When your club was founded in 1972, what was the mission at the time? Who founded it and why?
In the late 60’s, there was a large wave of Portuguese immigrants that settled in the area and started a community. Academica was officially founded when a group of younger members defeated a team of older members, led by the local priest, in a match in order to get their jerseys. The name Academica was adopted from one of Portugal’s oldest pro teams and the club was born. At the start, the mission of the club was to provide the local youth an engaging cultural activity but it soon developed into the area’s dominant team.

For hundreds of clubs in the US, field rental is one of the biggest costs, you happen to own your own pitch what is its history and how important is it?
We’ve always had our own facility since we began playing on a vacant lot that used to house chicken coops. With the growth of the Portuguese community, we were able to move into our current location and through the years, have built stands, restrooms, sidewalks, locker rooms, nets, and even a scoreboard. All of this was done by club volunteers over the span of 40 years. Owning our own facility has been a huge advantage financially and operationally. Saving on field rental costs as well as being able to rent out the facility to local youth clubs has helped grow the clubs coffers. We also don’t need to worry about issues regarding scheduling or availability. Our own pitch also is a bonus on the field. We have the nicest amateur natural turf pitch in Northern California. Its smooth surface suits our style of play so playing at home is a big advantage, especially when the quality of pitches varies greatly in the area. It has also been an attraction for local talent that want to play on it and I believe our players do feel pride coming out on a perfect pitch that our grounds keepers are just as proud about.

I recently read an article about The 209 and was really impressed with your player's involvement in community - what other ways have Academica been involved in your community and how important is that?
The club has been involved in several community enrichment events. We sponsor a lot of local fundraisers through monetary donations as well as the Portuguese Education Foundation scholarship that we provide. We even served dinner at the local men’s shelter last year. We love that our players also give back to their communities and we want to support them as community involvement is important to us. The club wants to give back to the community that supports us in more ways than just putting on a good game for them. We’re looking at other ways we can help out especially in today’s climate.

Having been around for nearly 50 years, do you have any standout players or coaches to speak about? How about big matches; any US Open Cup or exhibition matches which might go down in the history books?
We’ve developed a lot of top collegiate talent through the years but our most successful player has to be Adolfo Gregorio. Adolfo began playing with us at a young age before going on to play for the U17-U23 US Men’s National Team as well as win the NCAA National Championship with UCLA and getting drafted in the First Round of the 2004 MLS Superdraft. He returned to the club after his professional career as well. As far as big matches go, we’ve had several in the last few years. We held an exhibition match against Club America’s U20’s in 2018 that saw us lose in PK’s after a 1-1 draw in front of a 1000 fans at home. We were also featured on ESPN for our first ever US Open Cup First Rd game against El Farolito in 2019. Unfortunately we were made infamous as El Farolito scored a bicycle kick that made Sports Centers Top 10 plays that night. Our most exciting match that will probably never be forgotten is our final US Open Cup qualifying match against IPS. The winner of this match would qualify for the US Open Cup for the first time ever. We scored 2 goals in the last two minutes of injury time to tie the game in order to force extra time where we once again equalized in 124th to force penalty kicks. We won 3-1 in penalty kicks and our fans rushed the field. It is a real highlight for the club so far

Soccer has been hit pretty hard, all over the country, by Covid19; what are your plans for 2021? How impacted will the club be if NPSL cancels the league again? Are you able to switch back over to NorCal league if they're playing? Or can you afford to play it safe and just take a year off?
We’re hopeful of returning to play in 2021 but there’s a lot still up in the air. If the NPSL decides to cancel, we would look at other options of getting back on the field. Joining another league or holding exhibition matches are also options. We want to get back to it but only once it’s safe for our fans and players to return. If that’s not possible, we can definitely afford to take another year off but that’s a last resort for us.

Swag. Your kits are some of the best in the country right now! What inspired you to work with Icarus and where can our readers grab a shirt or a scarf to support you?
Our GM Michael Rocha was the one to initiate the conversation with Icarus. He had seen the work they had done with other clubs on social media and loved their stuff. We brought them in and emphasized that we wanted our jersey to be a representation of our community. What better way to represent your community than put the towns of the 209 on our 209 Jerseys. You can find these as well as other AC merchandise at our club shop at AcademicaSC.com or on any of social media shops.

Find out more about Academica SC HERE
Grab an Academica SC / Icarus FC kit HERE

The 1993 Academica Juniors (Image provided by the club)