Arcadia’s Urbina named MVC Player of the Year

Christopher Urbina was the straw that stirred the drink for the Arcadia attack all throughout the 2025 boys soccer season, putting up video game numbers with his goal-scoring proficiency.

For his stellar efforts, Urbina was named the 2025 Mississippi Valley Conference Player of the Year to close out an excellent high school career with the Raiders.

“It’s a goal that I’ve had for a few years so all the people who believed in me were proud,” Urbina said of the player of the year honor.

His senior season was the culmination of a sensational high school career with the Raiders, as Urbina set a new single-season program record by scoring 71 goals during the 2025 campaign.

“I was inspired by my teammates because they helped me a lot in the field and my coach always believed that I would get far,” Urbina said.

Urbina’s soccer journey — which he said was inspired growing up by some of the sport’s great stars like Neymar, Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo — brought him to a Raider program that had just hit new highs in the early 2020s with a couple of runs to the state tournament.

With Urbina’s goal-scoring prowess helping lead the way, Arcadia got back to Milwaukee for the state tournament this fall. Urbina had a series of close calls throughout the Raiders’ state semifinal match against Sturgeon Bay. He finally had his breakthrough moment when he scored in extra time to level the score at 2-2 just a couple of minutes after the Clippers had taken the lead.

Though that match with Sturgeon Bay ended in a heartbreaking 3-2 defeat, Urbina still expressed a great deal of pride in finishing his Raider career by helping Arcadia get back to the state stage.

“It meant a lot to me and the community of Arcadia because they all believed in me and my team and they all thought we would get far,” Urbina said.

In addition to Urbina earning the top individual accolade as a player, Arcadia’s Luis Cruz was named the MVC Coach of the Year after the Raiders finished second in the final conference standings.

Holmen captured the conference championship with an 8-1-1 league mark (25 points) to finish narrowly better than Arcadia’s record of 7-1-2 (23 points). The rest of the MVC standings saw Tomah and West Salem in a tie for third at 6-4-0 (18 points), Onalaska in fifth at 5-2-3 (18 points), La Crosse Aquinas in sixth at 2-5-3 (nine points), La Crosse Central in seventh at 2-6-2 (eight points), La Crosse Logan in eighth at 2-7-1 (seven points) and Sparta in ninth at 0-8-2 (two points).

Urbina was also joined on the All-MVC first team by fellow Arcadia seniors Jerson Sanchez and Johncarlos Uribe along with junior Ony Zaragoza Mendez.

Arcadia senior Jared Garcia Lara was the lone Raider to earn second-team honors.

Arcadia senior Alec Conrad and freshman Henry Schank were the team’s all-conference honorable mentions, while Garcia Lara was the Raider pick for the sportsmanship award.