CUNYAC Sports: Soccer

Art by Nafissatou Yattassaye

Editor's Note: The Paper is not affiliated with CUNYAC. These reports are independent and meant to provide a recap of the games our reporter attends.

By Nafissatou Yattassaye

CUNYAC: Women’s Soccer Championship Game- CCNY vs John Jay

At noon in Jamaica, Queens, York College hosted the 2025 CUNYAC championship game where CCNY faced an undefeated John Jay team. Yanique Newman, a Hall of Fame soccer player who once played at CCNY, leads a fairly young team filled with immense talent and key players to watch, such as freshman Sara Dos Santos and junior Larisa Hodzic. Ajani Clunie, once a former assistant coach that took over the program after Covid, leads John Jay’s gritty polished team in search of their 5th title. Despite the defense and saves from the CCNY squad and goalkeeper of the year Laila Issa, John Jay was able to break the lead with a Katie's header from Sofia's corner kick at the 30-minute mark into the first half. Sofia then buried her second hit, making the score 2-0 to enter the half. Despite appearances from Dos Santos, Husna Khan, and Issa pushing forward and taking advantage of moments, it just wasn’t enough to stop the John Jay squad. With one more goal, John Jay sealed their 5th CUNYAC championship title against a well hard-fought CCNY squad in the final minutes of the 2nd half. This was CCNY’s ninth appearance, with a lot of grit, tenacity,  and upside for years to come in the CUNYAC soccer conference.

CUNYAC: Men’s Soccer Championship Game - CCNY vs Lehman

The lights were bright following the women’s championship game in Jamaica, Queens, where York College hosted the CUNYAC Men’s Soccer championship game featuring the CCNY Beavers and the Lehman Lightings. CCNY, led by head coach Roger Gonzalez, has a fairly young but extremely talented squad as they look to take their 7th title against the Lightings, led by head coach Toma Gojevic, who has a pretty polished squad competing for their fifth title. Both programs knocked off the top seeds in the CUNYAC conference, reflecting the beauty of the playoffs as everyone starts off 0-0. Players to look out for include senior Kerneil Melius and senior Aliou Ndiaye for the Beavers to set the tone early along with freshman Abdul Salim who sent the semifinals game to overtime, ultimately leading to advancing in the finals. After a long hard-fought match on the turf from both teams, in the final minutes of the 44-minute second half, Lehman scored their first goal by Munem Alhassan, which gave the team their 5th CUNYAC championship title. The CCNY rosters played hard and showed resilience and promising results throughout the season to be under the bright lights once again.

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Nafissatou Yattassaye is a freshman at City College, majoring in Communications with a

concentration in Journalism. Writing allows her to escape reality and enter a realm where

she is free to express her creativity through words and phrases with simply the ink of her

pen!