Notwithstanding the April snow storm in the Northeast, we're starting to see the first signs of spring - postings of Fall 2025 Men's Soccer schedules!  I'm interested to see if the new NPI rules will affect the nature of non-conference games.  Last year's schedules were largely done before the NPI rules were finalized and while many schedules are still affected by prior year scheduling decisions because of home-and-away contracts, it will be interesting to see if we notice signs of scheduling adjustments now that teams are not necessarily chasing wins against regionally ranked opponents.

Below are a few early ones. As with last season, the upper Midwest tends to post earlier, possibly because they want to wish spring into existence!  This region also may be less revealing about scheduling changes since the distances are greater and teams tend to stay playing teams in the same circles.

Coe College

Wisconsin-Platteville looks to be the second half of a home-and-away series, but North Central is a strong new addition.

Augsburg

Linfield traveling to Augsburg for an early season match.  Maybe this helps Linfield's strength of schedule, which is something the Northwest Conference struggles with given their isolation and double round-robin conference schedule, but I suspect this was in the works for awhile since many teams, particularly in Region X, budget for one big pre-conference trip every four years as kind of a reward for the players and as a recruiting foray for the coaches and to raise the profile of the school in a big metro area like Minneapolis.  For Augsburg, unless Linfield dramatically improves this season or Augsburg collapses, it provides the Auggies with an easier early season opponent.

North Central

The is the first schedule that seems less loaded than last season (at least based on preseason expectations in both years).  Gone are St. Olaf, Gustavus Adolphus, Wisconsin-Platteville, and University of Chicago.  In their place are Wartburg and Coe, which are part of an Iowa weekend, Monmouth, and Illinois Institute of Technology

Wisconsin-Whitewater

They play North Park and Loras on return trips, but Macalester is gone from the schedule and they pick up teams like Webster and Greenville in a trip south to return a game against Westminster

Aurora

They play University of Chicago in a return trip, but replace Wash U and Wisconsin Eau Claire with North Park and one less non-conference game.

North Park

Lots of familiar teams, but replaces Wisconsin Eau Claire with Wisconsin Platteville

Central College

Replaces Macalester and Westminster with Wisconsin River Falls and Blackburn

Calvin

Calvin hosting Ohio Wesleyan on opening weekend for perhaps OWU's first or second game in the post-Jay Martin era should be interesting.  Otherwise, a pretty different schedule from 2024.  Not sure Oberlin will compare to Mount Union or Ohio Northern.

More 2025 schedules

Occidental

Very interesting opening exhibition game at Azusa Pacific on Aug. 19th, which recently announced it will be leaving DII and joining Oxy in the SCIAC.  Oxy is also taking a trip as far away from SoCal as possible to open the season in a very tough set of three games against Babson, MIT, and UMass Boston.  In the SCIAC, they play Cal Lu, Pomona-Pitzer, Chapman, and La Verne twice, and Redlands, Claremont-Mudd-Scripps, Cal Tech, and Whittier only once. That likely is a favorable draw and one that probably explains the scheduling to open the season.

Washington & Jefferson

Interesting that they are taking a 5 hour+ weekend trip to Virginia to play a single game against Randolph-Macon in mid-September.  I don't think the two teams have played each other before.

Albion

Although not going fully Adrian since they added Ohio Northern and Chicago, they do learn from Adrian after losing all of their non-conference games last year.  They added a bunch of DIII and NAIA teams that struggled to win any games last season in an apparent effort to focus on wins, which is the coin of the realm in NPI

Alma

Not sure I understand why they agreed to play Calvin twice, adding them as a non-conference game before also playing them in conference, but maybe it's tough for them to get a mid-week game.

Wabash

One notable omission (at least to me) is Earlham, who they have played 55 times over the years.  They played every single year from 1967 to 2019, but stopped when the streak broke in the pandemic.  I thought the rivalry may have restarted when they played again for the first time in 2024 to an exciting 5-3 Wabash win.  Earlham roared back from 4-0 deficit to score 3 goals in the second half before Wabash got an insurance goal in the 79th minute.  Alas, tradition is dead (or Earlham was worried that Wabash was catching up to them in the all time series).

Alfred State

First season for Vince Correa after moving over from an AC position at SUNY Brockport. I, for one, am happy that they open the season hosting Alfred University so that no matter what happens, Alfred wins.

Wheaton (IL)

They open the season hosting Chapman from the SCIAC and Colorado College from the SCAC and then travel to the NWC to play Pacific Lutheran and Puget Sound.  Chapman is a return trip from Wheaton's trip to SoCal last season, but the others are new.  Thus far, Region X teams seem to be the ones still traveling big distances for non-conference games (and presumably subsidizing trips to play them at home), although it's still a small sample of schedules. If that continues to hold as schedules get posted, though, it would make sense.  The "island" conferences are the ones that need to to look out of region for DIII opponents, which are the ones that count for NPI purposes.  For Wheaton, with non-conference games also on the schedule against Wash U and Chicago, they will certainly be battle-tested by the time conference play begins.

Marietta

They have kind of an impressive three state road trip in early September: @Washington & Jefferson (PA) Wed 9/3, @Transylvania (KY) Sat 9/6 and @Hanover (IN) Sun 9/7.

SUNY Potsdam

Traveling to St. Lawrence on 9/17 for Saints fans.  Host SUNY ESF and the Baruch/Nazareth in the Potsdam College Cup

Washington & Lee

Strong non-conference schedule, opening with games at Emory and Oglethorpe and then home to Covenant (who beat them 3-0 away last season) and away to Mary Washington.  No Johns Hopkins this year, but if anything the schedule is harder.

Lake Forest

They play Calvin and Wisconsin-Whitewater again in the second game of home-and-away series, but otherwise the schedule is pretty similar except for the absence of Hope, who they played while in Michigan to play Calvin.

Hendrix

Kind of an odd schedule in their first year in the SCAC.  They do play at Rhodes and against Westminster as part of the Rhodes tournament, but it seems like they had to push to fill in slots, playing Northwest Mississippi Community College and DII Ouachita Baptist as regular season games and having a game against Dakota Wesleyan (an NAIA team from South Dakota?!) on the schedule for late September that has already been cancelled.  They do host Emory and get an immediate introduction to the rigors of SCAC travel with a trip to Colorado College.

Wisconsin-Stout

Lakeland and Northland (RIP) are gone from the schedule, with Beloit and Crown replacing them in the second year of the men's soccer program.

Quote from: Kuiper on Yesterday at 04:31:02 PMWashington & Lee

Strong non-conference schedule, opening with games at Emory and Oglethorpe and then home to Covenant (who beat them 3-0 away last season) and away to Mary Washington.  No Johns Hopkins this year, but if anything the schedule is harder.

W&L also has Christopher Newport later in the season and is still showing an open date. That is a full and challenging non-conference schedule.

I'm hoping to get to the Atlanta games this year. Really hoping they look more like the team that ended the season than the one I saw get manhandled by Covenant last year. I suspect year 2 under Shabazz will start better than year 1.

https://athletics.stolaf.edu/sports/mens-soccer/schedule

2025 St. Olaf schedule

I'd say pretty comparable to the past few seasons in terms of difficulty. Maybe a touch on the lighter side, but it's pretty tough to make that determination before any games are played. Open the season hosting Pacific Lutheran and University of Chicago, and ending with UW-Platteville. Traveling to 2024 Sweet 16 participant UW-Superior. No surprise that the Oliver twins will open with an exhibition contest vs each other.

Bates

This is an incomplete schedule, with only the NESCAC games.  Only double conference game weekend is at home against Williams and Hamilton

Gustavus Adolphus

Interesting that they are playing St. Olaf as a scrimmage before playing them again in conference.  Like St. Olaf, they are playing Pacific Lutheran and Chicago in the opening weekend and also have some tricky non-conference games against Calvin, @Luther, @Nebraska Wesleyan, and against Wisconsin-Superior, with the later two sprinkled amidst conference play

John Carroll

First season in the NCAC, which means they play Kenyon et al in conference now.  They are playing Capital, Mount Union, and Baldwin Wallace from the OAC instead.  They do have return games against Carnegie Mellon and Lycoming and added a tricky opening game against Edgewood, which was 17-2-2 last season. Perhaps the most interesting game is away at Brandeis on 9/27.  That's an awfully long way to go for a single Saturday game.

Dominican

They replace Fontbonne (RIP) and Nebraska Wesleyan with Elmhurst and North Central

Quote from: Kuiper on April 13, 2025, 07:14:49 PMWabash

One notable omission (at least to me) is Earlham, who they have played 55 times over the years.  They played every single year from 1967 to 2019, but stopped when the streak broke in the pandemic.  I thought the rivalry may have restarted when they played again for the first time in 2024 to an exciting 5-3 Wabash win.  Earlham roared back from 4-0 deficit to score 3 goals in the second half before Wabash got an insurance goal in the 79th minute.  Alas, tradition is dead (or Earlham was worried that Wabash was catching up to them in the all time series).

I keep waiting for my Little Giants to break out and be competitive with the upper tier of the North Coast.  It hasn't happened yet and will only be more difficult with the addition of JCU to the conference.

SUNY Canton

Actually taking a legitimately long, pre-conference, out-of-state, road trip for the first time in years as far as I can tell, traveling to PA to play Juniata and Mount Aloysius the second weekend of the season.  Considering SUNY Canton's record last season and the records of Juniata and Mount Aloysius, this may be a situation where a weak team in the NPI era may be in some demand for stronger schools looking to bolster their W-L record before conference play.  SUNY Canton, however, doesn't seem to be searching for easy wins with this schedule.  VTSU Johnson isn't on their schedule, nor is SUNY Delhi, which accounted for two of their three wins last season.

St. Mary's College (Maryland)

Only the home games are listed on this schedule, but it's definitely not a pushover schedule for a team that played Dickinson tight in the opening round of the NCAA tournament last season.  Washington College, Johns Hopkins, Stevenson, and Salisbury are return games, and they add Lynchburg.

Bethel (MN)

Added Grinnell, Wartburg, and Simpson for teams like Wheaton, NC Wesleyan, and Nebraska Wesleyan

Earlham

It seems like most of the teams Earlham lost to last season were replaced in this year's schedule except Wilmington, Spalding, and Indiana University East.  They kept Kuyper (who they beat) and added Beloit, Muskingum, Heidelberg, and Olivet.

Quote from: Kuiper on April 13, 2025, 05:59:30 PMNorth Park

Lots of familiar teams, but replaces Wisconsin Eau Claire with Wisconsin Platteville

It's not entirely same-old, same-old for North Park in 2025. Trine is on the schedule; while NPU has played Trine in plenty of other sports before, this will be the first time ever that the Vikings and the "other" Thunder meet on the soccer pitch. MSOE is also back on the North Park docket after a dozen-year absence; the Vikings used to play the Raiders practically every season for awhile in the millennium's first decade when John Born, now North Park's AD, was the head coach of the Vikings; MSOE had been his previous stop as a head coach.

Quote from: Kuiper on April 13, 2025, 07:14:49 PMAlma

Not sure I understand why they agreed to play Calvin twice, adding them as a non-conference game before also playing them in conference, but maybe it's tough for them to get a mid-week game.

It's not as conspicuous an island school as are UMPI, Colorado College, UCSC, or the two West Coast conferences' teams, but Alma really does fall within the "you can't get there from here" category. Trust me on this, as I've been on the team bus to call road games against the Scots for both the NPU football and the NPU men's basketball teams, and the trips were mind-numbingly long. Alma, MI is located a third of the way up the index finger on its inside edge, if you're using the traditional "point at your outstretched left hand" method Michiganders use to identify locations on the Lower Peninsula. The only non-MIAA schools that are less than four hours away from Alma are Heidelberg and Bluffton, and they're both 3 1/2 hours distant. Alma coaches in a lot of sports have difficulty with midweek non-conference scheduling.

Quote from: Kuiper on April 13, 2025, 07:14:49 PMAlfred State

First season for Vince Correa after moving over from an AC position at SUNY Brockport. I, for one, am happy that they open the season hosting Alfred University so that no matter what happens, Alfred wins.

There's no good reason for these two schools to not play each other in every sport possible. This could naturally evolve into the one of the best D3 rivalries there is, alongside Calvin/Hope, Williams/Amherst, DePauw/Wabash, Carleton/St. Olaf, and Ithaca/Cortland.

Quote from: Kuiper on April 13, 2025, 07:14:49 PMSUNY Potsdam

Traveling to St. Lawrence on 9/17 for Saints fans.  Host SUNY ESF and the Baruch/Nazareth in the Potsdam College Cup

I'm happy to see that the Stumpies are still playing sports. When I was a kid I used to read the paragraph-sized recaps of ESF men's basketball games in the Syracuse newspapers. I can remember wondering how the heck the ESF coach was able to recruit basketball players to come to a school set up to train forest rangers and logging managers. Of course, since then I've learned that the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry produces graduates who cover a much more diverse spectrum of occupations than just forest ranger and logging manager, but it's worth noting that all ESF students are still called "Stumpies," regardless.

Quote from: Kuiper on Today at 01:02:33 AMDominican

They replace Fontbonne (RIP) and Nebraska Wesleyan with Elmhurst and North Central

It's an upgrade in terms of competitive level, but I suspect that the reason that the Stars are doing this is to cut travel costs.