Sporting Wichita caps undefeated season with MLS Next Cup national championship
Two years ago, Sporting Wichita Academy learned how cruel a one-goal loss can feel when it comes between a team and the national stage.
Club Ohio beat Sporting Wichita 3-2 in the 2024 ECNL Regional League final, punching its ticket to nationals while leaving a group of Wichita boys with a painful reminder of how close they were.
They carried that score with them.
They grew from it. They stayed together. They won the Kansas State Cup, won an ECNL Regional League title, stormed through this MLS Next season without a loss and arrived in Salt Lake City this past week with a chance to prove that Wichita soccer belonged against anyone in the country.
Then came the national final.
Same opponent. Same score. Different ending.
Behind three goals off set pieces and a tournament MVP performance from Canyon Glanzer, Sporting Wichita beat Club Ohio 3-2 on Saturday to win the MLS Next Cup U15 Academy national championship and complete an undefeated 28-0-1 season.
“It was just a perfect ending,” Sporting Wichita coach Tommy Fiszel said. “I don’t know if I believe in a Cinderella story, but that’s what it felt like to finish as undefeated national champions.”
It was also a perfect sendoff.
Fiszel has coached this group for the past four years, but Saturday’s final was his last game with Sporting Wichita. He has accepted a full-time position as director of coaching for Sporting City East in Kansas City and will begin that job next month.
That made the championship feel personal.
Fiszel was the first player ever for Sporting Wichita, the club his father, Daniel Fiszel, started from scratch when Tommy was 4 years old. He grew up playing for the club, then coaching for the club. Now he leaves it after helping guide one of its teams to a national title.
“It almost felt like it was meant to be scripted this way to go out like that,” Fiszel said.
The final did not waste much time delivering drama.
Sporting Wichita struck just 73 seconds into the match after earning a foul just beyond midfield. A dangerous service dropped into the six-yard box, bounced around in traffic and spilled loose in front of goal.
Glanzer was waiting.
The Maize South freshman finished the chance into an open net for a 1-0 lead before the match was even two minutes old.
Club Ohio answered quickly, converting a penalty kick in the sixth minute to tie the score. But Sporting Wichita had spent the season proving it did not need long to respond.
Midway through the first half, Newton eighth-grader Abraham Solorio-Rojas unlocked the Club Ohio back line with a gorgeous left-footed through ball from nearly 50 yards away. The pass split three defenders and sent Glanzer into space, leading to a shot on goal and a Sporting Wichita corner kick.
Glanzer took the corner, whipping a left-footed ball toward the goalkeeper. Club Ohio could not secure it, the ball spilled loose again and Maize freshman Jackson Price was there to clean it up in front of goal for a 2-1 lead in the 17th minute.
Then Glanzer produced the highlight of the week.
In first-half stoppage time, Glanzer pulled the ball back with his left foot, flicked it forward and raced past his defender down the right sideline. He drew a free kick just outside the box, about 30 yards from goal and right of center.
With the final kick of the half, Glanzer stepped to the ball, bent a left-footed shot up and over the wall and beat the goalkeeper to the upper-right corner for a sensational goal and a 3-1 halftime lead.
“That was a big-time moment for a big-time player to step up,” Fiszel said. “That was something special, especially at this age, you don’t see that very often. But big-time players step up when you need them most.”
Club Ohio pulled one back in the 84th minute to make the final stretch tense, but Sporting Wichita held firm.
In stoppage time, Club Ohio fired a shot from outside the box that tested Russ Ferricher. But the Andover Central goalkeeper smothered it, then sent the ball away as the referee blew the final whistle.
Sporting Wichita’s celebration was on.
It was the final step in a national-tournament run that required Wichita to beat some of the country’s top academy competition.
The 32-team MLS Next Cup field included teams that qualified by winning either their league or a regional qualifier. Sporting Wichita did both.
The stage also offered a small reminder of how far Wichita soccer still has to go for national recognition. Even with Sporting Wichita playing for a championship on an MLS stream, the official YouTube headline misspelled the city as “Witchita,” the kind of mistake Wichita teams have seen before when they travel outside Kansas and try to make a name for themselves.
The team went 17-0 in the U15 Heartland Division this qualifying season, outscoring opponents 78-11. Sporting Wichita was the only team in the MLS Next U15 Academy Division in the country to win every divisional match.
That dominance followed the group to Salt Lake City.
Sporting Wichita opened the national tournament with a 1-0 win over New England FC, then survived a 2-2 draw against The Football Academy, a club based in New Jersey, by winning 4-3 in penalty kicks after the sixth round. Kobe Raymond, a Kapaun Mt. Carmel freshman, converted the decisive penalty, while Ferricher held down the goal.
In the quarterfinals, Sporting Wichita beat Athletum FC Academy, a club based in Miami, 1-0.
The semifinal brought rare adversity. Albion SC Riverside, a club based in California, put Sporting Wichita down 1-0, marking the first time Wichita had trailed in the tournament and just the second time all season it had fallen behind in a match.
Albion later led 2-1, too.
Sporting Wichita still found a way, rallying for a 4-3 win to earn its rematch with Club Ohio.
“To be a small team out of Wichita, Kansas and beat teams from LA and New Jersey and Miami, it just shows you that talent can be built from anywhere,” Fiszel said. “It doesn’t matter the size of the city. At the end of the day, it’s about the heart and the passion of the boys.”
That was the part Fiszel loved most about this group.
Sporting Wichita had high-end talent. Glanzer was named tournament MVP and man of the match in the final after scoring twice and assisting on the third goal. Ferricher delivered in pressure moments in goal. Raymond stepped up in penalties. Solorio-Rojas supplied one of the tournament’s best passes. Price finished on the biggest stage.
But Fiszel said the strength of the team was never limited to one or two players.
Sporting Wichita had to play the national tournament without two injured players, including team captain and starting striker Parker Vieyra. That forced others into larger roles and tested the team-first culture Fiszel believed had been building for years.
No one was above the group. Everyone had to be ready. Everyone had to contribute.
The championship roster included Michael Anozie (Wichita Central Christian), Ian Campbell (Derby), Kellen Christians (Eisenhower), Brody Emes (Maize South), Ferricher (Andover Central), Cruz Garcia (Derby), Bryant Garza (Maize South), Glanzer (Maize South), Noah Hernandez (Garden City), Jackson Kendrick (Derby), Paxton Marsh (Maize South), Price (Maize), Raymond (Kapaun Mt. Carmel), Keanu Rosales (Dodge City), Adijah Solomon (East), Solorio-Rojas (Newton), Ethan Tofteland (Wichita Trinity) and Vieyra (Maize South).
Most of them are high school freshmen. Two are eighth-graders.
Together, they finished a club season without a loss.
Fiszel laughs now about the personality that came with the group. He said there were times when he tried to deliver a serious message, only for the boys to crack a joke and make it difficult for him to get through it.
But the looseness never kept them from competing.
“They’re just a bunch of teenagers and I think it’s important to just let them be themselves,” Fiszel said. “They like to have fun, but at the same time, they know how to work hard, prepare and train like they were going to win a final. I think that preparation and that discipline really helped.”
By Saturday, that preparation had carried a Wichita club team through five games in a week, past teams from the East Coast, West Coast, South Florida and Ohio and into a celebration years in the making.
Sporting Wichita had turned a 2024 heartbreak against Club Ohio into a 2026 championship against the same opponent. It had sent its coach out with a national title. It had completed an unbeaten season. It had given Wichita soccer one of its biggest national moments yet.
And maybe the next time Sporting Wichita reaches a national final, they’ll spell the city right.
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