OCEANSIDE — MiraCosta College women’s soccer coach Miguel Barragan was named Pacific Coast Athletic Conference Coach of the Year.
This is Barragan’s first year as a head coach at the college level. Within the year he brought the women’s soccer team to the conference playoffs.
Pat Conahan, athletic director of MiraCosta College, said it is a strong testament to Barragan’s skill as a coach that he won the award without winning the conference championship.
“The major parts of coaching are recruiting and tactical philosophy. Miguel has both,” Conahan said. “He’s hardworking, detail oriented and knowledgeable.”
Conahan added that Barragan has a great rapport with players, and athletes really enjoy playing for him.
“I’ve been impressed with him all year,” Conahan said.
Conahan said he is ecstatic about the success of the women’s team, but the real impact of Barragan’s coaching is the development opportunities he provided the players.
Barragan described the season. He said early on he worked on building up players’ fitness levels with endurance, speed and strength training exercises.
“Some players come in fit, some out of shape,” Barragan said. “You want to prevent injuries early on.”
At the same time team building was worked on.
Barragan said he video taped every game and used the tapes to teach team plays and improve individual player performance on the field.
“Video is a great thing,” Barragan said. “The exercises we do in practice sessions, they see exactly how it relates. They connect it and understand it better. They’re motivated to improve and practice.”
Barragan said he also carried a notebook and took a lot of notes during games. Fixes were made at halftime and followed up with post-game talks and future training sessions.
These interventions took time and dedication to implement.
Barragan said he spent three to five hours reviewing and editing game tapes prior to showing them to the team for instruction.
“It pays off significantly,” Barragan said. “It gets to the fix issue easier and faster.”
During the season the team continued to fine-tune their game and compensate for player sickness and injury.
“We lost three to four starters due to injury and sicknesses,” Barragan said. “We had to move players around. There was lots of work to be done.”
Barragan credits the team’s success to players’ positive attitudes that allowed them have good chemistry and unity as a group.
“When we made up the roster the girls’ personality and attitude was a huge part,” Barragan said. “They have good hearts and are good people.”
He added it was an honor to be recognized as coach of the year, but the award really spoke to the players’ achievements and the soccer program.
In MiraCosta College’s final championship game the team lost to Chaffey College in the first round of playoffs at Chaffey, 1-0.
“We fought hard to the last minute,” Barragan said. “It was a proud moment.”
“It was a great season,” Barragan added. “I couldn’t ask for a better group of girls.”
