NCAA Tournament Berth Energizes Florida Tech Men's Soccer Team - News 13

MELBOURNE, Fla. — It was a great season for the Florida Tech men's soccer team, which made it to the NCAA Tournament for the first time in a quarter-century.

Florida Tech men made it to playoffs for 1st time in 26 years
Head coach was on school's 1st national-champ team in 1988
Successful season has filled returning players, staff with optimism

You could consider it destiny for senior midfielder Luca Campanini.

"It was great to be a part of a team like this," he said.

His dad, Bino, is currently the vice president of alumni affairs at the university.

"To see the boys get back to that level where we thought they would be is great," said Bino Campanini who was co-captain for the school's first national championship team in 1988 and assistant coach for the 1991 champs.

The successful run for this season's team — which finished 11-2-1 in in NCAA Division II — has the memories rushing back for him and his former comrades.

"We are still friends and it keeps you together," he says. "So I'm sure these guys 25 years from now will be talking about the season they had this year."

"We felt good before the season," Head Coach Robin Chan said. "We felt like we had good depth at all positions."

It's a blast from the past for Chan, too. He played forward on the winning 1988 club and has now coached the team for the past 15 seasons.

Chan is proud of the fans who packed the stands at Panthers games, just as they did more than two decades ago.

"It kind of took us back to that time," he said. "It was really good to see. I'm just really proud of this group of boys."

It's a bittersweet finale for outgoing senior Campanini, who thinks this team's current success sets the table for the program's days to come — especially since his brother, Carlo, is a redshirt freshman on the team.

"I'm looking forward to seeing what the team can do in the future," he says.

There were several international players on this year's Florida Tech men's soccer team. It's representative of the school as a whole, as 30 percent of the university's students hail from other countries.