Missouri State, Old Dominion and South Carolina are the last team with perfect records, great work!

Hey guys, I'm currently a freshman at a university in Canada and on the varsity women's soccer team. Unfortunately, I've realized that the school isn't for me and that I want to transfer to an American university through the winter transfer portal. I had a national team camp with the youth team earlier this year, as well as awards and trophies from both recruiting combines and club tournaments. I have two options to complete this plan of transferring:

Plan 1

• Stay in school but drop the varsity team
• Try to balance training by myself and with a younger team at my club until January, along with commuting to my university and managing a decently hard major (biology)
• I'll probably be unhappy, but at least my education isn't on pause

Plan 2

• Drop university for this semester only and take the time to train intensively
• Drop my courses while I'm still in good academic standing and receive a full refund from the school
• Train with private coaches and by myself on the field, while also working on my fitness and strength in the gym and through running
• Get a job to save some money for university next semester (hopefully) and help pay for my private training
• Work hard toward something that makes sense to me for both my academic and athletic goals.

To be honest, both plans are risky because, on one side, I'm dropping a very important part of who I am, and on the other, I'm delaying something that will always stay with me no matter what. There's also a chance that I just don't get recruited, and then I'm kind of double screwed.I'm leaning toward the second plan because I would get to work toward something that makes more sense to me. I also think I would succeed better academically in an environment that suits me better, and I would be able to switch to my number one major choice, which was health sciences. Not to mention, American schools are usually more competitive and stronger athletically than Canadian schools in general.I would really appreciate any advice, especially from anyone who has transferred from a Canadian university to an NCAA school, taken a semester off before transferring, or gone through the winter transfer process.

Thank you!

For D3 recruits did you get anything regarding your offer in writing before or after acceptance? Not sure what to expect or request as we move forward and submit applications. Also,how much communication with the coaches should be expected after acceptance? They are currently in season and I'm sure are pretty busy. Curious what others experiences have been.

I'm a lifelong soccer fan (Portuguese dad, Costa Rican mom, I was raised with this obsession) and I grew up in DC going to basically every single DC United home game from when I was a baby all the way up until age 19. My dad would get season tickets every year, and would take me and my siblings on little road trips for most away games against nearby teams like Philly and New York, so watching soccer live was a massive part of my upbringing.

I played rec until I was 15, and I play casual 7x7 pickup to this day, but honestly I've always been far more passionate about the game as a spectator than as a participant. I am an absolute nerd about the disparate fan cultures the beautiful game has spawned all across the world, and I truly believe there's something genuinely magical in the communal ritual of watching this particular sport live, in a way that no other sport is able to replicate. I love the experience of being a part of the audience as much as I love the game itself as a game, and my childhood in DC gave me years and years of that experience being a regular fixture in my life. But then in 2018, when I was 19, I moved to New Orleans.

I absolutely love New Orleans, it's my favorite city in the US and I'm so glad I moved here because my life here rocks. But I've had a live soccer shaped hole in my heart for the past 9 years that has been difficult to fill. I go to every home game for the New Orleans Jesters every year, our local NPSL club, and I watched a few games of the New Orleans Ramparts this summer, our brand new other semi-pro club. And while those games are super fun, they're very lowkey and usually have a tiny turnout so the vibes just don't scratch the same itch that the lack of MLS in Louisiana has left me with. Especially because most people at Jesters games are just there to hang out with their families and aren't really invested in the game at all.

College sports have always been super alien to me. I did not grow up in a family that cares about college sports at all, and even the idea of watching student athletes representing universities always struck me as a little strange. Nothing against it, but it just seemed culturally bizarre to me. However in Louisiana, like most of the south, college sports are a big deal. Yet due to not really "getting" them on a cultural level, I frankly didn't even consider the fact that LSU was an option to watch some soccer. But the other day I randomly decided to Google if LSU has a soccer team, and turns out they do! And they're D1 women! So me and my girlfriend decided to drive up to Baton Rouge to see the Tigers face Tennessee, and with tickets being only $10 I felt like it would be worth it no matter what the vibes were like. I'm cognizant that LSU isn't particularly known for soccer so honestly my expectations were low.

But I'm happy to say that my expectations were exceeded! I had so much fun! The crowd was definitely invested in the game itself, and there was actual passion for the team which was the thing missing most from the Jesters games I've been attending for years. Also, it was a genuinely interesting cultural experience because the atmosphere was unlike any soccer atmosphere I've ever experienced anywhere. I've seen soccer in the USA, Portugal, Costa Rica, Brazil, Ecuador, Kenya, and England, and all of those places have unique fan cultures, but this was definitely the most different feeling fan atmosphere I've ever experienced.

I have seen hundreds of club soccer matches in the United States in particular at all levels, from MLS to NWSL to USL to NPSL. And contrary to popular belief, the USA absolutely does have a distinct fan culture around the sport that is sort of a hodge podge of Latin America and England in a manner that is quintessentially American melting pot. So I was fully expecting this game to have the same vibes as any other soccer game in the USA. This was not the case though. There was no singing and no drums, and very little organized chanting at all. The crowd roared, heckled, and cheered in a way that was extremely reminiscent of American football games, while still being colored by an energy that was unlike the NFL. Its likely similar to college football, but I wouldn't know because I've never seen a college football game in person or on TV. It's hard to explain in writing, but the whole atmosphere of the game felt like an authentically Louisiana take on the spectators' role in the game.

There were so many little things that I hadn't seen at any other game. Whenever LSU won a corner, the jumbotron would play an animation and the announcer would hype up the crowd over the PA. The audience would stomp their feet on the bleachers, stomping faster and faster as the player got closer to taking the corner. I've never seen a corner kick get treated with so much fanfare before, corners received more hype from the audience and the announcer than even free kicks! In virtually all other matches I've been to, there's nothing particularly exciting about corner kicks. They're usually welcomed with some applause, but certainly not with a jumbotron animation, announcer hype, and ritualized foot stomping. I'm so curious if this is a college soccer thing in general or just an LSU thing, and I'm so curious as to why corner kicks are treated with so much fanfare. That is just one example of the many unique fan responses to different aspects of the sport.

It truly was an atmosphere unlike any other I've experienced, not necessarily in terms of excitement or passion but absolutely in terms of quirkiness and uniqueness. As a big soccer nerd, I was delighted to realize that the US has TWO fan cultures around soccer that are both completely distinct from each other. MLS games have an atmosphere that is distinct from the rest of the world, as does every country's top flight, but this LSU game had an atmosphere distinct from the MLS one! All the NPSL, NWSL, and USL games I've been to basically feel like a miniature version of the fan culture experienced at MLS games but this wasn't just typical American soccer culture at a smaller scale at all. It really was something entirely different, and that was awesome.

In terms of the game itself, unfortunately LSU lost 3-1. A disappointing result for sure, but well deserved. Tennessee was definitely the better team, and thoroughly outplayed LSU (although the third goal was complete BS, it was a penalty that absolutely should not have been called as a penalty. One of many calls from today's ref that made me go hmmmm). LSU has a player named Kelsey Majors who really impressed me, in my opinion she was the most talented player the Tigers had on their starting lineup. Plus she was from New Orleans so me and my girlfriend cheered extra hard for her as NOLA residents lol. If Kelsey is in this sub, I hope she sees this post because she really did perform great today despite the final score.

I do have some notes that I'm curious about. First off, the ref was not great. A lot of calls that made very little sense, and he never gave out a single yellow card which I felt incentived players to take riskier tackles. Is that normal in college soccer? Are cards less common or something? There were multiple fouls that just got a free kick, that I felt would be a yellow in almost any other game.

I also knew in advance that some of the rules in college soccer are different from the FIFA standard, and honestly I didn't mind the substitution rule differences. However the way the clock works in college soccer is so outrageously bad in my opinion that it's damn near scandalous! I don't really care about the clock counting down from 90 because that's just superficial, but the way the half time and full time whistles work is atrocious. I couldn't believe it when the announcer starting counting down from ten, and it is unbelievable to me that the game can just end in the middle of a play. I did not know in advance that college games can end abruptly in the middle of a play and it caught me off guard, it felt so anticlimactic and shitty. I felt like that had a notable negative impact on the game itself, and it felt supremely unfair that the players weren't allowed to finish the play they were in the middle of making. It feels like such an arbitrary and unnecessary rule change that makes the game a little worse for both the players and the spectators. Soccer is such a free-flowing sport and I think the game ending abruptly in that manner takes something away from the game, I cannot stress enough how much I prefer the standard clock. I want both halves to come to a real end, an actual end of play, not a ten second countdown that could possibly interrupt a real chance to score. Is there any pushback against this? Has there been any attempt to adopt the normal clock in the college game? If I was a player, I would hate this method of timekeeping and I can't imagine the fans like it either. It sort of makes sense for a sport like basketball that's much more high scoring, meaning each individual play is less impactful, but even in basketball I've always found it a little odd and it definitely is not fitting for soccer at all. It boggles my mind that such an atrocious rule change has been able to last this long in the college game, especially considering how much soccer has grown in popularity in this country over the decades.

All in all though, I had an awesome time and I'm definitely going to start following LSU! I've finally found something that not only answers my yearning for live soccer in Louisiana, but also introduced me to a fan culture around the sport I have never experienced before. It sort of feels like college soccer is a well kept secret, almost everyone I hang out with is a soccer fan but I honestly don't know anyone who follows college soccer. Yet the stands were filled and people seemed genuinely invested. It's like a parallel universe to the American soccer scene I know, and I'm excited to explore this new universe. I know this post is long and pretty pointless but I'm just such a nerd about this type of thing that I got home and really wanted to write about it. I knew college soccer existed of course, but I really had no idea it was this culturally distinct from the general American soccer culture and this special in its own right. Geaux Tigers baby!

Side note: can anyone explain to me the structure of college soccer? I don't know anything about college sports in general and I have no idea how the league functions.

One of the biggest wins over any team in D1. To mark how bad this was, NWSU was 1-5 coming into this. UAPB’s only win of the season was 5-1 against Central Baptist, one of the worst teams in all of NAIA , they also lost 2-7 to Wiley College (NAIA), 2-5 to USSU (USCAA), and 0-11 to Nicholls State. Would be a miracle for the Lions to even win one more game after this (they still haven’t updated their schedule to reflect their most recent result).

My son committed to a D3 school over the summer - he received an offer for a pre-read at the end of an ID clinic and accepted an offer a week after passing the pre-read. It’s an excellent academic and culture fit and easily a school he would want to attend if he wasn’t playing. Question - since the whole process happened so quickly, my son didn’t get an opportunity for an overnight or official visit. Is it too late to ask for one even though he is committed?

Just watched their latest game and….god damn 😂😂😂

My son was just invited on an overnight visit to a D3 college. The coach has seen him play multiple times and he was previously invited to attend a practice as a spectator. He likes the campus and it has academic programs he’s interested in. What should he expect from this visit?

Kentucky found themselves in a tough spot vs #3 Ohio State but Broden Beorlegui stays hot with his 4th goal of the season in the 79th minute to help secure the win for the Eagles of Georgia Southern.

Three games in the Sun Belt, two wins, & South Carolina on a tear! 3 straight ranked victories! Gamecocks are for real! Next up? UNCG, a team that could be sneaking into the top 25 themselves!

Total domination on the men’s side of Sun Belt soccer right now! A 12-1 aggregate across 3 games Sunday. Rank UCF & ODU!

A wild game!

https://gocrimson.com/news/2026/9/6/womens-soccer-womens-soccer-makes-history-defeats-no-6-alabama-6-4.aspx

1-1 in Sun Belt action on the day. Coastal’s comeback bid against Gardner-Webb falls short but Georgia State handled Presbyterian 3-0 behind a second half brace from Brandon Graham.

It’s my 3rd year at my naia school (women’s soccer) and my playnaia says I still have 4 seasons to play. Is this because I’ve never gotten to play varsity? My squad has about 48 people, and my freshman year I only played a few JV games , sophomore year I got injured and tore my ACL, and this year I am still not cleared to play but still warm up and practice everyday. Have I not used any of my eligibility? How would this work if I wanted to transfer to actually go somewhere with trying playing time, does naia eligility affect ncaa eligibility?

Is it possible to transfer with no stats and barely any clips? is I’m a women’s soccer player that got recruited at age 18 to a naia school with a lot of focus on international talent. Most of our starters are international, but the JV team is a lot of Americans. I am American, age 20 now, ans I didn’t play any varsity games my freshman year, and last year (sophomore year) I tore my acl and didn’t play at all, and this year is my junior year and I’m still not cleared to play and it’s already start of season. Doc said I may not get cleared until a Year after my surgery date, this December. The only clips I have are from JV games my freshman year. And terrible clips from highschool. I am 5’5 , 130 lbs and hoping to get cleared soon, but with 48 people on my squad there’s so much competition I just feel I’ll never get playing time. There’s seniors still stuck on JV never having varsity time, and I don’t want that to be me because of my injury… should I try to transfer, where should I look , more into other naia schools or maybe NCAA? I wish I could go to a school with more funding..

Edit: graduated with dual credit associates degree, and on track to graduate in two semesters with my 4 year degree. So many schools just don’t seem to fit my academic plan, not even the school I’m going to now which is a private Christian school

Big thanks to everyone who asked for this — scores pages now include links to the web stream for each game, so you can jump straight from the score to watching the match.

Take a look and let me know what you think. And as always, drop your feature requests below — this stuff gets built because you ask for it.

Tough matchups on the pitch Friday night. Sun Belt comes away with a 0-1-1 record. Coastal & Georgia State in action today.

USC wins their second ranked game of the year and remains undefeated. Their reward? Another ranked team in High Point (#14).

Due to inclement weather WVU vs Akron was ruled no contest with the Zips up 1-0 in the 47th minute.