Women’s Soccer Staff

Cynthia Cervantes

Women’s Soccer Head Coach

Administration
Phone: (866) 664-2832
Email: ccervantes@mohave.edu

Mohave Community College just announced the hiring of a head coach for northwestern Arizona’s first-ever Women’s College Soccer Team.

Cynthia Cervantes was most recently the women’s team head coach at Western Texas College, and is currently assistant coach for the U.S. Western Region Olympic Development Program working with her friend and mentor Olympic Soccer Champion Brandi Chastain. At MCC, in addition to helping build the region’s first women’s college soccer program, she will also be an instructor and assist with student life activities.

Cervantes has been playing soccer since she was 12 years old and started coaching youth soccer in her hometown of El Paso, Texas at the age of 16. She earned bachelor’s degrees in Business Administration and Physical Education from Eastern New Mexico University, and her master’s degree in sports science from Ohio State University. She then became an instructor and a college coach, Director of Coaching for the El Paso Juventus Soccer Club, and Coach for New Mexico Youth Soccer.

She has also racked up some impressive awards, including:

2010, 2011 – MVP EL Paso Player of the Year
2011 – Conference of the Carolinas Conference Champion
2019, 2020, 2021 – El Paso Coach of the Year
2022 – 30 Under 30 Class with United Soccer Coaches

Coach Valencia said he and Cervantes will be very busy over the next year and half setting up a system to support successful athletic programs in a region that has never had a college athletic team. It is a lofty goal which entails many facets most people outside of college athletics may not realize, such as ensuring the college meets all requirements of the National Junior College Athletic Association, NJCAA, and the Arizona Community College Athletic Conference, ACCAC.

The coaches will also work closely with the college to build every internal and external process, essentially from scratch. This includes creating student-athlete recruitment and academic policies and procedures, developing scholarship funding sources, medical and athletic training guidelines and requirements, ensuring suitable housing for student-athletes, and community outreach plans that include developing soccer camps and clinics throughout the region, possibly as early as this coming spring and summer 2023 terms.