It's Opening Day!
Today marks the start of the 2022 Division III soccer season with over 300 men's and 330 women's teams in action in nearly 350 total games. D3soccer.com has the full slate of men's and women's games despite scaling back its offerings in 2022 (you can read more about that here).
The biggest encounter on opening day is a rematch of last year's Elite 8 men's tilt between Washington & Lee and Messiah, once again in Lexington, VA. Other top men's games include Rochester at Cortland State, Rowan at Johns Hopkins, Franklin & Marhsall at Lebanon Valley, Washington U. at Carthage, RPI at Montclair State, Chicago at Kalamazoo, Ohio Northern at Kenyon, and Centre at Otterbein.
On the women's side, top billing goes to either Brandeis at MIT or Chicago at Pomona-Pitzer followed by Messiah at Stevens. Other women's matches to keep an eye on this opening day include UW-La Crosse at Cal Lutheran, Misericordia at Susquehanna, Rochester at Geneseo State, Emory at Berry, and St. Norbert at Loras.
There are some changes for the 2022 season, maybe the biggest being that the USA South Athletic Conference has finally split into two conferences with the schools farther west forming the new Collegiate Conference of the South (CCS) with seven men's and nine women's teams. This includes Belhaven which was slated to join the USA South from the American Southwest Conference (ASC) this fall before the decision to break into two conferences. The new conference will need to wait two years to gain an automatic berth to the NCAA tournament which means that their teams will be in Pool B for at-large NCAA selection. The USA South continues with eight men's and ten women's teams after the departure of Averett which joins the Old Dominion Athletic Conference (ODAC).
Other schools and teams on the move include Allegheny switching from the North Coast Athletic Conference (NCAC) to the Presidents Athletic Conference (PAC), Medaille joining the Empire 8 conference from the Allegheny Mountain Collegiate Conference (AMCC), and UW-Platteville men and 2nd-Year provisional member Warren Wilson joining the geographically diverse Coast-to-Coast Athletic Conference (C2C).
One women's team has been lost, a new women's program added and a men's program resurrected. The women-only Mills College was merged into Northeastern University and will no longer field its own athletic teams. Further up the west coast, Lewis and Clark College has reinstituted its men's soccer program after a 30-year absence. In the east, Merchant Marine added women's soccer to their seven other women's athletics programs.
Pratt and St. Thomas (Texas) have successfully completed the 3-year provisional membership process to become active Division III members who are now eligible for the NCAA tournament. Bob Jones and Mississippi University for Women have advanced from Year Two to Year Three of provisional membership, Warren Wilson needs to repeat Year Two of the process being joined by Asbury who was promoted from Year One to Year Two. Lyon College has left the NAIA to begin the provisional membership process this year after being excused from the typically required exploratory year.
In their winter meetings, the championship committees anticipated that the tournament fields would remain the same as last year: 43 men's automatic berths and 21 Pool C at-large berths, 44 women's automatic berths with 20 Pool C at-large berths. However, it seems that may not have taken into account the growth of Pool B with the formation of the Collegiate Conference of the South (CCS) which was only officially approved as a Division III conference around the same time. With nine men's and twelve women's Pool B teams, the math seems to support a single Pool B at-large berth for both men (if rounding up from 0.97) and women, with the number of Pool C berths reduced by one.
While there may be a few other school name or nickname/mascot changes for 2022, the most high profile one is Kenyon College retiring the monikers "Lords" and "Ladies" in favor of the "Owls" which will be used by both men and women moving forward. Just over an hour down the road, Capital University announced their replacement of the "Crusaders" nickname with the "Comets" in the middle of the 2021 soccer season, making it the sixth Division III athletic program to drop the "Crusaders" name: Wheaton (Ill.) - 2000, Eastern Nazarene - 2009, Maranatha Baptist - 2014, Susquehanna - 2016, and Alvernia - 2017.
Of the rule changes that go into effect this season, a pair regarding overtime will be very noticeable. First, there will be no overtime played during the regular season. Then, in the postseason, golden goal or sudden victory has been eliminated and both 10-minute overtime periods will be played in their entirety regardless of any goals being scored. Less noteworthy is the change regarding suspended games. Games stopped short of 70 minutes that cannot be resumed the same day will now resume from the point of interruption with all statistics and discipline being carried over. Previously, the statistics were deleted and the game restarted from the beginning.
With that introduction, we welcome you to the 2022 men's and women's Division III soccer season. While coverage on D3soccer.com will be limited this season (read more here), you can count on finding all the games, team and conference schedules, results, and conference standings right here throughout the season.
Here’s to another exciting season of Division III soccer!
Comments or feedback for the author? Email Christan Shirk.
