San Clemente Soccer Club was founded in 1987 by Clyde Best (West Ham) and Martin Mcgrogan so that talented soccer players in the area would have a club to play for and also eventually benefit the local high school program. In 1993, Best and McGrogan started the Irvine Valley Soccer program, where Mcgrogan coached IVC to great success and Best went onto coach the Bermudan National Team from 1997-1999 and was later awarded an MBE for services to football and the community of Bermuda.

Reza Cherif resurrected the club (San Clemente United Soccer Club) in town, 1997 and with the help of John Merritt, established a strong reputation of developing local talent. Current Director of Coaching Chris Murray, joined the club in 2004 and helped build and evolve a professional development soccer model based on his experiences in professional soccer in Europe. During the next few years, we had tremendous success at the club and also had a positive impact in local and neighbouring high schools with the talent we developed, most notable Andy Martinez 69 goals at San Clemente High School and Roger Downes, L.A. Times and CIF player of the year. During this three year period, we placed around 20 players to colleges such as L.M.U, Wheaton, S.M.U, San Francisco, Point Loma

2011 was another year of success, with several of our coaches working on the boys program at San Clemente High School, we were able to help the program win CIF, State, achieve the ranking of no.1 in the State and no.8 in the nation all for the first time in their history. We also initiated the successful community projects under the guidance of Kerri McClellan to promote team building, leadership and give back to those less fortunate than ourselves.

In 2014, we joined Surf Nation which has over 50 clubs all over the country, all collaborating to create the best opportunities and experiences for our coaches and players. Surf Nation offers Surf Champions league for our middle school players, Surf Select for all our 9 vs 9 and 11 vs 11 players and takes our top players to compete in top tournaments in both USA and in Europe. 2023 we have coaches going to Ireland and Minnesota and several players going to England to represent San Clemente Surf in prestigious tournaments.

In the past few years we have progressed on and off the field with annually a dozen players all over the country on college scholarships, some even captains of their program (5 college captains from 2018-2023) and under the guidance of our college director Dave Nolan (Claremont McKenna head coach) are looking forward to continuing our great success of placing student athletes with great programs all over the country .

It’s an exciting time be involved with the club. To learn more about the club, teams or programs we offer, contact Director of Coaching Chris Murray at 949-547-0439 or scsurf@outlook.com.