Intramural sports can be a way to have fun, fool around and be competitive. It allows people to bond with their teammates during the season and outside of the sport.
At Cal Poly, the ASI Intramural Soccer Rules state that home teams must wear white and the away team must wear black. This is the case with most teams, but there is one team called the Soccer Moms who wear pink jerseys.
The team started together in the fall of 2021 when current Cal Poly seniors Brenden Jacoby, Jayden Perez, and third-year student Bryson Riddington met up and decided to start their team.
Each Player’s Early Soccer Experience
Riddington majors in communication studies and has played organized soccer since second grade. According to Riddington, the team thought having pink jerseys would make them a unique squad and be comedic for other teams to see.
It was $15 to make a light pink jersey for all players on the team.
Jacoby is also a communication studies major and a member of the Cal Poly Debate Team from Rocklin, Calif. He started playing soccer in 2007 and played club soccer from second to 10th grade.
However, he stopped after his sophomore year of high school because he developed a passion for running, but over time he started to miss the competitive nature of playing a team sport.
“I loved cross country and track but it is an individual sport,” Jacoby said. “There’s a comradery of playing on a team together and a brotherhood of winning together and losing together.”
Perez is a music major from Visalia, Calif. who has been playing club soccer since he was seven years old. He believes that although it is an intramural league, they still want to find a balance of competition while also not taking it too seriously.
“If we didn’t get a result that we wanted, we wouldn’t let it affect us like a pro athlete losing the NBA Finals,” Perez said. “ The reason we are here is to have fun.”
Memories Made with Team
The team has had a lot of success over the last few years. They competed until they lost in the quarterfinals in their first season.
The players recalled that a random person played in a game after Jacoby sprained his calf.
Unfortunately for the Soccer Moms, he accidentally kicked the penalty strike into the team’s own goal. All the players were confused at the moment but also found the situation funny.
In the fall of 2022, they won their first title in the Division II finals. After winning the title, they went on a roll for the next few years, winning a majority of their games 6-0 or 6-2.
As time passed on, age began to catch up to all of the players on the team, despite how much fun they were having.
“We played a team of all first years earlier this season and they were taking it super seriously,” Jacob said.
During this season, a lot of the younger teams would be too athletic and too hungry for these players to keep up.
Since these players are seniors, they needed to put more time and energy into their plans for their future careers, which robbed them of the free time they used to have to practice.
“We love to play, the love, the passion for the game has never gone away, but the reality now is that I don’t spend time running anymore,” he said. “I love how in the past three years we have been consistently playing with each other.”
Playing on Soccer Moms has been a staple to Riddington’s college experience.
“It was something to look forward to every week,” Riddington said. “It’s fun just getting out there being able to screw around for 40 minutes.”
Riddington, who is graduating after three years at Cal Poly, is appreciating the moments that he has given to the team. He enjoys the balance of competition and fun, but also having an activity to go to after school.
Jacoby met two of his roommates through playing with Soccer Moms, which was his best year of living with each other. They would all drive to their games together and trash talk after the game.
“It’s our weekly ritual of playing soccer together and we have done this for three years together,” Jacoby said.
Playing on this team was a stress relief to many of the players, as it was a time for them to isolate themselves from the load of schoolwork and extracurricular activities.
“With music, I’m always so busy practicing all the time,” Perez said. “Having the time to put away the music for a bit and focus on something else is nice to have a change of scenery.”
They are all excited to graduate as it is a huge accomplishment to go out into the real world and start their future careers.
However, soccer is a larger staple in their lives and something they all are very passionate about.
The future of how much time they will put into soccer will now be in question when they move into life beyond college.
“I am going to miss most of Soccer Moms, the name … and I like the fact that I feel like our team has more fun than any other team,” Jacoby said.
Being in college at Cal Poly gave these players an organized structure and community to build through the identity of their team. Graduating from college will leave a sense of uncertainty for these players, but not their love for the game.
“That weekly game, looking forward to it every week, especially with graduating college life is a lot more uncertain,” Perez said. “Having these teams for the last few years has been a joy and I will miss having that.”