Dunno, but I'm sure that there's an interesting story behind it.

North Park preview is up on the NPU football page.

The preview injects a little mystery into the QB question, but I don't think that there's any doubt that the job belongs to Paul Palmer. The foot he broke in his one start last season is fully healed, and he looked sensational against a better-than-usual Lake Forest team two weeks ago.

I'm guessing 4-6 this season. I'm hopeful for a return to 5-5, but i wouldn't be shocked by another 3-7.

Heh. Well, too old to identify the exact year, perhaps, but not too old to remember the conversation taking place.😉

I wonder if the bigger problem might be CTE. The more former players who are examined (especially postmortem) the more it becomes clear that the issue with football-related brain injury is even more pervasive than was thought even a few years ago.

The question is how much correlation there is between the proportionally dramatic increase in youth soccer participation and the decline in youth football participation everywhere outside the South, with the corollary question being how much of that shift from football to soccer, if it is indeed causative, is the result of parental choices in light of the relative health aspects of the two sports.

There are probably multiple reasons at work in the long slow death of youth and high school football north of the Mason-Dixon Line (remember, we were discussing this very subject on this board a decade ago). Some of it could come down to the simple explanation that Gen Z has difficulty touching grass.

Quote from: The Third Division on August 31, 2026, 11:10:01 PMAnd Manchester will likely play in the MSFA in NAIA

That would make sense. But the MSFA hasn't made any announcement to that effect, and neither has Manchester. It doesn't seem likely that Man U would jump affiliations without having all of its ducks in a row first, especially given that football is a very large duck indeed.

The MSFA is nicely balanced right now with six teams in each of its two divisions, so there's that as well. Conversely, with small schools starting to drop like flies, I could also see a circuit taking on more members as a sort of insurance policy, unbalanced divisions or not.

Carson Lewis is your nephew? Had a chance to talk with him once last season. Seems like a nice young man.

Thanks for the 411 on how NAIAs make the financials work. Speaking of nephews, I had one who was on a basketball scholarship at Goshen a few years ago. I couldn't figure out how a classic small and underfunded school like Goshen made it work. Seems reasonable that they're doing the same sort of maneuvering with merit-based aid as Defiance (and probably a lot of other small NAIA schools).

I suspect that Manchester might be leaving D3 for the NAIA for the same reason as Defiance: financial ill health. Manchester can now drop below the 6-6 sponsorship threshold mandated by D3 if it feels that that sort of belt-tightening is necessary. The Crossroads League doesn't sponsor football, so I wouldn't be surprised if Man U decides to jettison its football program.l

I thought that the scrimmage went very well, as did Coach Woodley. North Park's starters, despite missing two key players (both of whom are expected back shortly), won the first 30-minute period, 2-1, on goals by sophomore transfer Lily Cerjak (Trinity Christian) and All-CCIW junior Hannah Björkegren. This is a significant accomplishment; although the D1 players who make up part of the Edgewater Castle roster are off at school playing for their respective universities, all of the college graduates who constitute the bulk of the Rooks roster were present -- and they're a formidable and experienced bunch. Edgewater Castle finished third with a 6-3-3 record in the Heartland Division of the USL W, the second tier of women's soccer in the U.S., so the Rooks were a quality opponent.

The Rooks tied up the game in the second 30-minute period against the B team of the Vikings, and the C team gave up two more goals in the third 30-minute period to give Edgewater Castle the 4-2 edge for the evening. But I was very impressed by what I saw, especially from the first team. As an added bonus, the two goalkeepers for the match were two of NPU's three GKs, sophomore transfer Makenna Harvey (Loras) and freshman Linn Nilsson Forsell. That's the benefit of being the head coach of both teams -- you can put two of the goalkeepers from one of your teams into each of the nets, and the other team can't argue!

Well, I guess that I shouldn't be surprised ... except that WIAC fans keep insisting that the tuition and r&b at their schools has gotten ridiculously expensive, to the point where an outsider would figure that the cost was now too prohibitive for an 18-year-old would-be student-athlete to sit around and twiddle his thumbs for a year.

Quote from: Jbothe on August 27, 2026, 09:17:31 PMThe redshirt designation is odd without a class attached to it I agree.

I know at least one of the Augie 5th years did not come out for the team one year because he did not like the position change he was asked to make. After sitting out a year he came back.

They don't really have a "shirt" name for student-athletes who take a year off from the sport and become a student-at-large due to disgruntlement with the coaching staff. Anyone have a suggestion?

Back in the day, when D3 first got rid of redshirting and WIAC tuition was still so dirt-cheap that a student-athlete in that league could afford the luxury of five years as an undergraduate without worrying about finances, WIAC teams continued to recruit players and then stash them away for a year -- except that, as per D3's new anti-redshirt regulations, the newbies weren't allowed to practice with the team. So these dormant players-in-waiting were dubbed "grayshirts", a whole new category of players-who-aren't-really-players.

Back in the Oughts, Wheaton had a superstar men's basketball player named Kent Raymond. He was an all-time great, in fact; he's one of only three players who've ever won the CCIW's Most Outstanding Player three times. But after his superb freshman year in 2004-05, in which he was the CCIW's second-leading scorer and made the All-CCIW second team, he announced that he was not going to play basketball during his sophomore year at Wheaton because God had told him to set basketball aside.

Of course, God greenlighted Kent to return to the hardwood a year later, as he went on to win those three MOP awards and become a two-time first-team D3hoops.com All-American while playing his final season in 2008-09 as one of the first graduate students to ever compete in CCIW athletics. But during that distressing 2005-06 season for Wheaton fans in which they wondered if the Lord would ever let Kent Raymond play basketball in a blue and orange uniform again, I suggested on the CCIW MBB board that he should be referred to during his hiatus as a "hairshirt".

The Wheaties were not amused.

Calvin won, 2-0. The Knights scored about ten or fifteen minutes into the second half, as NPU's backup GK misplayed a ball away from his line when there were a couple of Knights hovering in the vicinity. And the Knights also blooped one in with four seconds left in the game when the thoroughly gassed Vikings had pretty much given up on getting an equalizer and were ready to form up for the handshake line.

It was a good wakeup call for the Vikings, which is why the coaches didn't seem really broken up about the loss. Apparently the Vikings were feeling a little full of themselves after blistering a D2 team by four goals. But, as any astute observer of small college soccer knows, divisional designations can be deceiving. Purdue Northwest is faster than any team either NPU or Calvin is likely to see in 2026, and they have some technical proficiency as well. But they play very undisciplined soccer, and NPU was able to exploit that. By contrast, nobody's ever accused Calvin of lacking discipline. As anyone who knows Calvin soccer expects, the Knights kept their shape and didn't lose their cool by overcommitting when the Vikings were breathing down the neck of the Calvin GK early on. Ryan Souders is apparently poor-mouthing his 2026 team in Lou Holtz fashion as being subpar by Calvin standards, but what I saw was the same-old same-old in maroon and gold: smart soccer with some good athleticism on the wings and superb coordination from one line to the next.

After a very aggressive start in which they spent most of their time bothering Calvin in the Michiganders' defensive box, the Vikings noticeably faded as the game wore on. For North Park this was not only a useful taste of bitter but necessary preventive medicine -- only bad things can happen to a cocky team that waltzes  into games against Chicago and Wash U to start the season -- it was also evidence of how difficult it is to have a predominantly Scandinavian lineup when the team has to labor in the swelter of a hot August afternoon in Chicago. Every coach in the midwest who is willing to play North Park tries to get Kris Grahn to agree to an early September date, and yesterday amply illustrated why that's so.

CCIW preseason poll:

1. North Central	64 (8)
2. North Park	53 (1)
3. Carthage	45
t4. Elmhurst	40
t4. Wheaton	40
6. Illinois Wesleyan	37
7. Carroll	19
8. Millikin	18
9. Augustana	8

Quote from: CarollFan on August 27, 2026, 11:12:56 AMThe article has a picture of 5 fifth year players. Two players in that picture Carl Thomas (20) is listed as a junior on the roster and Ben Hartman is listed as redshirt.

4rth or 5th year in school won't necessarily be listed as senior or graduate on the roster. I think on the roster what your listed as is tied to eligibility.

Two things:

1) "Redshirt" is not a class. Freshman (or First-Year), Sophomore, Junior, Senior, and Graduate are classes. "Redshirt" modifies the class status to indicate that the student-athlete has spent an academic year practicing with the team but not suiting up for games. It's usually affixed to freshmen to indicate that they're going to be playing for the first time this season but that they've had a year to practice, learn the system, bulk up in the weight room, get used to college, etc. -- but you can list players as Redshirt Sophomore, Redshirt Junior, etc., as well. But, whether your school lists your class by eligibility or by academic status, you can't simply be a "Redshirt" any more than your position can be "Right" or "Left". The Augustana sports information office needs to fix Ben Hartman's roster entry and give him a proper class, either Senior or (if the caption of the pic in the Quad City Times article is correct, which I'm not taking on faith) Graduate.

2) Redshirting is illegal in D3. Hartman played in one game for Augie as a freshman in 2022, two games as a sophomore in 2023, six games as a junior in 2024, and none last year. He did have his portrait taken last year in his 2025 Augustana football polo, and it appears on his bio page, but he didn't play and he wasn't listed on the 2025 roster. So most likely he was injured in preseason and missed all of last season, and is now enrolled as either a fifth-year senior or as a graduate student at Augustana in order to use his final year of eligibility for football.

Even if he had played in a game or two last season before being hurt, his eligibility this season would've been granted by the CCIW because of what's called a medical hardship waiver. The informal name for it is "medical redshirt", but it isn't really a redshirt at all. He didn't practice with the team, which is the whole point of redshirting. Like a redshirt, he is taking five years of schooling (or perhaps 4 1/2) to play four seasons, but he doesn't have the redshirt's benefit of the extra non-playing year spent honing his craft with his teammates. More likely, he was recovering from and then rehabbing whatever serious injury had taken away his 2025 season. And since he didn't even play at all last season, the whole point about a medical hardship waiver is moot, anyway; he's only used three years of eligibility, and thus he doesn't need permission to waive his participating in a small part of a fourth season.

Listing him as "Redshirt" is not only erroneous in terms of class listing, it's also inaccurate in terms of describing why he is playing in his fifth year as an Augustana student. Worse -- much worse -- is that Augustana looks like it's breaking D3 rules just by having the dreaded R-word attached to his name, especially without any further explanation. If Augustana wants to convey the impression that it's illegally redshirting players, that's Augie's business. But if I was an Augie fan, I'd tell the Augustana sports info office to fix Ben Hartman's listing tout de suite. It makes Augie look bad.

Quote from: CentPA on August 24, 2026, 06:34:37 PMI just looked at coach Woodley's bio and this year will be her 7th season of coaching but she just graduated from North Park in 2015!  She is so young to already be in her 7th season and now coming off the CCIW Coach Of The Year award there is certainly the potential/chance that she could have this team on the move up for the foreseeable future.  If things go well she could be coaching this team for quite a while.

Emma also serves as the head coach of a Chicago-based club team, Edgewater Castle FC, during the summer season.

https://www.edgewatercastlefc.com/post/how-emma-woodley-became-the-first-national-champion-coach-for-ecfc

(She's had a very busy summer thus far; in between coaching Edgewater Castle and the beginning of North Park's preseason camp last week she and the returning Vikings made a trip to Italy. They played games in Rome, Milan, and Venice, and they visited Lake Como as well.) This coming Thursday Emma's two teams will play each other in a friendly, as North Park will host Edgewater Castle. (Presumably, one of Emma's assistants will be in charge for the Rooks.) Should be fun, and it will give us an early indication of what the Vikings have, as they'll be going up against a pretty good club team that has a number of former D1 players on the roster.

This should be an interesting season.

North Central has grown into a juggernaut in CCIW women's soccer of the sort that's unrivaled by anybody in this league since Wheaton was stomping each and every CCIW opponent year after year in the the late '90s. Last year the Cardinals outscored the rest of the league by the absurd margin of 26-3 in CCIW play, and then followed that up by outscoring Carthage and North Park by a combined 7-0 in the CCIW tourney. NCC has won two of the last three CCIW titles, each of the last three CCIW tournaments, and has racked up 27 wins the last 29 times it's played a CCIW opponent (one of those non-wins was the 1-1 draw with Carroll in the 2024 tourney championship game up in Waukesha that ended with NCC advancing to the title on PKs). Small wonder that the Cardinals are the unanimous pick to repeat in 2026, according to the coaches poll.

It's not as though the Cardinals earned that preseason pick on reputation alone. They return three of the league's four specialty-award winners from 2025: three-time-reigning CCIW Defensive Player of the Year Kassandra Salviola; CCIW Offensive Player of the Year (and All-American) Jordan Langs; and CCIW Goalkeeper of the Year Lily Mattison. Plus, they return three other All-CCIW players besides Salviola, Langs, and Mattison. On paper, it looks like the Cardinals are going to run circles around the rest of the league again in 2026, especially since last year's runner-up in both the regular season and the tournament, upstart North Park, wasn't really competitive at all against the Cardinals either time that the two teams played.

But Emma Woodley likes her squad this season. The Vikings return 2025 CCIW First-Year Player of the Year Sofia Svensson, who led the league in goals scored in CCIW play last season, as well as three other All-CCIW players among the seven returning starters for NPU. As CentPA noted, the Vikings have also added a bevy of Scandinavian recruits, two of whom are D2 transfers. The first question is: Can North Park manage to close the enormous gap that existed last year between them and the Cardinals, especially given what the Cardinals have returning? And the second question is: Can anybody else in this league besides NCC and NPU make some noise?