Go WEST young man (and NORTH)

[Kuiper]

ASC Preseason Poll

1. Mary Hardin-Baylor (10)
2. Hardin-Simmons (1)
3. East Texas Baptist (1)
4. Schreiner
5. McMurry
6. Howard Payne

2026 ASC Preseason Players of the Year
Offensive: Alex Bethke, Mary Hardin-Baylor
Defensive: Jacob Wenzel, East Texas Baptist

2026 Players to Watch
 
Name    Position    Class    School
Gabriel Anderson *    D    So.    Hardin-Simmons
Alex Bethke     F    Sr.    Mary Hardin-Baylor
Jovani Burnett     MF    Jr.    McMurry
Joshua Daley *    F    Jr.    East Texas Baptist
Dylan Garcia *    MF    Sr.    East Texas Baptist
Jerron Garcia *    MF    Sr.    Hardin-Simmons
Justyn Judie     MF    So.    McMurry
Kolby Lara *    F    Jr.    Howard Payne
Lewis Paterson     D    Sr.    Schreiner
Korbin Raef *    F    Jr.    Hardin-Simmons
Rhett Rapuzzi *    MF    Jr.    Mary Hardin-Baylor
Xzavier Saldana *    F    Sr.    Howard Payne
Jose Sanchez     GK    So.    McMurry
Hughston Taggart * G    GK    So.    Mary Hardin-Baylor
Adrian Villa * DF    GK    So.    Howard Payne
Jacob Wenzel *    D    Sr.    East Texas Baptist

2025 All-Conference *
2025 Goalkeeper of the Year G
2025 Defensive Freshman of the Year DF

[Kuiper]

Cross-posted from the 2026 Schedules Thread

A couple of really interesting schedules from our in Region X

Redlands

New Redlands coach Alex Ortega has constructed a pretty ambitious schedule for his first year after leaving Amherst for the west coast.  They added SCIAC and D3 newcomer Azusa Pacific to the schedule in place of UC Santa Cruz and Nelson (AZ) (NCCAA), but the rest of the schedule is going to be a challenge.  They had to replace a bunch of one-off games from a slew of long road trips last season in Ralph Perez's retirement tour on the east coast.  The positive is that Ortega managed to do that with a schedule that basically keeps the team at home or close to home until October when they travel to Eagle Rock to play Oxy.  They open against Whittier in a non-conference game, which is something I haven't seen SCIAC schools do very often, if at all, lately.  SCIAC teams play all but three other teams in a home-and-away series, so it makes sense to play one or more of the single game teams again, but most teams want to play against other teams for variety or to enhance strength-of-schedule.  For the latter issue, that won't be necessary for Redlands because not only is Whittier likely to be one of the better SCIAC teams, but they also have Final Four team Emory and SCAC finalist Colorado College visiting Redlands.  I expect Colorado College will be better this year as they should have all but two starters returning and all of their leading scorers.  Redlands is returning its top scorers - Beckton and Darmanyan - and some of its starters, but it doesn't have a goalkeeper returning with any college experience and it has an entirely new coaching staff.  Non-conference should be a big test for the team.

Redlands just came out with a revised schedule and the non-conference schedule just got a lot harder.

I already wrote that playing Emory and Colorado College on back-to-back days on the second weekend of the season was ambitious, but now they've added a game five days earlier against Trinity (TX).  All of the games are in SoCal, but that's still a brutal stretch of games against three of the top D3 men's soccer programs in the country.  Kudos to Coach Ortega for being willing to take on the challenge and effectively making SoCal the place to be for D3 soccer for that stretch of games, but we'll find out really quickly whether he's bitten off more than he can chew. 

[Ron Boerger]

Trinity

After a home opener against Texas Lutheran, the defending national runner-up Tigers take to the air for a very rare non-conference set of tilts at CMS.  They come back to face La Verne, take a three-hour (if lucky) drive to UMHB, and then return home for the rest of their non-conference schedule against Hardin-Simmons, UC-Santa Cruz, and Concordia.  SAA play opens October 8th at Southwestern.  The only other change is a trip to new SAA member Maryville later that month.  Millsaps makes its final visit to San Antonio the last weekend of the regular season.

Trinity has finalized their schedule (same link as above), adding Redlands to the CA trip (so only one game vs CMS, which makes more sense) and inserting a home tilt against NAIA Texas A&M - San Antonio between La Verne and UMHB. 

TAMUSA (!!) is a new program which started up after the pandemic and went 11-4-2 last year in the Red River Athletic Conference.  They defeated Schreiner 4-1 on Sunday in the first game played at their new home facility.  This will be the first time the teams have played a game that counts for both (they scrimmaged last season, according to their schedule).

Edit:  in addition, Trinity and TAMUSA will scrimmage at the Jaguars' campus Friday (according to the Jags' IG).  It will probably be the first time many of the Tigers have visited a location on the far south side of town.

[Kuiper]

Interesting that they are just expecting Luther to waltz in and take the conference.

Midwest Conference Preseason Poll

1. Luther (9)
2. Lake Forest (1)
3. Grinnell
4. Illinois College
5. Beloit
6. Ripon
7. Cornell
8. Knox
9. Lawrence
10. Monmouth

Beloit College Buccaneers
Head Coach: Patrick Sanchez (4th Season)
2025: 7-9-4 (overall), 4-2-2 (MWC)
All-Conference Returnees: David Staats (Jr.)
 
Cornell College Rams
Head Coach: Nate Grosse (13th Season)
2025: 7-9-1 (overall), 4-3-1 (MWC)
All-Conference Returnees: Sam Burmeister (Sr.)
 
Grinnell College Pioneers
Head Coach: Brian Jaworski (23rd Season)
2025: 6-8-5 (overall), 4-2-2 (MWC)
All-Conference Returnees: Jack Pennachio (Jr.); Samuel Gojjam (Sr.); Demi Oni (Sr.)
 
Illinois College Blueboys
Head Coach: Evan Philpott (8th Season)
2025: 8-3-5 (overall), 3-2-3 (MWC)
All-Conference Returnees: Jives Efemini (Sr.)
 
Knox College Prairie Fire
Head Coach: Pablo Arriaga (1st Season)
2025: 7-5-4 (overall), 3-4-1 (MWC)
All-Conference Returnees: Ethan Thomas (Jr.)
 
Lake Forest College Foresters
Head Coach: Dan Andrews (11th Season)
2025: 19-2 (overall), 8-0 (MWC)
All-Conference Returnees: Sam Satisky (Jr.); Nathan Kostovetsky (Sr.); Gustavo Machado (Sr.); Andrew Swacha (Sr.)
 
Lawrence University Vikings
Head Coach: Ben Gyuricza (1st Season)
2025: 0-11-5 (overall), 0-7-1 (MWC)
All-Conference Returnees: None
 
Luther College Norse
Head Coach: Chris Garcia-Prats (19th Season)
2025: 10-3-7 (overall); 4-0-4 (A-R-C)
All-Conference Returnees: Francesco Mungari (Jr.) - 2025 A-R-C Offensive MVP; Paulo Mercante (So.); Nels Mortenson (Jr.); Elliot Lindberg (Jr.); Joseph Mulindwa (Jr.)
 
Monmouth College Fighting Scots
Head Coach: Ian Hatleli (6th Season)
2025: 3-9-3 (overall), 0-7-1 (MWC)
All-Conference Returnees: None
 
Ripon College Red Hawks
Head Coach: Marco Rhein (8th Season)
2025: 10-7-2 (overall), 4-3-1 (MWC)
All-Conference Returnees: Seth Schroeder (Jr.)

[Kuiper]

NACC Men's Soccer Preseason Poll

1. Edgewood (19)
2. MSOE (4)
3. Dominican (2)
4. Aurora (1)
5. St. Norbert
6. Wisconsin Lutheran
7. Illinois tech
8. Concordia Wisconsin
9. Benedictine
10. Marian
11. Concordia Chicago
12. Rockford
13. Lakeland

[Kuiper]

Redlands

Redlands finally posted its roster.  They went fairly heavy on transfers, including Jaden Nisperos, a Jr GK from D2 Biola, Daniel Rodas, a Jr. MF from San Bernardino Valley CC (a few years ago), Thomas Lyden, a 6'5" Jr F originally from D2 New Haven who started 13 games last season for D2 Pace University, and Tomas Paoli, a Soph MF who committed to D1 Bryant University after a year in a Spanish post-grad program, but is originally from NorCal, and Josh Hanson, a Soph GK from the UK and D2 McKendree.  It's pretty clear they were not happy with their GK room, which was fairly barren after graduations, and are trying to add some offensive depth behind Darmanyan and Beckton.  They also return MF Landon Azevedo for a 5th grad year, who missed almost all of 2025 with injury, but started 13 of 17 games played in 2024 and would be a strong contributor if healthy.  It's a relatively thin, but experienced, roster.

[olepoops]

Interesting that they are just expecting Luther to waltz in and take the conference.

Midwest Conference Preseason Poll

1. Luther (9)

Norse appear to have lots of churn in their sizeable overseas contingent.

[Kuiper]

For several years, I have been saying that CMS's soccer pitch was possibly the worst in the SCIAC, at least in the grass field category.

No more.  See this Instagram post with shots of the CMS women practicing on the new field, which is part of a massive new field construction project for CMS, including a new football stadium, softball and baseball fields, and track, with the full array shown in this Instagram post.

CMS men's soccer plays an official game on the field for the first time on Friday night against Trinity at 7 pm