SAN DIEGO — San Diego men's soccer has started singing a song exactly one time every year. The players don't rehearse it, probably because they don't have to. Every player on the roster knows the lyrics because they have been waiting all year to sing them. It comes out when they win the West Coast Conference title, and on a crisp November night in Corvallis, Oregon, with the WCC trophy under the gleaming lights of Paul Lorenz field, the Toreros sang the song, for a fourth straight year.
That's a dynasty.
Dynasties aren't built on easy years and easy games, and 2025 was no exception. Last season's West Coast Conference title race had potential for the Toreros to be dethroned. Portland, which was ranked as high as No. 1 in the country at various points during the season, was the clear favorite. Oregon State — also a top 10 team nationally — was right behind. When the Toreros dropped a tough 2-1 decision to then sixth ranked Portland three games into conference play, falling to 1-1-1 in the West Coast Conference, the narrative almost wrote itself: the streak was over. Four in a row was a bridge too far to cross, this wasn't their year.
The Toreros didn't read that narrative. They won all six remaining games.
Head Coach Brian Quinn has spent eight seasons building something at the University of San Diego that the West Coast Conference has yet to see. While the program has a long storied history of winning, it is not a program with an uninterrupted history of winning. The Toreros had won nine WCC titles before Quinn, dating back to the program's first in 1992, but they had not finished atop the WCC standings since 2015, three years before he took the helm. In his first season as head coach, they finished fourth in the WCC. Following another middle of the road season in 2019 and a shortened 2020 season, they went on to finish 2-15 in 2021. Just the kind of season that really makes you question everything.
What happened following that season is the story of what the right coach, with the right culture, can do.
Quinn is not a stranger to winning. Born in Belfast, Northern Ireland, he came to the United States to play professionally, and did so successfully, winning eight straight indoor championships with the San Diego Sockers and had 48 caps for the United States Men's National Team, a career that spanned 16 total seasons. When he finally hung up his boots, he channeled everything he had learned in his career toward coaching, eventually becoming the youngest coach in Major League Soccer history in 1997. He spent 11 seasons as the assistant coach to recent USD Athletics Hall of Fame inductee Seamus McFadden, before taking over as the head coach in 2018, with McFadden — who had led the program for 39 years — becoming the assistant. The two men simply switched chairs.
By 2022, something had shifted. The Toreros opened up the season with a non-conference record of 2-5-3, not exactly the start to the season they were dreaming of. But that didn't matter, because they went on to go undefeated in conference play and won the WCC. And after that, there was no looking back. They went back-to-back in 2023, and then they won it again in 2024, and again in 2025. Four consecutive conference championships, making them the first men's soccer program in West Coast Conference history to accomplish the feat. A 71-45-23 career record, three WCC Coach of the Year awards, and a team that even when many thought the window was closing, still found a way to kick it back open.
That's not a dynasty that was handed down, it was built. And on a chilly November night in Corvallis, it was defended.
Oregon State wasted no time, putting one past the Torero goalkeeper Lucca Adams just two minutes into the game, and the road to a fourth straight title got immediately steeper. A lesser team could've let that moment snowball, but the Toreros answered within minutes.
Iain Wagner, who finished the season leading San Diego with nine goals, fired a shot that deflected off a Beaver defender and found the back of the net, leveling the match at one. It was the kind of goal that required a little fortune, but fortune tends to find teams that refuse to panic. The two sides went into halftime level, with the WCC title still up for grabs.
In the 61st minute, Josh Martinez, a natural midfielder converted into a defender when injuries riddled the Torero backline, delivered a ball off a corner kick into the box. It ricocheted off Steven Ramirez's foot, deflected off a Beaver defender, and found the net. San Diego led 2-1. Oregon State eventually equalized in the 81st minute to send the home crowd into a frenzy as the momentum shifted rapidly towards the Beavers who knew that if the result held, they would be WCC champions.
What happened next was the moment in which this dynasty announced itself, again. A Beaver yellow card gave San Diego a free kick just outside the 18-yard box. Martinez stepped up and curled it into the upper left corner, leaving a packed Paul Lorenz field stunned as the Toreros then led 3-2 in the 82nd minute. Just one minute after the streak looked to be over again, San Diego was ahead. With under a minute left to go and hope still alive for Oregon State, Wagner stole the ball and laid a ball perfectly for Ramirez in the box who slotted it home and sealed the victory for USD.
The song started shortly after.
The 10 seniors on the Torero squad had accomplished something that had never been done in West Coast Conference history, a ring in each of their four years with the program. That is a culture, built deliberately over eight seasons by a coach who poured everything into a program over 5,000 miles away from his hometown.
The 2026 Toreros return with unfinished business. Not the unfinished business of a team that fell short, but unfinished business of a dynasty that isn't done writing its story. No WCC Men's Soccer program had ever won four straight conference titles, but no program has won five straight either.
They'll have new contributors, but also many familiar faces. They'll once again face a schedule that will test them from the opening whistle. And at some point, when the WCC title seems to reach its inflection point, the question will be the same one it has been every year since 2022: can they win it again?
If the past four years have taught us anything, it's that betting against Brian Quinn and the Toreros is certainly a losing proposition.
