MENLO SCHOOL Since 1915
About the Team
Menlo School girls’ soccer has been a competitive force in the Peninsula and West Bay Athletic Leagues and a regular visitor to the Central Coast Section playoffs.
The Knights closed the 2023-24 regular season with two dominating shutout wins and earned an automatic bid to the CCS playoffs, where they lost in a tightly contested 1-0 match to Gunn.
The Knights closed a historic 2019 season, earning a trip to the inaugural CIF-NorCal tournament after landing the CCS Div. I Championship. The Knights finished the season with an overall record of 20-2-2, winning their seventh CCS title in program history and their third in the past six years. In 2012, the team won its first CCS title outright and defended its league championship in 2013. The Knights returned to the title game, winning it in 2014 and 2016 and advancing to the final in 2015. Menlo shared a CCS Div. II championship three consecutive seasons 1988-1990.
The Coach
Ross Ireland (Eighth Season)
Ireland punctuated his return to the Knights with a Central Coast Section title in 2019, then repeated in 2021. He first served as head coach in 2015-2016 when he also led the Knights to a CCS Div. II Championship.
Before coming to Menlo as JV coach, he led Castilleja for eight seasons. Ireland brings years of international playing experience. He grew up playing soccer on the streets of Liverpool, then refined his skills as a player with St. George in Sydney, New Zealand’s National Youth Selection, FC Barcelona, and Southampton FC England. In 1994, he co-founded World Soccer Inc., a professionally run youth soccer organization and has coached many teams in the local area including Alpine, Stanford, Palo Alto, MVLA and PSV soccer clubs.
