National POTY

[PaulNewman]

In addition to Marcucci and the players @PaulNewman mentioned, other DIII men's soccer players to play in MLS include the following:

Alex Blake for Williams (3 appearances and 23 minutes in 2003 for the Colorado Rapids)

Jeff Moore for Richard Stockton (18 appearances and 17 starts for the New York Metrostars/Red Bulls in 2002)

Gregg Sutton, a 6'6" GK for St. Lawrence (50 starts in MLS for a ton of teams, including Chicago Fire, NY Red Bulls, Toronto FC in a pro career that spanned 13 years)

Dan Calichman for Williams (played over 50 games in Japan and then 100+ games in MLS with the LA Galaxy, San Jose Earthquakes, and New England Revolution)

Far less common today, when there are fewer college players in the league at any level after the creation of the Development Academy (now MLS Next) and MLS2 squads in USL and MLS Next Pro

If you're looking for an example of a current player who is playing in the lower pro leagues after a DIII soccer career, check out Noah Cavanaugh from Whitman.  He is currently a player for Flower City Union in Rochester, which plays in NISA, but played for a number of years professionally in Australia too.

I think I highlighted Niko Giantsopoulos who starred as GK for Calvin.  I had not realized he started out at Adrian College before transferring to Calvin after a coach stepped down.

On May 20, 2022, immediately after earning a clean sheet against Pacific FC, Giantsopoulos joined Major League Soccer club Vancouver Whitecaps FC on loan for their match on May 22, as the Whitecaps were left without any of their three goalkeepers due to injury and COVID protocols.[33][34] He did not feature in the match, serving as an unused substitute.[35] His loan expired on May 23, allowing him to return to play for York in their Canadian Championship match on May 24, where he made the game-winning save in the penalty shootout to advance to the semi-finals, where coincidentally, York would match-up against Vancouver.[36][37] In December 2022, he resigned with York United on a one-year contract.

And SC and the other GK savants might want to check this out...

In 2021, along with his club team York United FC, Giantsopolous launched a podcast series called 'The Last Line: A Goalkeeper's Podcast'.[40][41][42] In March 2022, he became the co-host of a radio talk show focussed on soccer called 'Footy First' on TSN Radio 1050.

Giantsopoulos would be an interesting person for SC to interview.

Kuiper makes a good point about few players nowadays making a successful leap to the professional level even from D1, but I'm still reminded of some of our back and forth early in the season about D3 vs D1.  The hard truth when seeing the info posted above is that in terms of D3 and playing professionally the data are sobering.  And it just goes to show how good players are who we watch professionally and often view as mediocre.  I've watched some D3 players who blew me away (including multiple Messiah players) and even sticking for long at the USL-type level has been rare.  I know there are more than we listed so far, but keep in mind that we listed guys going back over a more than 20 year period.

[blue_jays]

Congrats to McDonald...well deserved, outstanding season.  An irony is that probably some of the only folks really disappointed are Messiah fans, who perhaps even foreshadowed this outcome with some anxiety and hoped to avert it with a preference for Groothoff.

Groothoff is great and no doubt will go down as one of the all-time Messiah greats.  I'm not sure this year was his best season, but certainly few would have complained if he won....and of course there are D3soccer.com awards still to come (I think).  I'm not sure any of us have a full grasp of everyone in the country who might deserve consideration, but a few others who come to mind are Wada, Gillespie, Boardman, and maybe Akintade.

I'm no historian but when I think of D3 and a professional career the first person that comes to mind for me is Khari Stephenson from Jamaica who starred at Williams (2000-2003) and had a solid professional career with stints in Sweden, Norway, in MLS, and with the Jamaican national team.  There was Kai Kasiguran of Messiah fame who was drafted in MLS but didn't have more than a cup of coffee before spending some time in the USL.  There probably have been a handful of Messiah alums who had decent USL-type careers, but perhaps less of a professional career than some might have projected (not unlike what we may see from GG who certainly showed that he could play at a place like Maryland but wasn't a star and by the end of the season was barely playing and I think was available).  There was I think a CB for Redlands who may have spent some time in MLS as well.

Another guy who had a brief career after being drafted by the Columbus Crew was Marshall Hollingsworth (Wheaton Ill) and spending a couple of years with the Pittsburgh Riverhounds.

Hollingsworth was such a stud, one of 3 fastest guys I've ever seen in D3. The fact that great Wheaton team lost to Tufts in the finals still depresses me.

[stlawus]

In addition to Marcucci and the players @PaulNewman mentioned, other DIII men's soccer players to play in MLS include the following:

Alex Blake for Williams (3 appearances and 23 minutes in 2003 for the Colorado Rapids)

Jeff Moore for Richard Stockton (18 appearances and 17 starts for the New York Metrostars/Red Bulls in 2002)

Gregg Sutton, a 6'6" GK for St. Lawrence (50 starts in MLS for a ton of teams, including Chicago Fire, NY Red Bulls, Toronto FC in a pro career that spanned 13 years)

Dan Calichman for Williams (played over 50 games in Japan and then 100+ games in MLS with the LA Galaxy, San Jose Earthquakes, and New England Revolution)

Far less common today, when there are fewer college players in the league at any level after the creation of the Development Academy (now MLS Next) and MLS2 squads in USL and MLS Next Pro

If you're looking for an example of a current player who is playing in the lower pro leagues after a DIII soccer career, check out Noah Cavanaugh from Whitman.  He is currently a player for Flower City Union in Rochester, which plays in NISA, but played for a number of years professionally in Australia too.

Sutton is definitely in the conversation for being the best male athlete to come out of SLU.  Not only was he a mainstay between the pipes, but he was a starting power forward on the basketball team and played a huge role in SLU's run to the elite eight in 1998. 

[PaulNewman]

Congrats to McDonald...well deserved, outstanding season.  An irony is that probably some of the only folks really disappointed are Messiah fans, who perhaps even foreshadowed this outcome with some anxiety and hoped to avert it with a preference for Groothoff.

Groothoff is great and no doubt will go down as one of the all-time Messiah greats.  I'm not sure this year was his best season, but certainly few would have complained if he won....and of course there are D3soccer.com awards still to come (I think).  I'm not sure any of us have a full grasp of everyone in the country who might deserve consideration, but a few others who come to mind are Wada, Gillespie, Boardman, and maybe Akintade.

I'm no historian but when I think of D3 and a professional career the first person that comes to mind for me is Khari Stephenson from Jamaica who starred at Williams (2000-2003) and had a solid professional career with stints in Sweden, Norway, in MLS, and with the Jamaican national team.  There was Kai Kasiguran of Messiah fame who was drafted in MLS but didn't have more than a cup of coffee before spending some time in the USL.  There probably have been a handful of Messiah alums who had decent USL-type careers, but perhaps less of a professional career than some might have projected (not unlike what we may see from GG who certainly showed that he could play at a place like Maryland but wasn't a star and by the end of the season was barely playing and I think was available).  There was I think a CB for Redlands who may have spent some time in MLS as well.

Another guy who had a brief career after being drafted by the Columbus Crew was Marshall Hollingsworth (Wheaton Ill) and spending a couple of years with the Pittsburgh Riverhounds.

Hollingsworth was such a stud, one of 3 fastest guys I've ever seen in D3. The fact that great Wheaton team lost to Tufts in the finals still depresses me.

I'm gonna riff off this and go a little off topic...

Wheaton was never really in that game with Tufts just like OWU wasn't really in the game with Tufts in the semis.  Tufts led 3-0 against Wheaton before the great left-pegged, left back Noah Anthony pulled two back, and then Tufts scored again to win 4-2.  That may have been the best Tufts team in the whole Tufts run (we'll see if D4 will comment), at least offensively with Hoppenot, Santos, Majumder, Kayne, Pinheiro, etc and a defense that included Williams, Peter Lee Kramer, Patel, Dr. Zinner, and Greenwood at GK.  That team steamrolled through the Final 4.

That was a great Wheaton team.  A biased plug here as the year before Wheaton had essentially the same team and was very highly rated heading into the 2013 tournament.  I often mention the Messiah-Kenyon 2013 game as the start of Kenyon's 8-9 year run of consecutive NCAA appearances but that only happens because Kenyon upset Wheaton at Wheaton in the 2nd round (after Kenyon dispatched the previous year's runnerup in the 1st round...Ohio Northern).  Loras also had Wheaton's number for at least a couple of years during that period.

And a little trivia...Tufts beat BOTH Wheatons in the 2014 tournament.  I wonder if any other team has played much less beat both Wheatons in the same season.  Maybe another NESCAC or Messiah who would have faced Wheaton (MA) in a quadrant before playing Wheaton (Ill) at the Final 4?

And yes, Hollingsworth was fantastic.  I had a similar impression when I saw Jack Thompson (Messiah) live.  He looked uncontainable.  I think he had a stint with the Pittsburgh Riverhounds (maybe when Brandt was coaching), but when you've seen players that good not be able to have a significant professional career I find that very telling about the "there are levels to this" theme.

[Gregory Sager]

And a little trivia...Tufts beat BOTH Wheatons in the 2014 tournament.  I wonder if any other team has played much less beat both Wheatons in the same season.  Maybe another NESCAC or Messiah who would have faced Wheaton (MA) in a quadrant before playing Wheaton (Ill) at the Final 4?

It's never happened before 2014 or since, at least in the D3 men's soccer tournament. It's possible to look up the game-by-game results of the two Wheatons (the one in Mass has GBG results that go back to 1989, the one in Illinois has GBG results that go back to the unimaginably-early-for-American-soccer year of 1935) and determine if anyone's ever played them both in the same season other than Tufts in '14, but that would take someone willing to do the time and research to confirm a pretty likely "no". In most sports (including men's soccer) the regionalism of D3 makes it a longshot at best that someone would play an Illinois-based team and a Massachusetts-based team in the same season in a non-UAA context.

Now, if we're talking about other sports, it's happened plenty of times in baseball and softball. That's because lots of teams from both the midwest and the northeast anually head down to Florida for snowbird games in late February and throughout March when locally-played baseball and softball are not practical because it's too cold and/or there's snow on the ground. (Snowbird trips, typically scheduled during a school's spring break period, are realistically the only way that a lot of D3 teams in the Snow Belt can get in a full season.) D3 tourneys for baseball or softball that last for a week or two, and which draw a dozen or more teams, are thick on the ground in the Sunshine State, and every year you get lots of interesting crossover contests between midwestern teams and northeastern teams.

Last season, for example, the Wheaton (MA) baseball team faced UW-Stevens Point and Webster in a tournament in Auburndale, FL, and the Lyons softballers played Simpson, Loras, and St. Norbert in a tournament held in Clermont, FL. The Wheaton (IL) softball team played in a different tourney in Clermont -- which seems to be the snowbird softball capital of the universe -- and faced Mass-Dartmouth, Mitchell, and Gordon. (Their baseball schoolmates went to Arizona instead.) I'm dead certain that at some point a school has played both Wheatons in one of the two diamond sports on sun-drenched fields somewhere within a hundred-mile radius of Orlando. In fact, next time I speak to Wheaton (IL) SID Brett Marhanka I'll ask him if any of his school's baseball or softball teams have ever met their Bay State counterparts face-to-face on the diamond.

[Gregory Sager]

It didn't take me more than five minutes to find an example. In 2006 the Carthage baseball team lost to Wheaton (MA), 3-2, on St. Patrick's Day in Port Charlotte, FL, and then swept the three-game season series against the CCIW version of Wheaton at the end of April.

[d4_Pace]

Congrats to McDonald...well deserved, outstanding season.  An irony is that probably some of the only folks really disappointed are Messiah fans, who perhaps even foreshadowed this outcome with some anxiety and hoped to avert it with a preference for Groothoff.

Groothoff is great and no doubt will go down as one of the all-time Messiah greats.  I'm not sure this year was his best season, but certainly few would have complained if he won....and of course there are D3soccer.com awards still to come (I think).  I'm not sure any of us have a full grasp of everyone in the country who might deserve consideration, but a few others who come to mind are Wada, Gillespie, Boardman, and maybe Akintade.

I'm no historian but when I think of D3 and a professional career the first person that comes to mind for me is Khari Stephenson from Jamaica who starred at Williams (2000-2003) and had a solid professional career with stints in Sweden, Norway, in MLS, and with the Jamaican national team.  There was Kai Kasiguran of Messiah fame who was drafted in MLS but didn't have more than a cup of coffee before spending some time in the USL.  There probably have been a handful of Messiah alums who had decent USL-type careers, but perhaps less of a professional career than some might have projected (not unlike what we may see from GG who certainly showed that he could play at a place like Maryland but wasn't a star and by the end of the season was barely playing and I think was available).  There was I think a CB for Redlands who may have spent some time in MLS as well.

Another guy who had a brief career after being drafted by the Columbus Crew was Marshall Hollingsworth (Wheaton Ill) and spending a couple of years with the Pittsburgh Riverhounds.

Hollingsworth was such a stud, one of 3 fastest guys I've ever seen in D3. The fact that great Wheaton team lost to Tufts in the finals still depresses me.

I'm gonna riff off this and go a little off topic...

Wheaton was never really in that game with Tufts just like OWU wasn't really in the game with Tufts in the semis.  Tufts led 3-0 against Wheaton before the great left-pegged, left back Noah Anthony pulled two back, and then Tufts scored again to win 4-2.  That may have been the best Tufts team in the whole Tufts run (we'll see if D4 will comment), at least offensively with Hoppenot, Santos, Majumder, Kayne, Pinheiro, etc and a defense that included Williams, Peter Lee Kramer, Patel, Dr. Zinner, and Greenwood at GK.  That team steamrolled through the Final 4.

That was a great Wheaton team.  A biased plug here as the year before Wheaton had essentially the same team and was very highly rated heading into the 2013 tournament.  I often mention the Messiah-Kenyon 2013 game as the start of Kenyon's 8-9 year run of consecutive NCAA appearances but that only happens because Kenyon upset Wheaton at Wheaton in the 2nd round (after Kenyon dispatched the previous year's runnerup in the 1st round...Ohio Northern).  Loras also had Wheaton's number for at least a couple of years during that period.

And a little trivia...Tufts beat BOTH Wheatons in the 2014 tournament.  I wonder if any other team has played much less beat both Wheatons in the same season.  Maybe another NESCAC or Messiah who would have faced Wheaton (MA) in a quadrant before playing Wheaton (Ill) at the Final 4?

And yes, Hollingsworth was fantastic.  I had a similar impression when I saw Jack Thompson (Messiah) live.  He looked uncontainable.  I think he had a stint with the Pittsburgh Riverhounds (maybe when Brandt was coaching), but when you've seen players that good not be able to have a significant professional career I find that very telling about the "there are levels to this" theme.

You're gonna get me in trouble here as this is an endless debate with a lot of partisan arguments. I think there's certainly an argument that that team had the most talent. Due to being the first team in the run it didn't have the same professionalism and standards that subsequent groups had which was demonstrated by the fairly pedestrian regular season record. I also think it has been harder for subsequent teams that have to deal with the weight of expectation. But if you're looking at starting XIs on pure talent i think it comes down to the 2014 team versus the 2019 team.  My biased opinion will always have the 2017 team ranked highly but we didn't get it done come tourney time so we don't get to join the conversation.

[Falconer]

Congrats to McDonald...well deserved, outstanding season.  An irony is that probably some of the only folks really disappointed are Messiah fans, who perhaps even foreshadowed this outcome with some anxiety and hoped to avert it with a preference for Groothoff.

Groothoff is great and no doubt will go down as one of the all-time Messiah greats.  I'm not sure this year was his best season, but certainly few would have complained if he won....and of course there are D3soccer.com awards still to come (I think).

I'm not at all disappointed that McDonald got this honor. I've said for weeks that he's the best striker Messiah has had in all the years I've been a fan (which is longer than many here have been alive), with the sole exception of that incredible season by Nick West--which has to be one of the greatest individual seasons of any player in D3 history. The fact that he plans to return once more gives me great joy, at a season that for many is given to joy.

I've also said a few times that Groothoff was to this year's Falcons what Messi is to Paris Saint-Germain. Of course I didn't meant that he's anywhere near Messi in terms of his skills--who is? I simply meant that he was that important. His statistics this year were mediocre--and I talked about how misleading that was, pointing out that if most soccer scorers gave hockey assists he'd probably have led the nation in that category. However, 2022 was the only time in his career that he played a full season at CAM, which is his best and most natural position, though it took him several games at first to be fully recovered from major injuries and surgery. In 2019, he missed the first 7 games; in 2021, many will recall that he went down in October and never returned, missing 10 games and taking with him the Falcons' best chance at another Final Four. His only other full season was 2018, when as a FR he was asked to play CB (the Falcons already had an AA CAM in Samuel Ruiz Plaza, who is now on the coaching staff at Augsburg) and was AA in that position despite being undersized there. That year, I said he was the best CB from any team that I saw all season in person. But, he's unquestionably better at CAM. I did not see anyone all season, in person or on streaming, who was even as good as Groothoff was this season. Yes, I'd have been even happier if Groothoff had been named POY, but I'm hardly in any position to complain.