After a 2020 season that was hugely disrupted by COVID-19, resulting in both the men’s and women’s College Cup finals being played back on May 17, the 2021 NCAA Division I soccer season marks a return to normalcy as we’re now almost two weeks into the fall campaign.
It’s early doors but we’ve already seen some spectacular play around the country, so much so that SportsCenter’s Top 10 has already featured a couple stunning goals.
The best and worst time of year is approaching. The month of August is a time of heat waves, two practices a day, beep tests and a strange obsession with ice baths. Whether it is your first college preseason or your last, there is nothing that can truly prepare you for a month's worth of only seeing your teammates and taking power naps whenever you get the chance. Pushing your body to its limits and playing the game you love is bittersweet, even though you will probably dislike your life when you finish the beep test and go straight into small sided games.
The NCAA has adopted a new interim policy that provides college athletes with the opportunity to profit off their name, image and likeness (NIL). Including all the top three divisions of all NCAA sports nationwide, almost 460,000 athletes now have the liberty to be compensated for their worth and what they bring to their school. Before the new policy came into effect, the NCAA owned the public rights of every athlete as a part of their scholarship agreement.
As the world heals from the pandemic, pick-up matches are on their way back as well. Pick-up matches exemplify all the best parts of soccer: intense rivalries, healthy competition and the opportunity to sharpen your skills.
They knocked out No. 1 overall seed Clemson; they knocked out the defending champion Georgetown; they knocked out two-time national champion North Carolina. The only thing left to do was defeat eight-time champion Indiana and Marshall — a program that’d never advanced beyond the NCAA Men’s Soccer Tournament quarterfinals before this year — would claim the College Cup.
In a tournament that’s been largely decided via penalty shootouts, it was only fitting that the NCAA Women’s College Cup Final was decided on penalties Monday night in Cary, North Carolina.
The only surprise was that No. 1 Florida State — after triumphing by this method in both the quarterfinals and semis — was ultimately upset by No. 11 Santa Clara after sending its first two attempts off the post.
When it comes mid-major programs that know how to write a Cinderella story, there’s not many better than the Marshall Thundering Herd.
More recently, the men's basketball team advanced to the Second Round of the 2018 NCAA Tournament as a 13-seed, while the 2020 football team reached No. 16 in the national rankings after starting the season 7-0.
Now it’s the men’s soccer team’s turn.
After four quarterfinal matches on Sunday, we’re down to the final four of the NCAA Women’s College Cup. The semifinal games will be played on Thursday, May 13, with the championship game falling on Monday, May 17, at WakeMed Soccer Park in Cary, North Carolina.
Here’s a quick recap of how Sunday’s quarterfinal matches played out.
NCAA D1 Women’s Soccer Tournament: Quarterfinal Results And Highlights
No. 1 Florida State vs. No. 9 Duke
The NCAA women’s soccer tournament kicks off on Tuesday in North Carolina. Personally, every time the College Cup rolls around, I think about one of my biggest regrets from my college days: deciding it was too expensive to buy a ticket to attend the 2005 College Cup, which was walking distance from my dorm room at Texas A&M.
After a year postponed and the swapping of high-profile matches at the home of the Colorado Rapids for individual training sessions in deserted local parks, GAM United’s Elijah Mwenebitu is looking at everything as an opportunity to be chased, which isn’t exactly a new way of operating for the 23-year-old midfield destroyer.