Kogiso: The Last Senior Standing

For the Viterbo V-Hawks men’s soccer team, there’s quite an unusual circumstance this year when it comes to upperclassmen leadership.

The men’s soccer team has only one remaining senior this season, Yoshi Kogiso, who went from playing for the V-Hawks as a freshman, to now being the only senior on the team.

Along the way, Kogiso has learned much, including one very important concept: selflessness. Selflessness is something he is all too familiar with.

He explains, “I think that I did a good thing playing for the team instead of playing for myself. I feel that I gave everything I could to win some games and help the soccer program in general. I always tried to be a good teammate and share with the younger players my passion for the game. Hopefully, the rest of the team thinks the same about me.”

Although this journey is ending, Yoshi has had an amazing experience playing on the Viterbo men’s soccer team, and he is satisfied with his accomplishments. He states, “I’m satisfied because I did everything I could to help my team. Being the captain of this team was easy because the boys were always willing to work, and they never questioned any of my decisions.”

When asked how Yoshi felt to be the only senior remaining on the V-Hawks men’s soccer team this season, he had this insight: “At the beginning of the season I had felt discouraged, but sometimes you just need to deal with situations that you cannot control. Now that the season is almost over, I feel proud that I was the only senior that stayed with the team and gave all my effort to win some games despite all the obstacles that we had as a team.”

For the Wednesday October 24 , 2018, home game against sixth ranked Bellevue University, Kogiso stated that they were well prepare, all thanks to their coach.

“Coach always prepared us for every game,” he said. “For this game, he gave us an idea of how Bellevue plays, and what we should expect during the game. He also prepared us mentally to be ready for this game.”

Kogiso explains his experience of the sport: “I would like to let [the team] know that hard work always pays off and sometimes passion is more important than pure talent…Don’t wait until you are a senior, to be professional and give everything you can to have a good season…They should play and practice with passion every day while they wear a Viterbo Men’s soccer shirt, and don’t forget to have some fun inside the field.”

In the end, the men’s team fell a bit short, but despite the loss, there were some positive outcomes from the team’s overall performance. “It was a good game, and we played very well as a team…I want to recognize our goalie, Nate Regas, and the rest of the team because they had a great performance.”