Soccer Pre-season Opener: Rain Before The Storm

Redwood High School’s Varsity Soccer Coach shares his thoughts and predictions for the upcoming 25-26 season.

By: Abigail Zapata

As the summer heat winds down, Redwood’s Varsity Soccer coach, Joey Chica, is already heating things up with new strategies and high expectations for the upcoming soccer season.

For a lot of people, summer is people’s time to relax, take it easy, and begin getting ready for school; however, that is not the case for Chica’s varsity soccer team. 

During the pre-season, Chica says, “We’re learning a new formation that we’re gonna try this year just to get more to the attack and score more goals.”

There will be many bumps in the road, and Chica is aware of that; one of those being the competition he faces throughout the year.

“We’re gonna be playing a lot of top opponents throughout the year, at least the top ten soccer teams around the central valley,” said Chica. “I know we’re gonna get battle tested and ready for league and obviously playoffs.”

Lucky for him, he has very seasoned, and well trained players.

With his boys making it very far in the playoffs last year, they know what it takes to win a game, as well as working under pressure in difficult scenarios. 

Chica’s 2024-25 soccer season had a pretty great season, going 12-7-9 and getting far in the playoffs, they unfortunately fell short in the Semifinals of the Division 2 CIF Central Section Championship, losing 4-0.

Although unfortunate, Chica did not leave the field without being taught a lesson, and having a chip on his shoulder for the 2025-26 season.

He says “Obviously, we know what the expectation is, again having a lot of returners coming back know, they know what it’s like to be in that spotlight.”

“I think now having that experience in that game will hopefully help us moving forward to this year, but we gotta get there first,” says Chica.

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