2024 D3 Men's Soccer National Perspective

[SierraFD3soccer]

Not sure I would pay for this commentary, but it is entertaining.

True, but you would think you would have a better team with them clowning around as much as they do.

[pelsken71]

I'm not sure how those 2 statements would be related   They now have a dedicated media person since about halfway through the last season that does the game announcing.

[SierraFD3soccer]

Tweet re: D1 men's soccer and int'l players. 760 players of which there are 252 int'l which is about 33%. Also breaks down the top 25 and the number of int'l players.  Marshall has 24 int'l of its 28 players.

https://x.com/ImCollegeSoccer/status/1833131627091804298

[SimpleCoach]

Tweet re: D1 men's soccer and int'l players. 760 players of which there are 252 int'l which is about 33%. Also breaks down the top 25 and the number of int'l players.  Marshall has 24 int'l of its 28 players.

https://x.com/ImCollegeSoccer/status/1833131627091804298

I get it, but find it a bit sad.  My question is what foreigner willing goes to Huntington West Virginia?

SC.

[SierraFD3soccer]

From this tweet - https://x.com/ImYouthSoccer/status/1833173527647944841

We estimate there are only 208 roster spots left in D1 and 100+ of those in the 4 lowest ranked RPI conferences (SWAC, MAAC, NEC, Southland) and agree with @ImCollegeSoccer that the focus for uncommitted 2025s should be on D2 and D3 programs. Here is some more detail

[SierraFD3soccer]

Tweet re: D1 men's soccer and int'l players. 760 players of which there are 252 int'l which is about 33%. Also breaks down the top 25 and the number of int'l players.  Marshall has 24 int'l of its 28 players.

https://x.com/ImCollegeSoccer/status/1833131627091804298

I get it, but find it a bit sad.  My question is what foreigner willing goes to Huntington West Virginia?

SC.

You might think. Huntington is pretty bad. Marshall's coach who is English came to Marshall after coaching a reasonable successful Univ. of Charleston squad. Won the nat'l title during Covid with virtually no Amer. players. He's been doing this for years. Plus he never has to US teen tournament when he can get complete players 19 yrs or older. He now has direct pipeline to Brazil and other countries.

[Gregory Sager]

Tweet re: D1 men's soccer and int'l players. 760 players of which there are 252 int'l which is about 33%. Also breaks down the top 25 and the number of int'l players.  Marshall has 24 int'l of its 28 players.

https://x.com/ImCollegeSoccer/status/1833131627091804298

I get it, but find it a bit sad.  My question is what foreigner willing goes to Huntington West Virginia?

SC.

Are you kidding, SC? Huntington is located in the promised land as far as Germans are concerned. And, no, I am not being facetious.

Germans light up whenever they hear the two words "West Virginia". You think they love Bach and Beethoven? Well, those two guys are pikers compared to Henry John Deutschendorf, Jr., better known to the world as John Denver:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jf13z5gM-cw

The best part of the video is at the end, when the P.A. cuts out the song as play resumes on the field, but all those Germans just keep singing that damned song a capella. I suppose that you could chalk it up to Teutonic thoroughness in finishing what they'd started, but the truth is that they simply love "Take Me Home, Country Roads" to pieces.

A Dutch band covered the song in 2001 and had a #1 hit with it in only one country: Germany. Bill Danoff, who co-wrote the song with Denver and with Danoff's ex-wife Taffy, was invited by the German government to visit Deutschland for the first time on an all-expenses-paid trip eleven years ago. He got to meet the Prime Minister and all of the other political bigshots in Berlin at a party thrown in his honor at the American Embassy. And at the party they made him sing the song no fewer than four times.

I can attest to this phenomenon firsthand. I've been to Oktoberfest in Munich, and I can tell you that in every single one of the hangar-sized wooden beer tents in the Theresienwiese (the Oktoberfest grounds) the house band plays "Take Me Home, Country Roads" every hour on the hour. You might be confused and/or amused to hear an oompah band play "Take Me Home, Country Roads", but it's serious business to the locals. Even in the tent operated by Spaten Brewery, the most traditional and hidebound of the Oktoberfest beer tents, "Take Me Home, Country Roads" is the ultimate crowd-pleaser. Every German in the tent stands up, swings his or her mass (the supersized glass steins in which beer is served) back and forth, and sings every word of the song, many of them with tears in their eyes. It's awesome (and a little bit frightening) to behold, especially since sentimentality and emotionalism aren't words commonly associated with Germans. But to them there is no song ever written that captures heimweh (which means both homesickness in terms of place and homesickness in terms of family) better than "Take Me Home, Country Roads". Forget "Deutschland über alles"; "Take Me Home, Country Roads" is the real German national anthem.

If I'm the soccer coach at WVU or at Marshall, I'm devoting a huge chunk of my time and energy every year to recruiting German players ... because I know I have a sales pitch for them that no other soccer program in D1 can beat.

[SKUD]

Marshall is not viable for an American Student Athlete/soccer player, especially if they had to suffer through years of the Regional youth tournament being held in Barborsville.  The academics, addiction and despair of the place is too much for American players.

[SierraFD3soccer]

Marshall is not viable for an American Student Athlete/soccer player, especially if they had to suffer through years of the Regional youth tournament being held in Barborsville.  The academics, addiction and despair of the place is too much for American players.

Hahaha, we just missed that era as we did not let our son play for a top tier team (financial) till his junior year. All the parents told me about their war stories in Baborsville. Those were the days of USYS. Long, long gone.

[SimpleCoach]

Marshall is not viable for an American Student Athlete/soccer player, especially if they had to suffer through years of the Regional youth tournament being held in Barborsville.  The academics, addiction and despair of the place is too much for American players.

I spent a month long 5 day stay at the regional tournament.  I thought I was in an episode of Twilight Zone.

SC.

[SierraFD3soccer]

Are you kidding, SC? Huntington is located in the promised land as far as Germans are concerned. And, no, I am not being facetious.

Germans light up whenever they hear the two words "West Virginia". You think they love Bach and Beethoven? Well, those two guys are pikers compared to Henry John Deutschendorf, Jr., better known to the world as John Denver:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jf13z5gM-cw

The best part of the video is at the end, when the P.A. cuts out the song as play resumes on the field, but all those Germans just keep singing that damned song a capella. I suppose that you could chalk it up to Teutonic thoroughness in finishing what they'd started, but the truth is that they simply love "Take Me Home, Country Roads" to pieces.

A Dutch band covered the song in 2001 and had a #1 hit with it in only one country: Germany. Bill Danoff, who co-wrote the song with Denver and with Danoff's ex-wife Taffy, was invited by the German government to visit Deutschland for the first time on an all-expenses-paid trip eleven years ago. He got to meet the Prime Minister and all of the other political bigshots in Berlin at a party thrown in his honor at the American Embassy. And at the party they made him sing the song no fewer than four times.

I can attest to this phenomenon firsthand. I've been to Oktoberfest in Munich, and I can tell you that in every single one of the hangar-sized wooden beer tents in the Theresienwiese (the Oktoberfest grounds) the house band plays "Take Me Home, Country Roads" every hour on the hour. You might be confused and/or amused to hear an oompah band play "Take Me Home, Country Roads", but it's serious business to the locals. Even in the tent operated by Spaten Brewery, the most traditional and hidebound of the Oktoberfest beer tents, "Take Me Home, Country Roads" is the ultimate crowd-pleaser. Every German in the tent stands up, swings his or her mass (the supersized glass steins in which beer is served) back and forth, and sings every word of the song, many of them with tears in their eyes. It's awesome (and a little bit frightening) to behold, especially since sentimentality and emotionalism aren't words commonly associated with Germans. But to them there is no song ever written that captures heimweh (which means both homesickness in terms of place and homesickness in terms of family) better than "Take Me Home, Country Roads". Forget "Deutschland über alles"; "Take Me Home, Country Roads" is the real German national anthem.

If I'm the soccer coach at WVU or at Marshall, I'm devoting a huge chunk of my time and energy every year to recruiting German players ... because I know I have a sales pitch for them that no other soccer program in D1 can beat.

Great post!!

Mom born and raised in Germany with her bothers still there. Spent 6th and part of 7th grade there. Also did ROTC so I could end up in Germany for another 3 years. Great times.

IMO, there has always been tension in Germany - think "Sprockets" v. rural/small villages. Sprockets way, way too sophisticated to like "Take Me Home." The rural/small villages generally love America and all that it is about. Part where I was stationed we called the WV of Germany and they loved us. A lot of appreciation for country music and blue grass along with several real?? Wild West Towns scattered around Germany.  One not far from where I was stationed and along with ones near Berlin and central northern Germany (Harz) https://www.pullmancity.de/en/

As to Fest, several liter mass and among the Bayerisch (which to this day I struggle to understand their dialect), you get a lot of emotion for Germans.

Just don't tell them that the couple who initially wrote "Take Me Home, Country Roads" were driving along the winding Klopper Road in Montgomery County, MD northwest of DC. Apparently, they met John Denver at a DC club and worked on the song.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Take_Me_Home,_Country_Roads#:~:text=Inspiration%20for%20the%20title%20line,while%20Danoff%20played%20his%20guitar. Sort of like Paul Harvey and "The Rest of the Story" moment. (Look that up Youngens, but anyone on these boards probably knows exactly what I am saying)

[SierraFD3soccer]

As to Huntington and crime/drugs - this is interesting. https://crimegrade.org/drug-crimes-huntington-wv/  Obviously not in the brochure.

[SKUD]

Now that is funny and worth repeating from SC,

"I spent a month long 5 day stay at the regional tournament.  I thought I was in an episode of Twilight Zone."

SC.

[Falconer]

Maybe there's a reason here, why the 2021 WV state player of the year went out of state--to Messiah. 

I mean this Ethan Gregory https://gomessiah.com/news/2022/6/29/mens-soccer-welcomes-six-new-players-to-grantham.aspx, third man from the top), not to be confused with the Ethan Gregory from VA and Rider University soccer, or Ethan Gregory the American football player at Kentucky.

[stlawus]

So far Case Western has the best video stream I've seen this year.  Crystal clear 1080 HD with a perfect refresh rate, excellent work here.  Stockton up 1-0, however.