The noise was deafening, a squall of cheers rolling down from the stands and igniting a rapturous celebration like gasoline. Seconds after winning the Texas Class 4A state title in April to finish a perfect 33-0-0 season, the University boys soccer team was in the midst of the greatest moment in program history.

For a moment, Ricky Perez quietly stood off to the side and took in the scene. The University assistant coach understood better than most the significance of the celebration. Visions from his boyhood, from 1992, strobed in his memory.

Perez was the centerpiece of head coach Mike Chapman's first team at University 21 years ago. Perez returned 11 years ago to join Chapman as an assistant, helping guide the Trojans to the most prosperous period in program history and one of the best anywhere in the country. Chapman is still at University. Now, so is Perez.

During the 11 years between the program’s founding and the day Chapman arrived at the Waco, Texas high school program, the boys soccer team was 46-93-6 and had one winning season. Since Chapman arrived, the Trojans are 358-105-23, and they've had at winning season every year since 1993. 

But the winning gets even more concentrated since 2008, when Chapman added Cain Quiroz as his second assistant to pair with Perez. With Quiroz and Perez marking out the tactical map, University is 127-14-2 over the last five years. And that now includes a state title.

The journey to the most wins of any team in the nation ranked in NSCAA's year-end fall, winter or spring rankings for the 2012-2013 high school season was an unforgettable one. In the 4A Region III final, with a spot at the state tournament on the line, the Trojans tied Houston Lee with eight seconds left on a sidewinder of a free kick by steady midfielder Michael Solis. They eventually won the game in penalty kicks.

They did it again in the state semifinals, a Jon Lozano goal with less than three minutes left tying Mesquite Poteet 2-2. They won that one in penalty kicks too, an improbable blast from eventual state tourney-MVP goalkeeper Adrian Barragan deciding the game. Finally, Eli Sanchez's rope from 15 yards won the state title game against El Paso Del Valle with less than 10 minutes left. 

"Sometimes it's just your year," Chapman said. "When you score with seconds left and then score with two minutes left to tie a game, sometimes it's just your year. I think it was ours."

Basking in the school's first state title in any sport on Birkelbach Field in Georgetown, Texas, Perez kept thinking about 1992 and the strides the inner-city soccer program has made since. Eight soccer players turned out for Chapman's first team at University in 1992. The team won five games that year. Last season, the coaching staff chose from a pool of 150. They won 33. 

"We had few soccer players that could play," Perez recalls of 1992. "Coach Chapman had to recruit football players." 

Perez understands the hardscrabble South Waco neighborhoods from which the school pulls it students better than most. University High School is nearly 70 percent Hispanic, which includes nearly every player involved in varsity soccer during Chapman’s tenure. Most of the team comes from single-family homes, Perez said, and Chapman estimates that nearly 75 percent of the time they spend with the players is non-soccer related.

"My parents worked just to try and get food on the table, get us clothes, shoes," Perez said. "Every summer they'd send us to Mexico just to keep us out of trouble, just to get away from Waco. Pretty much our grandparents took care of us just to keep us out of trouble."

"I just want to be a role model to these kids," Perez added. "I've been through what they've been through. Through gangs and all the violence and everything that goes around here. What I kind of tell them is if I can do it, you can do it."

Since a number of the team's players deal with the added strain of working to help support their families, Chapman stresses community service and team cohesiveness off the field as much if not more than tactics on the training ground. The program's Soccer Buddies program travels to area nursing homes, hospitals and charities year-round. By fusing the team together off the field, Chapman thinks he's created the perfect balance on it.

"Coaches talk about wanting their team to be a family and they try to dress them alike to make them a family," Chapman said. "You can't dress a team alike and make them a family. Look at Huntsville (Texas State Penitentiary). They're all dressed alike. I think our community service work we do brings our kids a lot closer together as a family, where they're out helping other people in the community."

Perez and Quiroz largely handle the tactical side of the game, where they've turned University into a lean, tidy attacking side with buckets of style. University routinely passes through its opponents, gathering possession, recycling it through its silky midfield and then finishing with a deep stable of strikers. High school programs don't keep possession metrics, but most teams on this level in the country would be hard-pressed to keep up with the Trojans in that regard.

Club soccer rules the roost for the nation's top high school players, a number of whom never play for their school teams in favor of higher competition at the club level. Since nearly all of Chapman's players also play club on some level, he instructs them to fit into whatever style is being pushed by their club coaches. Often, it's nothing like the tight-cornered passing style University employs.

That changes once they step on University's practice field. While most admit to playing a more direct style at the club level, University stresses the fundamentals and using easy-to-find, shrunken passing lanes. That's given rise to a holistic system that fits in players rather than cater to them.

"I think maybe I'm not to the level that some (academy coaches) are at," Quiroz said. "Maybe they're higher level so they have higher expectations, so they play that European style. Maybe they expect their kids to be able to make a difficult 10-yard pass and make a tough trap. I come in with the mindset to start from the bottom. Start with the simple stuff. We stress that." 

Quiroz has a relative that plays in the U.S. Development Academy, and he attended the Development Academy Playoffs in Frisco in June. When he saw the team playing a blunt, direct style, Quiroz had a conversation with him after the game.

"When I watched the academy team, I asked, 'Is that the way your coach wants you guys to play?'" Quiroz recalls. "He was like, 'No, not really. He wants us to possess the ball.'"

Quiroz then asked why they didn't do that more.

"I don't know why we do that," he answered.

"They try to play that European style where they have one forward and knock it up to him," Quiroz said. "They don't have that technical skill to be able to bring it down and lay it off. I understand pros can do that, but they're still not quite there. I think if we had our guys play that way, they'd struggle as well."

To prevent that sort of tactical fog bank from rolling in, the team works on the intricacies of passing on a base level every day in practice. That's created a fleet of midfielders with passing ability for days and the ability to meticulously weave their way past the opposition. The approach has obliterated opposing teams that utilize direct style that pervades the youth level, leading to win after win over the years. In addition, University plays a rarer diamond back line, giving them flexibility and the added perk of clotting the midfield, the team's strength.

"It's drilled into them from day one every day," Chapman said. "I think you could take some of our same kids that are so finesse here, but when they're playing somewhere else, they're not finesse at all. They're playing the way they're being allowed to play. The way they're playing here is the way it's stressed on a daily basis. They also know if they don't play this way with us, they're going to be on the bench."

Certainly from all aspects, the Trojans' future appears bright. When former Waco Independent School District athletic director Johanna Denson left for the same post at Austin-area Pflugerville earlier this year, she tried to pull Perez with her.

His answer? There's something special about University soccer. I'm not leaving. Now, following up one perfect season with another when the season cranks up in January is the goal.

"The guys didn't know how to lose," Quiroz said. "We got into close games in the playoffs, and before that the boys had never been in a close game. I don't think it registered in their heads that they could lose."