The senior forward emerged as one of Minnesota’s top scorers in his first season with the Polars. Now North St. Paul is asking him to do even more.
Last summer, North St. Paul boys soccer head coach Dan Torrez had heard enough about Gino Sarabia Pinzon to spend a Sunday afternoon in Maplewood looking for him.
One of Torrez’s players had told him about two brothers who had recently enrolled at North and could play. So in June 2025, Torrez went to a Sunday league in Maplewood to see for himself. Most of the players on the field were adults. Gino was 15.
It did not take long for him to get Torrez’s attention. A loose ball came out of the penalty area as the goalkeeper charged off his line. From about 25 yards away, Gino brought the ball under control and drove a shot toward goal.
“On a rope,” Torrez recalled. “The way he was able to take the ball down and strike the ball from that distance is not something you see from kids his age. I was immediately impressed with his raw talent and very excited for him to join the program.”
A few months later, Gino was no longer a secret. He scored 31 goals in his first season with North St. Paul and helped the Polars finish 11-3-3 and second in the Metro East Conference. Strib Varsity named him to its 25-player All-Minnesota team.
The production was impressive enough. How quickly it happened made the season stand out.
Now entering his senior year, Gino will try to prove it was only the beginning.
A soccer player from the start
Gino’s breakout in Minnesota happened quickly, but soccer has been part of his life for as long as he can remember.
His father, Tomás Sarabia, said Gino began tagging along when he took his older son to soccer training in Ecuador. Gino was only 4 and was supposed to be watching, but he would sneak into the practices. Before long, the coach noticed the little brother trying to join in and recognized some ability.
Gino soon began training and competing himself. Tomás said scoring followed his son through youth soccer, with golden boots and other awards from his years playing in Ecuador still kept at the family’s home.
Gino said he began training at 4 and soccer became his passion as he grew up.
Tomás had already been living in Minnesota for several years while his wife and sons regularly came to visit. Eventually, the family decided to stay in Minnesota and began looking for schools for the boys.
Gino landed at North St. Paul.
He is still becoming fluent in English, but neither Gino nor his father described the transition to a new school and soccer program as particularly difficult. Gino credited his coaches and teammates with making that possible.
“I always felt comfortable,” Gino said, adding that his coaches and teammates welcomed him from his first days with the program.
The environment Gino entered was not accidental. Torrez, who is entering his eighth season at North, has tried to build a program that does not depend on players coming through the traditional pay-to-play club soccer system.
North works with community programs to provide year-round opportunities and with school staff to help students navigate sports physicals, registration and other barriers that can keep them from participating. Many of North’s players do not spend their offseasons with high-level club programs.
“We just need to be more creative and involved in their development than other programs who may expect their kids to go play club in the offseason and then rejoin the high school team the next fall,” Torrez said.
Gino fit that model. When Torrez first saw him, he was not playing for one of Minnesota’s prominent club teams. He was playing Sunday league in Maplewood on a team coached by his father.
Even after establishing himself as one of the state’s top scorers, Gino continued showing up for North’s summer sessions. Torrez said he regularly played in mixed-age games with younger players simply because he wanted to be around the game.
That part of Gino stood out to Torrez during North’s preseason trip to St. Cloud last year.
The Polars participate in an annual round-robin scrimmage there, and it gave Torrez his first chance to see how Gino would fare against high school competition. Gino played well enough to reinforce everything his coach had seen in Maplewood.
What happened afterward stuck with Torrez just as much.
When the varsity players finished, Gino sat in the stands with his teammates, ate his bagged lunch and loudly cheered for North’s junior varsity players as they finished their games.
“While other guys in his position may feel pretty accomplished and full of themselves after having performed at such a high level, Gino was in the stands cheering and yelling for our JV guys,” Torrez said. “This humility is what separates Gino from most other kids at his ability level.”
A different challenge ahead
North St. Paul scored 69 goals last season. Gino accounted for 31 of them.
His biggest scoring night came in a 7-4 victory over South St. Paul, when he scored five goals and added two assists. He had three goals and two assists in an 8-4 win over Two Rivers and by the middle of September had already emerged as one of Minnesota’s most productive forwards.
Torrez said Gino’s effectiveness comes from more than his ability to finish scoring chances.
While some forwards use speed or strength to overwhelm defenders, Torrez said Gino plays with patience and is comfortable maneuvering in tight spaces. During pickup games, he sometimes drops into the midfield or even plays defense because he wants more opportunities to touch the ball.
“Gino is an absolute menace in front of goal,” Torrez said. “What separates him from other kids who may also have admirable stats is his feel for the game. He plays at a different pace than other kids who may have grown up in Minnesota. He’s never in a rush and always in control.”
North became a better team around him as the season progressed.
The Polars entered the Class 3A, Section 4 tournament as the No. 5 seed and went on the road to beat fourth-seeded Woodbury 2-1. Gino scored one goal and assisted on the other. North’s season ended three days later with a 2-1 loss to Stillwater.
Torrez said last year’s team had to learn how to win. Early in the season, North often relied on talent to overcome mistakes. By the postseason, the Polars were more organized, more disciplined and better equipped to adjust when injuries or other problems arose.
The challenge this fall is carrying those lessons into a different team.
North graduated several important players, including Andrew Ortiz and Abdimalik Nur, who helped keep opponents from focusing entirely on Gino. Torrez expects junior winger Noah Smith to take on a larger attacking role, while Maudi Rodriguez, Jose Rodriguez and Teng Thao are among the returning players who will be asked to take on more responsibility.
Gino’s role will change, too.
Last season, North could keep him higher on the field and allow him to concentrate on finishing chances. Torrez expects him to spend more time dropping into midfield this year, helping to start the attack and create opportunities for teammates.
“I expect Gino’s assist tally to go up this year,” Torrez said. “We’ll need to rely on him to do more than goal scoring.”
That does not mean Gino has stopped thinking about goals. His father hopes he can surpass last year’s total, and Gino does, too.
But both pointed toward the same larger goal for his final season.
“It’s my last year and I know that with my team we will be able to go far,” Gino said. “It would be excellent to be able to win the championship and I could score more goals than last season”