, and, Marmelstein said, “We’re going to see what happens.”
“What is it that Jim Harbaugh said? Number one, play hard. Number two, win a game. Number three, win two games in a row. Number four, win a championship. We’re on that trajectory. We still have a long way to go, but the guys, they’ve really stepped up.”
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