2026 Schedules

[mngopher]

https://athletics.stolaf.edu/sports/mens-soccer/schedule

St. Olaf's 2026 schedule looks pretty typical for the Oles. Nonconference headliners are Chicago, Edgewood, and Luther. All of them won a game in the NCAAs last season. Central, UW-Platteville, and UW-Superior are solid opponents as well.

One thing that bothers is the conference game against crosstown rival Carleton is again a middle of the season weekday game. For a while that game was played on the final Saturday of the regular season, but for whatever reason that tradition ended. For the last 7-8 seasons the Olaf-Carleton game has typically been a weekday 3:30pm or 4pm game. It used to be an informal gathering of soccer alumni when it was that last Saturday of the season (or at least some other Saturday), but the late afternoon weekday slot is not very conducive to getting a good alumni turnout.

[B Teamer]

Stockton has posted their schedule on the Instagram.

[Kuiper]

Eastern Mennonite

Grove City and Geneva are off this schedule this year, but fellow Pennsylvania school Gettysburg travels to EMU.  They also leave off John Jay, Mary Baldwin, and Johnson & Wales (NC) and add Salisbury, St. Mary's College of Maryland, VMI (DI).

Rhodes

Rhodes had a brutally hard schedule to start last season, playing Johns Hopkins and Montclair St.  This year, they start with Ozarks and Huntingdon, which should be more competitive games.  In their tournament in mid-September, they play ASC schools LeTuorneau and East Texas Baptist, which should be less challenging ASC opponents than Mary Hardin-Baylor, who they played last season.  They once again travel to Southwestern and Trinity in SAA play, but this time they do it for the last two games of conference play.  If they have aspirations of playing in the SAA conference tournament, they would do well to build up cushion early in the season and not have to come into South Texas and pick up points to make it.

[Ejay]

Eastern Mennonite

Grove City and Geneva are off this schedule this year, but fellow Pennsylvania school Gettysburg travels to EMU.  They also leave off John Jay, Mary Baldwin, and Johnson & Wales (NC) and add Salisbury, St. Mary's College of Maryland, VMI (DI).

That's a massive upgrade for EMU, a team that hasn't been above .500 since 2017.

[Kuiper]

Some Region X schedules

George Fox

After playing 4 non-conference games last season, George Fox cuts it down to two, traveling to Southern California to play SCIAC opponents La Verne and Caltech.  From the perspective of NPI, however, it's actually an increase in countable games because in 2025 they played 3 NAIA opponents and 1 NCAA D3 opponent.  This year, they have two D3 opponents.  I doubt any of that matters to George Fox, though, since they went 5-9-6 last season and, like all NWC teams, they basically have to win the conference to go to the NCAA tournament.

LeTourneau

LeTourneau replaces Berry and Maryville with two other SAA opponents - Sewanee and Rhodes. They also replace a conference game against Schreiner with a non-conference game against Schreiner, which has moved from the SCAC to the ASC for Fall 2026.  That's kind of symbolic of the oddity of having two D3 conferences in Texas.  It makes sense that they would split in two to maximize NCAA auto bid spots and to regionalize a bit in the large Lone Star state, but regardless of which conference each school is in, they're still going to have to play each other because there aren't a lot of other D3 options available.

[Kuiper]

Babson

Babson had a down, or at least uneven, year in 2025 by their lofty standards, that looked a lot better by year's end.  Ties to UMass Boston and Covenant were troubling, but both teams ended up having pretty strong seasons, and an uncommon three game losing streak with losses to Roger Williams, Brandeis, and Amherst, plus four dispiriting conference results - ties to Salve Regina and Coast Guard and losses to Emerson and Wheaton - put Babson at risk of not making the NCAA tournament.  They turned it around to win the NEWMAC tournament and then beat Oneonta to advance to the second round before falling to Conn College on two PKs, the second in the 81st minute.  This year's schedule is a bit less challenging than last year's.  No extensive travel to Georgia, no UMass Boston or a good Occidental team to push them on opening weekend, and they get Amherst, Salve Regina, Emerson, and Coast Guard at home this season.  Tufts away will be a big hill to climb and Brandeis and Wheaton away should be challenges again, but they get newly resurgent Bates at home instead of Wesleyan. Plus, with the exception of a couple of players on the backline, they get all their starters back, including all their top scorers (especially Yablonovskiy), and their freshman/sophomore starters will have a year of experience under their belts.

[BaboNation]

Babson

Babson had a down, or at least uneven, year in 2025 by their lofty standards, that looked a lot better by year's end.  Ties to UMass Boston and Covenant were troubling, but both teams ended up having pretty strong seasons, and an uncommon three game losing streak with losses to Roger Williams, Brandeis, and Amherst, plus four dispiriting conference results - ties to Salve Regina and Coast Guard and losses to Emerson and Wheaton - put Babson at risk of not making the NCAA tournament.  They turned it around to win the NEWMAC tournament and then beat Oneonta to advance to the second round before falling to Conn College on two PKs, the second in the 81st minute.  This year's schedule is a bit less challenging than last year's.  No extensive travel to Georgia, no UMass Boston or a good Occidental team to push them on opening weekend, and they get Amherst, Salve Regina, Emerson, and Coast Guard at home this season.  Tufts away will be a big hill to climb and Brandeis and Wheaton away should be challenges again, but they get newly resurgent Bates at home instead of Wesleyan. Plus, with the exception of a couple of players on the backline, they get all their starters back, including all their top scorers (especially Yablonovskiy), and their freshman/sophomore starters will have a year of experience under their belts.

I wonder if this is still a work in progress.  Only 14 games listed after regular seasons of 19-19-18 the last 3 years.  September seems particularly light.

[Kuiper]

Babson

Babson had a down, or at least uneven, year in 2025 by their lofty standards, that looked a lot better by year's end.  Ties to UMass Boston and Covenant were troubling, but both teams ended up having pretty strong seasons, and an uncommon three game losing streak with losses to Roger Williams, Brandeis, and Amherst, plus four dispiriting conference results - ties to Salve Regina and Coast Guard and losses to Emerson and Wheaton - put Babson at risk of not making the NCAA tournament.  They turned it around to win the NEWMAC tournament and then beat Oneonta to advance to the second round before falling to Conn College on two PKs, the second in the 81st minute.  This year's schedule is a bit less challenging than last year's.  No extensive travel to Georgia, no UMass Boston or a good Occidental team to push them on opening weekend, and they get Amherst, Salve Regina, Emerson, and Coast Guard at home this season.  Tufts away will be a big hill to climb and Brandeis and Wheaton away should be challenges again, but they get newly resurgent Bates at home instead of Wesleyan. Plus, with the exception of a couple of players on the backline, they get all their starters back, including all their top scorers (especially Yablonovskiy), and their freshman/sophomore starters will have a year of experience under their belts.

I wonder if this is still a work in progress.  Only 14 games listed after regular seasons of 19-19-18 the last 3 years.  September seems particularly light.

Agreed.  The first weekend (9/5-9/6) seems to be the most glaring hole in the schedule.

[Kuiper]

Greenville

Drops Wisconsin-Whitewater, Dubuque, Loras, and University of Health Sciences & Pharmacy (NAIA) and adds Spurgeon, Illinois College, and Crown.  That's a drop in quality for a team that finished 10-5-3 last season and lost in the SLIAC championship game, but at least they start conference play @Lyon to try to get some revenge.

Saint Francis University

This will be the first year SFU is playing D3 as it transitions from DI.  This isn't a team, however, that did poorly in DI its last season as players jumped ship.  SFU was 8-9-1 and 7-2 in the NEC, losing in the NEC championship game to Farleigh Dickinson 1-0. So, if they retained any portion of their roster they should be pretty darn strong.  That makes their first D3 schedule revealing.  They play an entirely President's Athletic Conference schedule except for one non-conference game away at Arcadia (a really long bus ride, by the way, for a Thursday evening game).  Maybe they had trouble finding opponents or this is an incomplete schedule.  Otherwise, it suggests that either teams are avoiding them on the suspicion they will be too good or teams are avoiding them because it won't count for NPI purposes.

[Ron Boerger]

FWIW SFU's (American) football schedule consists entirely of eight PAC opponents.  They were 0-11 last year.

[Kuiper]

Case Western Reserve

Drops Franciscan, Penn State-Behrend, and Otterbein and picks up Ohio Wesleyan (on opening day), Lycoming, and Trine.  Last season, Case started the season with a 9 game unbeaten streak and a 6-0-3 record, but only won 1 game in the UAA.  Not sure whether it was injuries, quality of competition, or they just wore down, but tough games against Kenyon, John Carroll, and Otterbein right before conference play might have done them in.  This year, at least they put the Trine game after the Kenyon and John Carroll games and before the tough Rochester/Wash U road trip to open UAA play, although Trine away makes for three road trips in a row.

[Flying Weasel]

Messiah Falcons:  Schedule  |  Write-up with Incoming Class

Non-Conference:
Added (3): Franciscan (A), Vassar (A), Muhlenberg (A)
Dropped (4): Claremont-M-S, Rowan, Salisbury, Lynchburg
Retained (7): Scranton (H), Dickinson (H), PSU-Harrisburg (H), E-town (A), Lancaster Bible (H), Mary Washington (A), Lycoming (A)

Salisbury is dropped after 6 seasons.  Rowan is dropped after two years.  Last year's neutral site game vs. Lynchburg has no follow-up.  Clarement's visit to Messiah was never part of a home/away series.

This will be the first-ever encounter with Vassar.  Franciscan is on the regular season schedule for the first time, having met once before in the NCAA first round in 2022 the night before Williams ousted the undefeated Falcons on PKs.  Muhlenberg is back on schedule after a home/away series that straddled the missed COVID season represented the first meetings of the sides since playing annually thru the mid-2000s (before and after the Mules departure from the MAC to form the Centennial in 1993).

It looks like they re-upped for another home/away series with Scranton and Mary Washington, while this is the fourth straight year playing Lancaster Bible.  Dickinson continues to be their most played non-conference opponent.  Former conference foe Lycoming has remained an annual adversary since moving to the Freedom side of the MAC in 2021 and then leaving the MAC in 2023.  And PSU-Harrisburg has become a regular, being on the slate six of the last seven seasons.  E-town and the flying marshmallows is a given (2018 being the only year this game was not on the schedule since Messiah joined the NCAA in 1982).

[Kuiper]

University of Chicago

Chicago had a bounce back season last year, qualifying for the NCAA tournament and finishing 12-3-5, but two 1-0 losses to Wash U. in the regular season finale and the NCAA tournament has to have stung the Maroons.  This year, they once again have a tough non-conference schedule to get them ready for UAA play.  They have three straight home games to open the season, but playing those games against North Park, St. Olaf, and Gustavus Adolphus hardly constitutes easing into things.  They drop MSOE, Aurora, and Hope from the non-conference schedule and pick up Carroll (WI) and Edgewood.  At least they get Wash U. at home this season.

[Kuiper]

Plattsburgh

This is a team that hasn't lost more than 3 games since 2022 and went 10-3-5 last season, yet hasn't made it to the NCAA tournament in those three years.  Part of that is because winning the SUNYAC with Cortland, Buffalo State and Oneonta dominating in recent years is pretty difficult.  Plattsburgh, however, hasn't even gotten out of the first round in the SUNYAC tournament, losing to New Paltz in 2024 and Fredonia in 2025 (they didn't make it in 2023).  That suggests they need to up their non-conference schedule to both increase their NPI SoS and to prepare them for the tougher conference games.  In a normal year, you would have thought that beating St. Lawrence 5-2 and RPI 2-1 would be a nice boost, but 2025 wasn't a normal year for those two opponents.  In 2026, Plattsburgh opens with three straight away games - St. Lawrence, Clarkson, and Norwich - the latter two of which they tied last season, and add MCLA and Stevens, while dropping Ramapo in non-conference.  The Stevens game, especially in Hoboken right before the start of conference play, is the only upgrade.  In conference, New Paltz (which is moving to the NJAC), Fredonia, and Buffalo State are off the schedule, while Cobleskill and Delhi take their places.  That seems like a downgrade.  If they can get by Oneonta and teams are roughly similar in strength to last season, Plattsburgh might be in decent shape in conference by the last game of the regular season at home to Cortland.

[Kuiper]

Babson

Babson had a down, or at least uneven, year in 2025 by their lofty standards, that looked a lot better by year's end.  Ties to UMass Boston and Covenant were troubling, but both teams ended up having pretty strong seasons, and an uncommon three game losing streak with losses to Roger Williams, Brandeis, and Amherst, plus four dispiriting conference results - ties to Salve Regina and Coast Guard and losses to Emerson and Wheaton - put Babson at risk of not making the NCAA tournament.  They turned it around to win the NEWMAC tournament and then beat Oneonta to advance to the second round before falling to Conn College on two PKs, the second in the 81st minute.  This year's schedule is a bit less challenging than last year's.  No extensive travel to Georgia, no UMass Boston or a good Occidental team to push them on opening weekend, and they get Amherst, Salve Regina, Emerson, and Coast Guard at home this season.  Tufts away will be a big hill to climb and Brandeis and Wheaton away should be challenges again, but they get newly resurgent Bates at home instead of Wesleyan. Plus, with the exception of a couple of players on the backline, they get all their starters back, including all their top scorers (especially Yablonovskiy), and their freshman/sophomore starters will have a year of experience under their belts.

Turns out Babson's schedule that I discussed was a work-in-progress as @BaboNation suggested.  It certainly doesn't get any stronger with the additions though.

On the 9/5-9/6 weekend that I pointed out was surprisingly free of games, Babson will be traveling to New Hampshire to play the Keene State tournament against Keene State and Ramapo.  No disrespect for those two teams - they both had winning records last season, albeit barely - but not quite the same level as UMass Boston or Oxy or the rigors of travel to Covenant/Oglethorpe.  Perhaps there are more games coming.