The college soccer season begins in August with the 2 week preseason training and ends in early December with Nationals if your team qualifies. This college semester is called Fall semester.
College soccer teams, both men’s and women’s, are part of either the NCAA, NAIA or NJCAA leagues as explained in this article.
The universities in the respective leagues play against each other in the different conferences, which usually group the colleges by geographical area, for example the Sun-Conference is the NAIA conference in which all Florida college teams play and also some universities in Georgia and Alabama (states bordering Florida).
Once the regular season games of the different conferences are over (beginning of November), the 8 best teams face each other in the play-offs (mid-November) and the winner of these play-offs will play in the Nationals in which all the winners of the different conferences will face each other (end of November/beginning of December).
National Finals are generally held in a different city each year, for example, NCAA D1 soccer teams hosted Nationals at Oregon State University, NCAA D2 at Colorado Springs, NAIA at Columbia Georgia, while NJCAA has hosted its own Nationals at Tyler in Texas.
Once the Nationals are over, players return to their respective universities in the second week of December to take the Finals (final exams of the college semester). Once the semester is over, student-athletes can go home for Christmas break and return to the United States in mid-January for the second semester.
The second semester, called spring semester, lasts from mid-January through early May. For soccer players, the spring semester is considered off-season since there is no championship, but teams focus more on the physical preparation of their student-athletes and organize weekly friendlies to prepare the team for the fall semester (August-December) when they are In Season. During the spring semester, players also have the opportunity to focus more on college classes.
Playing in the American college leagues gives you the chance to get to know new places with teammates who come from different countries and have different cultures than yours. This certainly helps you grow temperamentally and prepares you to succeed on the field, in college and in the working world.
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