This coach is breaking rivalry walls and forwarding Wichita soccer in the process
Rey Ramirez looked out to his opposing crowd and smiled.
His Maize South High boys soccer team had just handed Trinity Academy a 5-1 thrashing Friday, and afterward, about 100 Trinity students and parents came onto the field to talk with their players. They stayed on the field about 30 minutes after the final whistle.
“This wasn’t here 10 years ago,” Ramirez said. “Number one, the field, but just the atmosphere. This amount of people coming out to support their soccer team? Yeah right. That wasn’t happening before.”
Ramirez holds three titles in the Maize school district. He is a district-wide teacher of English for students of other languages. He is the boys soccer coach at Maize South. And he finished his first season as the assistant girls coach at Maize High in May.
He said he doesn’t care about the rivalry. He cares about soccer in the Wichita area.
“I hate to put it this way, but I think it is this way, I don’t have a closed-minded view of the game in Wichita soccer; I try to be a big picture guy,” he said. “If I had to pick, I’d go Maize South boys and Maize High girls.”
Ramirez has developed plenty of coaching connections in Wichita through his time in the area. He started as a club player at Wichita State before jumping into officiating and eventually coaching.
He met coaches like Northwest’s Bobby Bribiesca, Maize’s Jay Holmes and Rose Hill’s Jerry Treat. He has led camps in the area and accepted players from anywhere — even his “rival” school and even players from some his top league contenders.
The Maize South boys are among the favorites to clinch the AVCTL II title in 2018 after a 12-6 record last season. Eisenhower are the reigning league champions and beat Maize South 3-2 in overtime last year.
Several Eisenhower players were at the Mavericks’ road win Friday. They came on the field after the game, talked with the Maize South players and even Ramirez. Ramirez wished them luck this season.
“It’s between us and them, but I’m not all, ‘Oh, I hate those guys,’ ” he said. “It’s not that way. It’s Wichita soccer. I hope Wichita soccer does well. I don’t limit myself to (Maize South). It’s much bigger than this. If anything, we’re competing against Kansas City.”
Ramirez said it’s astounding how far soccer in the Wichita area has come since he arrived. Wichita area schools have won 11 state championships since 2000. Before that, Wichita had only four.
He said the youth soccer scene has improved, too. The participation league in the Sedgwick County Soccer Association is up, he said. The association broke its record for number of teams this past season with about 380 teams, he said.
The YMCA was recently accredited through U.S. Soccer, and the Styrker Soccer Complex recently approved a $22 million upgrade.
Ramirez is still looking for his first state championship as a coach. Last year, his Mavericks lost 2-1 to eventual third-place finisher Kapaun, and the Maize girls came third in 5A for the third straight season.
He said he is certainly shooting for that title, but if it doesn’t come in 2018 or the year after, he will still have a rooting interest.
“Whoever it is in 5A at the end of the day, we’ll wish them luck,” he said. “We want them to beat Blue Valley Southwest, St. Thomas Aquinas. Same way in Maize. I love both campuses. It’s about kids first. It’s about soccer. It’s about community. It’s about the city.
“It’s not about dividing. It’s about uniting.”