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So many things in life that seem phenomenal in theory are terrible in reality. The proposed split season for college soccer is one of them. Do I get the practical applications of a split season??? For sure! We complain all the time that soccer is the most demanding sport with the shortest runway. It’s crazy that we go to 0 to 60 in the amount of time that we do and cram all our games into an 11 week season. (tho at least they extended our season this year). But there are so many variables at play here.
Think back to Covid when most conferences had their seasons cancelled but the P4 did not. They played all fall when the rest of us did not. Then when the NCAA announced we would have our official season in the spring, they all got a second season. This was in essence a trial run for the split season. One of my close friends who coaches at a P4 school detailed an eye opening account of all the reasons why the coaches and the players absolutely hated it. (And keep in mind this is a big time program, lots of national team players, and presumably, the most talented and most committed college players there are)
1) The obvious answer was it was just too long. He said they were all absolutely fried and over it by the end of the spring semester. And again, you are talking the upper echelons of talent and even they were miserable
2) When we are in season and focusing on games, the training is completely different than the spring. We are basically surviving and preparing for each subsequent game. We often say that every bit of player development comes in the spring. Hand in hand with that also comes playing time for the entire bottom, half of your bench who are given game opportunities to prove themselves. The same coach elaborated that those players we’re very discouraged after basically sitting on a bench, the whole YEAR and feeling like they were not getting the individual development that had occurred in a real off-season.
3) After sacrificing more than a decade of life, our seniors are so looking forward to being a “normal“ person for senior year spring semester. For the first time in life, as long as they can remember, they are able to relax and not have every single choice dictated by a sport for their last few months of “childhood”. The split season obviously requires that they play right up until graduation.
4) College athletes have a huge burnout factor, and the winter break is such a great opportunity for them to take a breather and recharge and come back with a renewed sense of commitment. A split season means that Christmas break is spent grinding with zero downtime as they prepare to come back and play games out of the gate.
5) Never mind where recruiting fits into all of this? Spring is huge for our recruiting efforts and we all just might lose our minds if we are trying to juggle all of that with also running an entire real season.
6) The entire northern half of the country will be completely screwed with this. This past winter that was so cold and snowy is a perfect example. There would have been no way in hell that games would have been able to be played in parts of February and March in many places. There are plenty of schools who have grass fields in cold climates as well—are they just supposed to now play some games on grass and some on turf and have zero consistency?
7) This will undoubtedly result in schools being forced to build turf fields and create logistical administrative nightmares given that many lacrosse teams and soccer team share fields. Someone else pointed out that it will be a good excuse for schools to eliminate more soccer programs especially when we are at a point with NIL that schools need to figure out how to save money on Olympic sports not create monumental new costs
NCAA News@NCAA_PR
Committee adopts 2-semester playing season for DI men’s soccer. ncaa.org/news/2026/5/13…
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