The Rhodes College soccer women’s team has won the national championship for the second year in a row. The Rhodes College soccer women’s team has also won the national competition six times. The previous winning team was the College of Saint Mary. This is the first time that a team from this prestigious institution has won the national women’s soccer championship. Coach Kevin Reyes will be pleased with the team’s performance and will be named to his fifth national coaching award.
Rhodes College Soccer
“Rhodes College has set a new standard in the college soccer world,” said Rich Pederson, director of communications for the university. “We are delighted to have beaten St. John’s in what was an even contest and are extremely proud of our players’ performance.” “This whole team is deeply rooted in the values of our institution and it is inspiring how our players continue to strive for excellence each day,” said Coach Reyes. “We expect this year’s team to exceed expectations and to achieve a place in the College Athletic Association (CAA) championship picture.”
Football and lacrosse are two of the many sports that make up the Rhodes athletic program. The football program has won the national championship three times, the past in 1997. The lacrosse team has won the national competition twice, the most recently in 2021. Both sports compete against some of the nation’s top colleges and universities. Each sport brings fans to the campus each week, but soccer gives the Rhodes College sports teams a chance to reach the largest crowd of any college athletics program.
The Rhodes College Soccer team plays in the Colonial Athletic Association, which is an independent circuit of the NCAA. This is the third highest Division I school behind Harvard and Yale. The Colonials play at the Brannock Stadium, which is named after the then owner of the land on which the stadium is built. The current owner is expected to sell the team if it cannot be renewed. The team is scheduled to begin play in the fall of 2021.
A recent article in the college women’s magazine described the financial difficulties the soccer program had experienced since the team’s inception. According to the report, the team lost money every year and this year is on the low side, having lost several million dollars in its first five years of operation. Many of the team’s players are between jobs because of the low revenues. Even with the low revenues the team is one of the better teams in the league and they play at one of the conferences’ top facilities, the Kenan Stadium.
The soccer program paid expenses this year, including travel expenses to away games and other team activities. It also paid expenses for coaches, trainers and a facility builder. There is a plus side to this equation, though, as the coaches will typically bring more talent and skill to the team that they manage than they would on their own. The players will also play better on the field because they will be under fewer conditions. This may mean a slightly higher level of play overall, but there is a great deal of money involved in operating a college women’s soccer program.
In essence, then, these programs are similar to those of major Division I or II schools, only smaller. They make up a small part of the billions dollars in revenue generated by American college sports, but they are not as financially successful as their larger cousins. This is because those larger conferences have far greater support from the major universities and the national media. The smaller Maryland program, for instance, can’t match the six figure yearly revenues produced by such power houses as Texas, Oklahoma or Florida.
The plus side to the story, then, comes in the form of low-cost entry into major leagues. As it has been said, the big boys have the advantage when it comes to drawing talent away from lower level programs. For Maryland, this translates into an excellent base of players that were able to make the leap to college and, in turn, produced stellar results on the field. By creating a winning program, the Terrapins have shown that they can do it no matter how small the budget.