Vanderbilt Men’s Club Soccer

Purpose

The Vanderbilt Men’s Club Soccer Team is comprised of approximately 25 undergraduate and graduate students committed to competing at the highest level of intercollegiate club soccer. The team is paritally funded by the Vanderbilt Office of Campus Recreation as well as player dues and other fund raising opportunities

We compete against club teams from universities in the SEC and other schools in the southeast region and play in several tournaments during the year including Clemson, Florida, and Vanderbilt.  We also compete in a regional tournament to obtain an automatic bid to Nationals, or compete for an at-large bid to Nationals based on rankings by the National Intramural Recreational Sports Association (NIRSA)

History

The club team was started in the Fall of 2001 and played a season of exhibition games. The Vanderbilt Men’s Club Soccer team entered NIRSA via the Southeastern Collegiate Soccer League (SCSL) the following year, in the Fall of 2002. In its first year of SCSL and NIRSA play Vanderbilt went 14-1-1, winning the SCSL Regional tournament and thereby qualifying for Nationals hosted by NIRSA in Bakersfield, California. At Nationals, Vanderbilt was able to advance out of its bracket which consisted of Vanderbilt, Cornell, Minnesota, and San Diego State University, but lost a well fought match to Michigan in the Quarterfinals, 2-1.  Since then, Vanderbilt has maintained a consistent presence at the national level advancing to the quarterfinals in 2004 and the national championship game in 2005, where they were defeated 2-1 in overtime by the University of Colorado.

In the Spring of 2003, Vanderbilt began hosting a tournament called the Commodore Classic. The tournament is held in late March, and is open to all NIRSA affiliated club teams.

Practice

The team practices four times a week and normally plays at least one game per weekend.

Click here for the current practice schedule.

Contacts

Walker Mainwaring:  walker.l.mainwaring@vanderbilt.edu

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