UC Santa Barbara Gauchos men's soccer

UC Santa Barbara fielded its first men's soccer team in 1966, but they didn't compete in the Big West Conference until 1983.[9] The Gauchos had mixed success, with good seasons (1983, 1988) alongside bad seasons (1991, 1992), but never found prolonged stretches of success or failure.[10]

The Big West Conference stopped sponsoring men's soccer after the 1991 season, but re-instituted it prior to the 2001 season.[9] During this period, UCSB competed in the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation. The return of soccer to the Big West Conference marked the rough beginning of the Gauchos' greatest success to date.[9]

In January 1999, UC Santa Barbara's athletic director, Gary Cunningham, was successfully able to hire former UCSB and professional soccer player, Tim Vom Steeg, away from Santa Barbara City College to lead the Gauchos' program.[11][12] The Gauchos won the 2001 Big West Conference championship for the first time in their history, but missed out on a trip to the NCAA Tournament since the Big West Conference was ineligible for an automatic bid.[13] UC Santa Barbara have won eight Big West regular season championships (2001, 2002, 2004, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2013, 2014) and have won the Big West tournament in 2010.[10]

The Gauchos burst on to the national scene in 2004 during their run at the 2004 NCAA Championship. The showing in this tournament established UC Santa Barbara as a force in college soccer, with UCSB marching all the way to the finals before losing out on penalties to Indiana.

2006 White House visit with George W. Bush.

The crowning achievement of the men's soccer program took place in 2006, where UCSB won the NCAA Division I Championship in a 2-1 decision over UCLA. It marked the program's first championship and only the university's second athletics championship (1979 Men's Water Polo).

At one point during the season, UCSB's record stood at 7-6 with dim prospects for postseason glory. However, a 5-1 stretch to close out the regular season raised morale. The Gauchos made the NCAA Tournament as an unseeded team. During their championship run, the unseeded Gauchos defeated San Diego State at home, then #1 ranked/#3 seeded SMU followed by Old Dominion on the road, and finally Northwestern before an NCAA season high 8,784 people at Harder Stadium in Santa Barbara. This propelled the Gauchos into the Final Four and earned them a trip to the College Cup held at Hermann Stadium in St. Louis, Missouri.

UCSB needed extra time to defeat #2 seed Wake Forest 0-0 (4-3 on penalties) in their first match of the College Cup. The final was a matchup between Southern California teams as UCLA advanced on a 4-0 win over Virginia. The #8 ranked/#8 seeded Bruins served as the final team to fall to the Gauchos by a score of 2-1 to complete UCSB's magical season.

At the end of UCSB's 2-1 loss to UC Davis in overtime, UCSB coach Tim Vom Steeg was aggressively yelling at the referees for what he believed was a missed foul call preceding the UC Davis golden goal. During the chaos, UCSB senior Peter McGlynn ran toward the match referee, Reed Christy, and pushed him to the ground despite Vom Steeg's attempts to block McGlynn. McGlynn was detained by campus police and later released.[14][15] As a result of the incident, the UCSB Athletics Department, in collaboration with the Big West Conference, removed McGlynn from the team with two games remaining in his senior year, suspended head coach Tim Vom Steeg for the following game, and chose to forgo postseason play for 2012.[16] McGlynn later apologized with a statement on his Twitter account and pleaded guilty to the misdemeanor and served community service as a result.[17]

As of September 23, 2020[18]

Note: Flags indicate national team as defined under FIFA eligibility rules. Players may hold more than one non-FIFA nationality.

No. Pos. Nation Player 0 GK  SLV Alan Carrillo 1 GK  USA Ben Roach 2 DF  USA Ramses Martinez 3 DF  AUS Henry Davies 4 DF  ESP Adrian Adames 4 DF  NGA Salaudeen Ayila 6 DF  ENG William Gillingham 8 MF  USA Kaya Fabbretti 10 FW  SLE Rodney Michael 12 FW  USA Pablo Figueroa 12 MF  USA Carson Vom Steeg 13 MF  AUS Finn Ballard McBride 15 DF  USA Giovanny Acosta 16 FW  USA Rigoberto Barragan 16 FW  GHA Ameyawu Muntari 17 FW  SWE Fabian Bostroem 17 FW  MEX Derek Kryzda 18 DF  USA Ryan Johnson

No. Pos. Nation Player 19 MF  USA Nalu Mack 22 MF  USA Kenny Villatoro 23 MF  USA Luka Živković 23 DF  USA Andrew Ratto 24 DF  USA Ryan Pace 25 FW  USA Emmanuel Petrov 26 DF  USA Tristan Miller 26 MF  USA Miguel Tostado 27 FW  USA Carter Clemmensen 28 FW  USA Diran Bebekian 28 FW  USA Oscar Ferreira 30 MF  USA Sam Fletcher 31 DF  USA Lucas Gonzalez 32 MF  USA Zade Ghani 33 MF  USA Shawn Foster 40 GK  USA Carlos Zuniga 77 MF  RSA Thaabit Baartman — GK  GER Luca Oliveri del Castillo

Players noted below, with years at UCSB in parentheses, have represented their senior national team or played professionally.

As of September 5, 2018[19]