Kolya Glick (Class of 2006) loves soccer and never gave up on his dream of playing at the NCAA collegiate level. The 2006 Boulder High School graduate and former varsity co-captain, will play for the University of California Santa Cruz NCAA Division III varsity team next fall after a successful tryout this spring.
Next fall, Kolya will represent the UC Santa Cruz Fighting Banana Slugs as they compete to return to the NCAA National Tournament for the eighth time in the last nine years, including a 2004 Final Four appearance. UC Santa Cruz plays a strong conference schedule and plays out of conference against NCAA Division I and II schools.
Kolya’s path to collegiate soccer was uniquely his own. Kolya spent much of his high school years traveling the world, including a 5 month around the world adventure with his journalist father. The summer before his junior year he returned to Europe with his U16 club soccer team (coached by Coach Hardy Kalisher) where they won the Challenge Cup in Amsterdam, Holland and finish 5th in a tournament in the Czech Republic. Kolya senior season at BHS was not filled with many victories on the field but he was recognized as a standout All-Conference player in the competitive Centennial League. After graduation, while many of his teammates went off to college, Kolya deferred his admission to UC Santa Cruz and spent a year in Algeria, Africa where he kept up his enthusiasm for soccer by playing on an Algerian men’s soccer team. After a year abroad, Kolya enrolled at UC Santa Cruz where he captained their championship men’s club team before making their NCAA varsity team.
“We are all proud of Kolya, it takes courage to follow your dreams and a special kind of dedication, in your junior year, to tryout and make an NCAA program with UC Santa Cruz’s strong soccer tradition. ” said Coach Kalisher. “Kolya was a very athletic and passionate student-athlete at BHS who embodied the values of our program by competing with great competitive spirit, displaying leadership on and off the field and achieving academic excellence. We wish him the best next fall.”
