A 22-year-old former UCSB soccer star was found guilty of raping a female student this week by a Santa Barbara Superior Court jury.

Eric Frimpong could spend up to eight years in prison for the crime, which occurred on an Isla Vista beach just after midnight on Feb. 17, according to local media reports.

The Santa Barbara Independent reported that while none of Frimpong’s DNA was found on the victim, her DNA was found on his genitals.

The 19-year-old woman said Frimpong hit her in the face, tried to strangle her and pinned her to the ground while taking off her clothing on the beach.

The defense had aggressively questioned her memory of the events during cross-examination, saying the 115-pound woman had consumed 13 drinks over the course of three hours just prior to the alleged rape.

The summary of the case as told by witnesses is as follows:

On the Friday night of Feb. 16, after consuming four shots of vodka in her dorm room, and then four shots of rum and two beers at a couple parties, the woman tried to get into another party at a Del Playa Drive residence. But the people at the house did not let her inside. Standing in the driveway, the woman called a friend on her cell phone.

There, she met Frimpong, then 21, who also was standing in the driveway, talking on his cell phone. They struck up a conversation, and decided to walk to Frimpong’s house nearby.

In his backyard, they played beer pong, a drinking game in which players try to toss a ping-pong ball into one of several glasses of beer at the other end of the table. Generally, if one player makes the shot, the player on the other side of the table must down the beer in the cup.

After drinking several more beers, the two decided to go to the beach just below the Del Playa Drive house in which Frimpong resided.

The woman said her memory of what happened next is fragmented, but that she recalled the following: Someone threw her to the ground, placed a hand over her mouth, struck her with a partially closed fist, and then removed her pants and underwear before raping her.

Frimpong is scheduled to be sentenced on Jan. 31, 2008.