Women's Soccer and The Path to an Elusive State Title

Women's soccer at City College has a heritage of winning, and with prejudice. In the 2025-2026 season, they had an overall record of 17-3-2, 10-0-1 in the conference and only losing to Sierra College 2-1 in the final round of playoffs, Sierra later won the 3C2A Soccer State Championship. City College had played Sierra College before the start of the conference and had beat Sierra 2-1.

“So we beat them 2-1 at their place earlier, then returned for the lead eight and lost 2-1, but I think this year we just have hopefully just a little bit more depth in areas that we didn't have as much depth. So the hope is that that's going to take us over the finish line,” said Coach Jeff Wilson.

During the playoffs, two of their starting fullbacks were injured, which pulled other players out of their natural positions, proving difficult for them. Wilson wants to have additional players who play at the same level to step up when unforeseen illnesses or injuries arise. 

“Looking at that, myself and my staff wanted to address that and just have people where you know if somebody gets hurt in their natural position. You have somebody else who can replace and also plays that position,” said Wilson.

City College will be playing Sierra College at home on Tuesday, Sept. 22 at 4 p.m. 

Wilson is cultivating an active dynasty of elite players. Eight players who were under Wilson last year transferred and play at the collegiate level.

“The majority of them went Division Two, and then we had two young women that went Division I,” said Wilson.

Part of their recipe is the level of competition they are playing during the post-season in the spring and the pre-season. In the spring, they played University of San Francisco, a NCAA Division I team and will play another two NCAA Division II teams in the first week of September.  

“I don't think there's too many people from the outside that would be able to know who's who other than the uniform. So I think it says a lot about our talent level. We compete at a very high level. Although it's community college, I think if we really were to play out a season in one of those conferences, maybe not Division I, but you know any of the Division II conferences, I think we’d do fine,” said Wilson.

Defensively, City College was a fortress with a moat, alligators included. Overall they only conceded 11 goals, conceding two goals during the conference and ultimately the last two scored by Sierra College in the playoff finals. One of their center defenders, Kalea Dwelle, was named All-American last year and will return.

 City College delivered some thrashings last season, with some brutal scores like 8-0 against Gavilan College, 7-0 against Skyline College and 7-0 against Foothill College. Their leading goal scorers Chemnui Simpson and Luz Hernandez are set to return. 

“I’m excited to work with a very talented group. Really excited about our coaching staff. Our coaching staff features three women that played here and then went on to four-year schools and are now back. So I think they can share their story to the women and explain why it's important to be here and what you're going to get out of it. But I think overall, I'm just excited for another year, and we hope to make a run at that elusive kind of state title that we're coming close to, but haven't quite reached the top yet,” said Wilson.