The Genesee Community College men's soccer team received their National Junior College Athletic Association championship rings in Steiner Theatre on the Batavia Campus March 8 during a brief ceremony, while receiving accolades from several distinguished guests.
Leading off the live-streamed ceremony was GCC President James M. Sunser, who was once again side-by-side with the same group that he spent hours traveling to see back in November when they captured the school's first national championship in soccer at Herkimer County Community College.
Head coach Ken Gavin admitted that in his decade of coaching GCC soccer that the group on the stage was his best to date. Gavin also admitted how impressed he was by the team's depth and how bench players were able to take on starting roles without missing a beat.
Co-captains Glenn Holmes and Joseph Calvert took turns in trying to describe the process involved with maintaining a championship caliber team and why this team was so special.
After showing some video clips of the team's amazing championship run that included going undefeated in the team's last 20 games with an 11-game winning streak, athletic director Kristen Schuth began reading some of the accolades that individual team members accrued throughout the season.
Schuth's list was reserved for the most prestigious awards which most began with "all." From all-American, all-region, all-tournament and all-academic, the list seemed never ending but also included keeper David Ormiston's region and national tournament most valuable player accolades that didn't have an "all" tagged with them.
Indeed, the list of accomplishments seemed never ending. Thirteen different times during the season, a men's soccer player was weekly recognized as either the top athlete regionally or nationally (sometimes both) - which is quite an accomplishment when you consider the season had fewer weeks than the amount of total weekly awards bestowed upon the group collectively.
A photo gallery of the ring ceremony can be viewed at: http://www.geneseeathletics.com/sports/msoc/2017-18/photos/0011/index
