Anteater men's soccer has been synonymous with the Santora family since the mid-2000s. The Santora family made a generous contribution toward the Santora Elite Training Center. Kevin Santora was a key member of the 2008 squad that finally broke into the NCAA Tournament for the program. Over a decade removed from his successful UCI career, his experiences as an Anteater continue to fuel his career off the pitch.
"My personal definition of luck is work meeting up with opportunity. I think it describes how I cameto play at UC Irvine," noted Anteater alum Kevin Santora.
Santora's luck was him working through high school and club teams. He wanted to get the most exposure he could, so he played as much as he could with his club squad. He found himself at the UCI soccer fields for tournaments and camps catching the eye of 'Eater head coach, George Kuntz.
"A couple of those showings is what led to an offer from UCI. I was super excited to join. There were other schools I was interested in, but none were as interesting in terms of giving me a realistic opportunity of making an immediate impact, playing with the first team. That was a leading factor."
The other factors weren't too bad either. Location, academics, the campus as a whole spoke for themselves. Santora really was enamored with the idea of starting something with the Anteater program that was still looking to make its name on the national soccer scene.
"The guys before us should have made it to the NCAA Tournament way before we did. Guys like Anthony Hamilton, Brad Evans, and Cameron Dunn."
The number one takeaway for Santora were the relationships with teammates he was fortunate to play alongside, and he attributed that a lot to who he is today.
"I think UC Irvine, specifically the soccer team,attracts a certain character and personality that I love to beassociated with. That's thereason I keep in touch with a bunch of the players a decade later."
Santora recalled all the achievements on the field from winning the Big West to the first tournament berth win. As a player himself, he dots the record book playing 84 games and starting 79 times, among the top three in Anteater history. He also posted six goals, three as game-winners, and assisted in 12 others.
"Those experiences are forever embedded in your mind. In terms of how we got there and the journey, it was a lot of hard work. Our coaching staff pushed us, we pushed each other, that was key to our success. We absolutely had a work ethic about us that showed in terms of grit and grind to win games."
Work ethic is oozing from everything Santoradoes. He has tried to separate himself and write his own story. Even in the classroom, hiswork ethic shone through.
"Freshman year at UCI, I thought I would really like to do stem cell research, and therefore I opted to study biology. It was really hard to juggle that and soccer, and I applaud some of my teammates that continued to pursue that major like Stephen Carveth and Eric Shuffle."
Santora understands the learning process that college students go through. He went through that process realizing a biology major was not for him, and he switched to business management. Like the rest of his teammates, he still had an eye on a professional soccer career. He soon found out that a lot of that journey is out of his hands.
"Things like injuries, coach likes and dislikes, needs for your position, playing style, all of these attributes go into decisions of selecting one player over another. So it was a great learning process for me, and that's obviously something players that haven't made that jump need to know ahead of time. It's definitely important to have a backup plan. When you're playing for a fantastic institution like UC Irvine, you are also getting a great education and inherently giving yourself a secondary option. There are a lot of things that the soccer team, and collegiate sports in general, allow you to do when trying to enter the workforce. It allows you to differentiate yourself and become a more appealing candidate."
One of the biggest things Santora noticed was the little things that added up. The act of showing up prepared and on time is much more important than he had ever thought.
"If you didn't show up to practice on time or didn't make the games, you would get kicked off the team. Playing soccer for UCI taught me that discipline and preparation are critically important for success, and that translates directly to success after collegiate sports."
The simple acts of showing up and being on time are something collegiate athletes have so much experience with that they don't even realize it gives them a leg up in other parts of their life. So Santora's post-collegiate route began with a pursuit of professional soccer. But after not being selected in the MLS Draft and his stint as a trialist for a German club didn't work out, he was back to the states looking for his next move holding a business management degree.
"I was fortunate to begin my sales career shortly after I came back from Germany at a company called Riverbed. My collegiate background helped me be successful in my profession and helped me get to where I am today at HashiCorp."
HashiCorp specializes in software that helps companies solve problems related to managing multi-cloud environments. As an Enterprise Account Manager, he helps his customers efficiently address those problems and understand the value of their solutions.
"Ultimately in my role, what I'm doing is helping the customers and companies solve problems. I feel very fortunatein my role. The people who I get to work with are extremely smart and diligent. The competitive nature of collegiate sports sets you up for success in the business world. The team dynamics, the political environment you're juggling, and how you help the team succeed are all important things that I had the opportunity to learn when I was with UCI soccer. Those things have translated into my success at HashiCorp and all the roles that I've had."
The lessons from UC Irvine soccer continue to permeate Santora's life whether it be his work ethic in his career or continuing to rep the UCI blue and gold.
"For me, when you follow the team and see the success that they've had in recent years, that just brings a great nostalgic factor for us alumni, especially when we were able to set the standard. And it does two things for you – it makes you extremely proud to rep the program and school, and then it brings back those memories and feel-good moments as a team that you always want to relive."
He is very much locked in to coach Raz and the team. He sees today's Anteater squads continuing the winning traditions that prior Anteater teams brought before them.
"There's still that drive to be among and be the best. We were able to get to the level that we did in making it to the NCAA tournament, but that was by no means where we wanted to stop. The beauty of collegiate sports is that you leave some of those stories to be written by future players and teams. I had a great experience at UCI. I was very fortunate to be part of those teams. I was never the best guy there, but the reason I'm able to say we won the league and had success was that I was part of such an amazing organization and played with such great teammates. I would advocate for anybody that would like to be a successful soccer player and a successful person to join Yossi's team because I think he is building something and growing something very special."
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