RIVERSIDE, Calif. – 2022 Big West regular season and tournament champion UC Riverside hopped on a plane on Friday, June 23, to Mexico City for an international tour, where the Highlanders will play three games and enjoy cultural and educational tours and experiences before returning to the States on July 1. Updates and highlights from the tour will be posted on UCR Athletics' social media channels throughout the course of the tour. 

As head coach Tim Cupello enters his 11th year at the helm of the Highlanders, the program's success under Cupello's watch is rooted in his leadership style along with the revitalized culture that he has established for the program and his coaching staff. This collective unit of coaches has successfully recruited and developed student-athletes from California, across the United States and around the world.

"This has been a tremendous week in Mexico City for our program," said UC Riverside's Director of Intercollegiate Athletics, Wesley Mallette. "We have been working together for more than a year to put the collaborative efforts between UNAM, AlianzaMX and UCR into action, and seeing it come to fruition this week has been spectacular. Our Chancellor Kim Wilcox and his senior cabinet team members, our Head Coach Tim Cupello and his staff, and our senior athletics administrators Michelle Almazan and Joshua Smith, all have been instrumental in working with our partners with UNAM and AlianzaMX."
 
"This has been a remarkable week for our Men's Soccer student-athletes. The friendships our student-athletes are building with UNAM's student-athletes, the competitive play they are experiencing against teams like Pumas U23 team, and the life experience they are gaining this week in Mexico City is life changing."

UC Riverside competed in its second NCAA Tournament in program history last season - both of which have come from automatic berths under Cupello, who was named the program's first Big West Coach of the Year in 2022. UCR won the 2018 Big West postseason title, 2022 regular season title and 2022 Big West Championship.

Several coaches and staff members who worked under Cupello over the past 10 years have gone on to excel at the next level of their craft, including former assistant Ladule LoSarah (now with USL League One's Union Omaha) and former UCR student-athlete and current assistant coach Eric Gonzalez. Numerous former Highlander student-athletes have also gone on to play professionally, including Daniel Aguirre (Los Angeles Galaxy) and Aaron Long (LAFC and U.S. Men's National Team). Joining Aguirre and Long at the club level professionally are Michael Salazar (Miami FC), Tony López (Pittsburgh Riverhounds) and Ricky Ruiz (Rio Grande Valley FC) of the USL Championship, as well as Jonick Pineda and Leopoldo Hernandez of NISA's LA Force. 

Academically, Highlander men's soccer continues to excel with 21 Big West All-Academic honors in the past two seasons and more than 40 since Cupello took the reins of the program in 2013. Cupello has also overseen a pair of United Soccer Coaches Scholar All-Region honorees, most recently Dusan Keca from the Highlanders' 2018 Big West championship team.

Stay tuned to @UCR_Athletics on Twitter and Instagram for photos, videos and more from the Highlanders' summer trip.