Soccer a course option at PC
First step of many to potentially bring sport back
Soccer is coming back to Porterville College — sort of.
This year the college is bringing back soccer in the form of a beginner’s course students can take as a requirement towards a kinesiology degree, as well as a tool to gauge interest in soccer on campus.
The soccer course is just the first of many stepping stones the Pirates need to analyze the possibility of bringing the men’s or women’s soccer programs back since their end in the early 2000s.
However for students wanting to major in kinesiology, a popular major amongst athletes, there will be an immediate impact as they gain an option other than basketball to meet their degree requirements.
“We’re offering kinesiology here now and one of the requirements to get a degree in kinesiology is you have to take a class in a team sport,” PC Director of Athletics and Student Programs, Joseph Cascio, explained.
The course is offered on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 5:15 p.m. to 6:40 p.m. at Jamison Stadium and is taught by Daniel Nelms.
“He’s an excellent instructor,” Cascio said. “He helps with the women’s basketball team, and he’s an instructor in our weightlifting and fitness
center programs. And he’s been a tremendous instructor. So I have no reason to doubt his ability to do this too.”
On using the course as a tool to gauge interest, Cascio said, “That’s going to help if and when I kind of move forward with adding a soccer program, to be able to say, ‘Hey look at all these students that enrolled in this beginning soccer class from the general population.’ There’s a lot more to it than just that but it’s a good piece of the argument.”
But Cascio doesn’t want anyone getting their hopes too high because there is still a lot that needs to be done and considered when it comes to bringing soccer back — like where would matches even be played?
“The rules and regulations for offering JC soccer have changed, to the point where, the current configurations of Jamison Stadium wouldn’t allow us to host home games,” Cascio said. “We could have our practices there but I would have to find a field in town to play our games.”
Cascio joked that if someone were to “drop a truckload of money off” then the college would be able to do the multimillion dollar renovation needed to bring the stadium up to the Fifa-regulated size required by California.
Also on the minds of the Pirates is the addition of three new programs already.
PC brought in women’s tennis and cross country during the 2018-19 season and men’s cross country is coming this fall. Last season the women’s tennis program did well with a 7-7 season and two state qualifiers, but the women’s cross country team only had one runner on their roster.
Cascio said it usually takes a couple of years to see how a program will fair financially and in interest, so that’s another thing to take into consideration especially when college budgets are usually tight to begin with.
However, Cascio said he will continue to look into the possibility of bringing soccer back like he’s been doing since the day he started as PC’S athletic director.
“I started in August of 2015 (and) I’ve always had one ear to the ground about the possibilities of eventually bringing soccer back to this campus,” Cascio said. “But like I said, there are a lot of things that have to happen.”
In the meantime, the soccer course remains a great option for those who enjoy playing soccer, want to help bring a program back or simply want to meet the requirement for a degree.