Shocker soccer coming soon?!

[Kung Wu]

Go.

[Kung Wu]

Please for the love of all things holy, do not even consider hiring a local person as a coach.

There is no quality NCAA Division 1 coaching experience to be found in this town. None.

The Kevin Kewley coaching tree has some eye-popping expertise underneath it though. And he is the true father of Wichita soccer. His son Andrew has an A license and is technical director with the Colorado Rapids -- would probably make an amazing DOSO, but I doubt he would be interested. Kevin should be consulted.

So should Vlatko Andonovski.

[SubGod22]

I think we're still a few years away unless I've missed something. But I would be crazy excited for Shocker Soccer and it would jump right to my 3rd favorite program behind men's basketball and softball.

[jcdshocker]

I think there was some recent discussion of adding Women’s Soccer. I can’t find any news article so I might be completely wrong.

[SubGod22]

Saal once hinted at the future possibility of it when talking about Cessna. More of a keeping options open sort of thing.

It makes too much sense though. It's growing in popularity, isn't crazy expensive and there's a lot of talent in the area. We could be competitive fairly quickly

[WINGdingBALLfling]

It would be nice to have an outdoor sport to support in the fall.. I'd be a day 1 season ticket holder.

[1972Shocker]

Define "soon".

[Kung Wu]

Define "soon".

Well now that there is an official Shocker soccer forum on Shockernet, if Saal doesn't get on this he will get billboarded!

[SubGod22]

The last officially public mention of Shocker Soccer was from late September of last year.

Eagle - Women's soccer emerging as future option for Wichita State to add as Division I sport

While a women’s soccer program may not be imminent at Wichita State, first-year athletic director Kevin Saal acknowledged to The Eagle that adding the sport in the coming years is a “makes-sense option.”

“Women’s soccer is incredibly strong in this city and I think you could build it relatively quickly,” Saal said. “It also would add a sport to our fall sports portfolio and when you talk about campus life and student engagement, adding another fall sport would be really good.”
.....
Five years ago, WSU had a near-even split between its male and female students. According to Saal, the split at WSU is approaching 56% female and 44% male, meaning that WSU’s scholarship split must be at least 51% female.

“You’re starting to see the gap widen and there’s only so much we can do with our existing roster management,” Saal said. “We can hold men’s rosters to a minimum and ask women’s rosters to carry this many to help your numbers, but that will only take you so far. At some point, you’re either going to have to drop a men’s sport, which we don’t do here, or you’re going to add a sport. We have to be prepared for growth.”

Research for potentially adding a women’s sport began well before Saal was hired this summer, but the AD said the preliminary discussions that have been had since he joined WSU have been centered around three possibilities: women’s soccer, women’s beach volleyball and women’s bowling.

I do think it's pretty much inevitable and Saal knows it. It's a sport we could get good at quickly with a lot of local talent to build off of.

When an official announcement would come is still up in the air. But I could see a fundraising announcement done in the next 24 months to help gauge interest and see what kind of financial support will be there.

I'm also not sure how much more of the $50M+ needs to be raised to finish Cessna. I want to say only $20M or so covers what they currently have planned over the next two years but I might be mistaken. Though I do think it's possible that a women's soccer announcement could boost some fundraising for both the team in the stadium.

I think I'd seen somewhere else previously that Saal has mentioned the potential renaming of the new stadium and that could help raise some funds to put into the new additions. I'm not sure who would step up for those naming rights but there are some local options that could definitely invest in it if they wanted to.

[Kung Wu]

They can easily use the stadium at Stryker complex (owned by the city) for awhile.

[SubGod22]

I agree that they could, but I'm not sure that they'd want to. With that said, I believe the entire project is expected to be finished by 2026 and I think it would be usable by 2024.

I'm not sure how much time they'd need after announcement. Teams have 14 scholarships and it appears they generally have 28 members of the roster. So I'm guessing you'd give out 28 half scholarships in general. I suppose your first season, whenever that would be, you'd need to find a number of HS kids willing to commit and then mix in some JC girls and maybe a couple of transfers to mix in. You might be able to find some local girls playing elsewhere willing to come back home. It would be interesting to see it develop and how long from announcement to team on field it would be.

I would think that you could announce sometime in the next year and maybe put a team on the field in fall of '24, but probably '25 at this point.

No matter what, I think it would generate a lot of local excitement and I think the campus field could be used as early as '25. I think they'd need the west stands rebuilt with clubhouse/locker rooms ready before campus games would work. I'm not sure how much time the AAC would need to integrate you into the conference schedule. I'd think it could be done pretty quick but being as I haven't paid attention to women's soccer in the conference, I'm not sure when they release the conference schedule for the following year.

From what I can tell, they haven't released the '23 schedule yet. So in theory, WSU could announce they want to have a team together for the '24 season and as long as things were in place and going to be ready it appears that wouldn't be an issue for the conference as long as we could put together a schedule.

Looks like teams in the conference played between 17 and 22 games during the year. There were 8 conference games for a 9 team conference. The American will lose 3 teams and add 6. If we added soccer that would be a 13 team conference which would account for 12 games I'm assuming. So I'm guessing you'd have to schedule 4 to 8 non-conference games.

I could be wrong on how things would play out. But could be a deep and competitive conference.

[shock]

I would rather have beach volleyball

[Kung Wu]

How about both?

[BAShocker]

How about both?

“Coleman, should we go with the lobster or the cracked crab”?

[shock]