UC Santa Barbara Gauchos men's soccer

The UC Santa Barbara Gauchos men's soccer team is an amateur, NCAA Division I college soccer team composed of student-athletes attending the University of California, Santa Barbara. The team is most famous for winning the 2006 NCAA Division I Men's Soccer Championship. Like most of the UC Santa Barbara Gauchos athletic teams, the men's soccer team competes in the Big West Conference.

The Gauchos play their home matches at Harder Stadium on the campus of the University of California, Santa Barbara. The program currently holds the top six NCAA Soccer (men's and women's) records for largest regular season attendances at on-campus venues, highlighted by the top mark of 15,896 fans packed into Harder Stadium when UC Santa Barbara hosted UCLA on November 9, 2010. The Gauchos have led all of NCAA Division I in average soccer attendance every year since 2007.

History

Humble beginnings

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