Tochigi SC栃木サッカークラブ

Tochigi Soccer Club (栃木サッカークラブ), commonly referred to as Tochigi SC are a football club based in Utsunomiya, Tochigi Prefecture, Japan. They will play in the J2 League. The team's colour is yellow.

History

Teachers in Tochigi Prefecture founded the club in 1953. They were initially called self-explanatory Tochigi Teachers' Soccer Club (栃木教員サッカー部 Tochigi Kyoin Sakka Bu). They started to welcome players with other professions in 1994 and renamed themselves as Tochigi Soccer Club. In 1999, Tochigi won the Kanto Regional League and were promoted to the Japan Football League after finishing runners-up in the Regional League play-off. In March 2005, they announced that they would set up a task force to give a serious consideration to turn professional and try to gain J.League status.

On January 2007 they achieved J.League Associate Membership status and in the 2008 season they secured qualification for promotion to professional status on November 16; on December 1 promotion was made official by J.League and Tochigi had competed in J2 since 2009. In 2015 Tochigi finished bottom and were relegated for the first time to J3, the third and lowest professional level in the league system. After two seasons, they returned to J2 as runners-up in 2017.

This page also has a version in other languages :  Тотиги (russian)