The first Wednesday in February is always a big, exciting day for all of us associated with Aggie Athletics.  This is the first day that high school seniors can officially sign their commitment to attend and play for a division I soccer, track, hockey, and/or football team.

There usually is lots of drama surrounding this day in college football.  This is when high school guys are wooed back and forth by high profile colleges, commit one way, then often blow off that “commitment” and choose another school and get more internet and media chatter about themselves, etc…  College football and basketball recruiting can be a nasty business. 

There usually isn’t too much drama in women’s college soccer recruiting.  These student-athletes and their families tend to do their homework on schools before they make up their minds and a make verbal commitment (usually in their junior year).  They then usually keep their word and sign with that school in February of their senior year.  By the time signing day rolls around the names of players and their school are often known by the people who are paying attention.  That’s the way it is this year with our program at A&M… Rachel and Sara have been committed to Texas A&M for a good while, and have already been working hard on the classes of 2011 and 2012. 

I’m really pleased to have Sara Ellis and Rachel Lenz in our program.  They are both great young ladies and national caliber athletes.  You can click HERE to go to our National Signing Day release. Or, you can go to our full, 3 sport National Signing Day Page

Because we’ve only signed 2 players, our class of 2010 probably won’t be ranked very high by internet soccer “experts.”  That’s OK – we don’t put any weight on those “experts.”  We didn’t sign a big number of kids  this year because our team is already at a comfortable number and filled with players who we think are going to help us win in 2010 and beyond.  There is still a chance at a transfer player or something out of the ordinary coming in, but that’s not due to a change in our policy of only bringing in players who we think can help us WIN immediately.

Emily’s New Blog

As you may have known, Emily Peterson kept up a great player’s blog this past season.  I thought she did a great job and i know that lots of people were impressed with her writing and the way it exposed her wonderful personality and charater.

Well, she at it again, but this time Emily is doing her own personal blog about her trip around the world.  The blog is titled: “Taking on the World Single handededly”

If you’d like to keep up with Emily and Micah Stephens on their many adventures around the worlkd (literally), then click  HERE

1 Additional Spring Exhibition

I have added one more match into our 2010 non-traditional season schedule.  Stephen F Austin State university (SFA) will come to Aggieland on Good Friday – April 2^nd to play us and BYU.  This will create a nice round-robin day of games, similar to what we’re doing on March 6, March 27, and April 10^th.

With this new game, our total for the spring is up to 12 exhibitions (four 7v7s + eight 11v11). 

All of these exhibition matches will be held at The Aggie Soccer Stadium and all are FREE to the public:

• February 20 – 7v7 Tournament at Texas A&M
• March 6 – Exhibitions vs. UNT and Utah
• March 27 – Exhibitions vs. Baylor and Marquette
• April 2 – Exhibitions vs. SFA and BYU
• April 10 – Exhibitions vs. Houston and SMU

Aggies Earn National Team Call-ups

Congratulations to Whitney Hooper and Kristin Arnold for being called into the USA under-23 Women’s’ National Team Camp March 7-14^th.

We are very proud of all of our players, and real excited for Kristin and Whitney.  Both of them came into our program as super athletes with great promise, but they have taken the information from our training sessions and combined it with hard work to really develop into special players.  I think more of our players will be getting call-ups to different national teams throughout the spring.

Future of the NCAA College Cup

Next week the NCAA men’s and women’s soccer committees will be holding their annual meetings at NCAA headquarters in Indianapolis, Indiana.  That’s not news, it happens every year when they discuss any changes or adjustments to the men’s or women’s soccer seasons.  What is news worthy is the unfortunate fact that the NCAA is moving against the wishes of both the men’s and women’s college soccer coaches to combine the Men’s and Women’s College Cups into one combined event, starting in December 2011.

So, 2010 will be the last year (for an undetermined amount of time) that the NCAA men’s and women’s College Cups will be held on different weekends at different locations.  This is the last year of the current active contract; the women will play their Final Four on the first weekend in December in Cary, NC while the men will play the following weekend in Santa Barbara, CA.

It really is unfortunate that the NCAA is combining the two events, it’s going to cause lots of problems for lots of universities and it will probably decrease the impact of each gender’s event.  Our coaches association (the NSCAA) has been lobbying hard to the deaf ears of the NCAA on this for a couple years.  Men’s NCAA soccer coaches overwhelmingly oppose a combined event as does the vast  majority of coaches for women’s teams. 

Currently the NCAA soccer season kicks off 12 weeks prior to the NCAA Tournament’s first round.  Since the NCAA Tournaments begin on different weekends it means the women’s season starts a week before the men.  This has been great for universities with a men’s and women’s team.  Starting and ending on different weekends makes it easier on scheduling games and practices in their facility, as well as all the administrative support hours that goes into operating games.

Currently each gender enjoys the full spotlight on their gender’s College Cup.  Plus, the wear and tear on the stadium’s playing field is generally able to tolerate 2 Semi-final matches and a Championship match in a 3 day period.  That would change if the stadium is hosting 4 Semi-Finals and 2 National Championships on a natural grass surface (which is typically dormant in December).

I really don’t know who the finalists are to host the College Cup in 2011 and beyond are.  I do know that Texas A&M remains in the mix to be the host of the combined event.  We have submitted our formal bid to be the host for the 2011, 2012, and 2013 NCAA College Cup weekend.  The NCAA has made money at the 3 College Cups held in College Station.  We have always received rave reviews from the NCAA Committee of the way our department runs the most professional operation/event.  We’ll just have to wait and see what is decided upon in Indy.

Future Big 12 Schedules

2010 is the final year of the current schedule format for Big 12 soccer, where 1 team is the “Lone Ranger” and everyone else has a travel partner.  Remember that K-State doesn’t have a team, so we only have 11 Big 12 soccer programs in the conference.

A new format was proposed by the conference which could take effect beginning in 2011.  Under this new format, there would be no Lone Ranger; the emphasis would be on playing 8 of your conference games on Friday nights, and then playing on 3 Sundays in October.  It’s an interesting proposal.  Then again, we might just start the rotation of one team being the Lone Ranger, all over again?

We won’t know the Big 12 schedule, or even the format, until the NCAA decides on the official start date and College Cup dates for 2011 and beyond (see above).

WPS Moves

Last week it was officially announced that the WPS franchise in LA was folding operations.  That’s terrible news and sort of offset all the positive news about the league adding new franchises in 2 former WUSA cities – Atlanta and Philadelphia.

But with the disbanding of the LA Sol, there is a lot of buzz about the dispersal draft being held on Thursday February 4^th.  The Sol was the best team in WPS in 2009 and have a lot of great players including the league’s marquee star – Marta.

On Tuesday, St. Louis traded several players to Atlanta to get the rights to the #1 pick in the dispersal draft.  That means that Brazilian coach Jorge Barcellos will now have the opportunity to draft The Brazilian star, Marta.  I think that if that happens, then you have to like The Athletica’s chances of being the top team in the league in 2010 – good news for all our friends in St. Louis!  But, others are predicting St. Louis will draft Shannon Boxx instead.  Wow, finally some  drama for WPS!

In other WPS News; good and bad (in my opinion):

-Atlanta will christen their new 8,300 seat WPS specific stadium at Kennesaw State University in May. 

-FC Gold Pride are moving out of their old digs at Santa Clara University’s Buck Shaw Stadium (12,000 seats all around the natural grass field) which they shared with MLS San Jose earthquakes and both SCU’s college teams. They are going to the campus of UC East Bay in Hayward, CA (5,000 seats on one side of a artificial turf field, surrounded by a 5 lane jogging track). 

-FC Gold pride is now the only WPS Team west of the Mississippi. Okay, the St. Louis tem will play at the Busch Soccer Park which is actually a couple miles from the big river, but you get my point… Costs just went up for the team who travels all the way across the country for every away game.

-The new Philadelphia women’s team (The Independence) will not be sharing the new MLS Stadium with the MLS expansion team (The Union), rather, they will be playing in the football stadium at West Chester University. I’m not sure if it’s a natural or artificial surface.

Come Play with us at A&M this Summer!

We are currently accepting online registrations for our 2010 sessions of the Texas A&M Soccer Camp!

Our camp is widely recognized as the best camp in the USA, and for good reasons – we have a great coaching staff with a 7:1 coach to player ratio, great soccer and housing facilities, a challenging and comprehensive curriculum, and we make it fun and educational.

You can get all the info you need at our camp website:

www.AggieSoccerCamp.com

I hope you have a great week!

Gig ‘em! – Coach G