Description
Tochigi SC are a professional soccer club in the J. League, currently part of the J3 league. Their home town is Utsunomiya city in Tochigi prefecture. As their home stadium, they are using the Tochigi Green Stadium.
In 1953, teachers in Tochigi prefecture established “Tochigi Teachers’ Soccer Club”, which was the predecessor of Tochigi SC. In 1978, they joined the Tochigi League’s 1st division, which they won several times, although after promoting to the Kanto League, they never managed to produce noticeable results and became known for repeatedly relegating and promoting between the two leagues.
In 1994, when they set up a goal of promoting to the J. League in the future, they changed their club name to Tochigi Soccer Club and went from being a team that mainly consisted of teachers, to opening their doors to the general public. In 1998, when they won their 10th championship in the Tochigi Prefecture League’s 1st division and promoted to the Kanto League again, then the next year, in 1999, after a 7 year comeback, they won the Kanto League’s championship for the first time. On top of that, they came in 2nd place in the Japan Regional Football Champions League, which secured them a promotion to the Japan Football League (JFL).
From 2000, when they joined JFL, their first few years were filled with tough fights and sluggish results, finishing in the lower positions. However, every year they continued to improve their standings and when former Japan National Team player, Koichi Hashiratani, took charge of the team as manager in the 2008 season, they succeeded in finishing in 2nd place.
Their dream of entering the J. League had finally come true.
In 2009, they hired Avispa Fukuoka and Vissel Kobe’s previous manager, Hiroshi Matsuda, who reinforced the team with several experienced J. League players, but without being able to improve the team’s results in J2, the team finished their 2015 season in last place and relegated to J3. More over, in that year’s Emperor’s Cup, in the first round against Ryutsu Keizai University, they lost in the penalty shoot-out. With such undesired results, their season came to an end.
In 2016, with a new manager and new fighting force, they maintained good results in the J3 league and contended with Oita Trinita for first place. In the end, they lost their lead to Oita and by coming in 2nd, they faced J2’s 21st place holder Zweigen Kanazawa in the J2-J3 relegation matches. The final scores were: Home 0-1; Away 0-2. They lost both matches and their hard earned chance to promote to J2 slipped by.
The team’s home jersey is yellow with vertical blue stripes. Their supplier from 2015 has been ATHLETA. Their shirts are decorated with logos of their local sponsors like TKC, CAWACHI , TOYOTA WOODYOU HOME, and others.
