This is a shortened version of coach Ryan Swan's e-mail to donors:

We officially welcomed Tyler Doll and Ronnie Bouemboue to the staff. Tyler has been with the program for the past year but officially became full-time a couple of months ago. Ronnie joined us earlier this month. Ronnie had been the head coach at Eastern Illinois University for the past two years and had assisted at IUPUI, Bradley and NC State prior to that. Both are great additions to our staff and are already driving us forward.

Our recruiting class is still to be finalized but we have added:
Taylor Davis - Fwd from FC Dallas.
Kevin Meza - CM from Barca Academy in Arizona
Kuba Drazek - CM from FC United here in Chicago
Taisei Arima - CAM from Japan (transfer from Ft. Hayes)

They add to:
Nolan Cosgrove - GK from St. Louis (transfer from Tulsa)
Patrick Coleman - LW from Antioch, IL (transfer from Notre Dame)
Both Nolan and Patrick joined us in January.
There will be a couple of more announcements before August.

More good news........Our playing surface will be replaced this July!!!! We are on the same surface that went down in 2008, so we are long overdue for this upgrade. I am very excited to get the ball rolling (instead of bouncing) on the new pitch this fall. I am making a push to make some other upgrades. I would love to add locker-rooms at the field, but I think our next priority will be permanent toilets instead of the porta potties.

Hopefully you will be able to see the new pitch this fall as after months of uncertainty, we finally got a schedule from the MAC. Getting to this point has been a long and arduous journey. We will add Chicago State to the conference and play a double round robin schedule.
With our schedule now in place, we are able to coordinate an alumni event with our women's team. We are looking at Homecoming weekend (Oct 7-9). There are a lot of things going on that weekend and we think this will be a great time to celebrate our soccer programs. We will host a doubleheader with our women's team on Oct 9. The women play at 1:00 and we will play immediately after. There is a football game on Saturday and we will plan an event before or after (details to follow soon).

Understand the necessity, but adding Chicago State to the MAC is more of a negative than a help other than a much lesser trip than going to West Virginia.

Well, we finally got info for a lot of questions on the soccer program. Not to be negative, but you would think the MAC or NIU Athletics would have sent a news release on the conference status instead of an email from a head coach. Hopefully they will release some official news in the future.

(05-26-2022 06:05 PM)Schaefer Beer Wrote:  Well, we finally got info for a lot of questions on the soccer program. Not to be negative, but you would think the MAC or NIU Athletics would have sent a news release on the conference status instead of an email from a head coach. Hopefully they will release some official news in the future.

Now that's funny.

And, unfortunately, even with Chicago State, the MAC remains one school short of being an NCAA qualifying conference. West Virginia, Georgia State, and Georgia Southern all left, leaving the MAC at four MSC schools, plus CSU makes five.

I read somewhere that the NCAA is giving the MAC/Chicago State a waiver this fall. Any school that is playing Chicago State can field their school's club team instead. If the score is 6-0 by half time, Chicago State would be allowed to add an extra player on the field for the second half.

(05-26-2022 08:40 PM)Huskie D Wrote:  I read somewhere that the NCAA is giving the MAC/Chicago State a waiver this fall. Any school that is playing Chicago State can field their school's club team instead. If the score is 6-0 by half time, Chicago State would be allowed to add an extra player on the field for the second half.

I don't think the OVC offers men's soccer and, as a result, I don't know if those schools offer it and where they play, but Lindenwood (St. Louis) has a men's soccer program and St. Louis is pretty rich in US Soccer history. I can't find where they'll play next season as a D-1 program but that could be a program to target.

Eh...I finally found it.

***Edit***

On second thought, maybe the MAC just needs to drop men's soccer and allow us (and the other 3 schools) to join whatever conference we want for the sport. It seems dumb that we have to be held in the conference for a sport that we are pretty good at but the rest of the members want no part of.

They don't hold Western Michigan and Miami hostage over men's hockey. We should be able to join the Summit or whatever conference suits us if we want to have the program and they don't.
They're joining the Summit League. Same with Southern Indiana.

I try not to be in the group that is always jumping on the MAC and school admin for doing nothing and not being proactive, but this seems like an egregious miss to not get one or both of those schools into the fold for men's soccer.

(05-27-2022 07:44 AM)Big Red Wrote:  

(05-26-2022 08:40 PM)Huskie D Wrote:  I read somewhere that the NCAA is giving the MAC/Chicago State a waiver this fall. Any school that is playing Chicago State can field their school's club team instead. If the score is 6-0 by half time, Chicago State would be allowed to add an extra player on the field for the second half.

I don't think the OVC offers men's soccer and, as a result, I don't know if those schools offer it and where they play, but Lindenwood (St. Louis) has a men's soccer program and St. Louis is pretty rich in US Soccer history. I can't find where they'll play next season as a D-1 program but that could be a program to target.

Eh...I finally found it.

***Edit***

On second thought, maybe the MAC just needs to drop men's soccer and allow us (and the other 3 schools) to join whatever conference we want for the sport. It seems dumb that we have to be held in the conference for a sport that we are pretty good at but the rest of the members want no part of.

They don't hold Western Michigan and Miami hostage over men's hockey. We should be able to join the Summit or whatever conference suits us if we want to have the program and they don't.
They're joining the Summit League. Same with Southern Indiana.

I try not to be in the group that is always jumping on the MAC and school admin for doing nothing and not being proactive, but this seems like an egregious miss to not get one or both of those schools into the fold for men's soccer.

Someone on the MAC board also said they had read that the NCAA has given the MAC a one year qualifying conference waiver. If so, we have another year to find a sixth school.

Chicago State? A skeleton of a school with a 2-13-3 record?

Yikes, hope thats not a permanent add for the conference.

Hope we are in a different and better conference sooner rather than later.

(05-27-2022 08:14 AM)NIUfilmmaker Wrote:  Chicago State? A skeleton of a school with a 2-13-3 record?

Yikes, hope thats not a permanent add for the conference.

Hope we are in a different and better conference sooner rather than later.

In many aspects, the MAC is a perfect conference for NIU.

But when it comes to soccer, we are 100% being held back by the conference.

It is official.

https://getsomemaction.com/news/2022/5/2...occer.aspx[/font]

(05-28-2022 08:32 AM)HuskieDave Wrote:  It is official.

https://getsomemaction.com/news/2022/5/2...occer.aspx[/font]

Poor Chicago State, it seems that officials titles always seem to have the "Interim" designation before the title.

For a team that re-started it's soccer program recently, even though they had a bad record, by the scores posted they seemed to be competitive. They didn't play top 25 teams, but played a few decent Div 1 programs and didn't get blown out.