KANSAS CITY, Mo. – The United Soccer Coaches announced Jacksonville University was named a College Team Academic Award winner for its 2024-25 academic year.

The women’s soccer team boasted a program best 3.64 GPA, earning a spot on the national list. A team must maintain a season GPA of above a 3.0 to be awarded a United Soccer Coaches College Team Academic Award winner.

Of the 697 schools recognized, 414 were women’s teams. By setting a new program record, JU was among 151 schools nationwide to reset the student-athlete standard at their respective school.

The 2025-26 Dolphin soccer season kicks off at Southern Oak Stadium on August 14 against Jacksonville’s own Edward Waters University at 7 p.m.
 

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Skyhawks recruiting class highlighted by international players, goalies

Elizabeth David of Fort Lewis College celebrates her goal against Colorado School of Mines on Friday at FLC. (Jerry McBride/Durango Herald)

Jerry McBride

The Fort Lewis College women’s soccer team has had a good two-year run with trips to the Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference tournament. The Skyhawks’ return to the NCAA tournament could come down to how well their offseason acquisitions contribute.

Skyhawks women’s soccer has won nine games in each of the last two seasons. Last season, FLC went on an incredible run in the RMAC tournament, with two penalty shootout wins before losing to Division II’s top team, Colorado School of Mines, 1-0 in the RMAC championship game.

FLC brings in 10 freshmen to support the 18 returning players with the Skyhawks’ first game on Sept. 4.

“I’m excited about the class for sure,” FLC head coach Damian Clarke said. “At the end of the day, you don’t know until you see them, you get them here and figure out how fit, how much work did they do, how much did they suffer before they got here, to be prepared. But in terms of just talent as a whole, we’re super excited about what we’re bringing. There are big shoes to fill in the senior class that left.”

Two of the most important freshmen will be the two goalkeepers Clarke and his staff brought in. The Skyhawks lost fifth-year goalkeeper Riley Bravin and fifth-year goalkeeper Katlyn Rosenbaum as both players ran out of eligibility. The two veteran goalkeepers split time the last two seasons.

Freshmen goalkeepers Lilliana Brinkmeier and Trinity Lujan will battle for the starting job this fall.

Brinkmeier, a 5-foot-8-inch freshman from Sandpoint, Idaho, comes from a small town like Durango that has produced a lot of good athletes, according to Clarke. Brinkmeier comes from an athletic family as her father played goalkeeper and is a high school coach.

The FLC freshman spent a lot of time playing high-level soccer in Spokane, Washington, and is an athletic shot stopper, according to Clarke.

Lujan is a 5-foot-8-inch freshman from Gilbert, Arizona, who could’ve looked to play at Division I schools but chose to play at FLC because of its better fit, according to Clarke.

“We’ve had a ton of kids from Gilbert,” Clarke said. “Some of the best teams we’ve ever had have been kids from Gilbert and Chandler. We’ve had a lot of fortune with getting kids from the Phoenix metropolitan area. Trinity is legit; she’s a kid that has a sibling that played at Kansas, a sibling that played at NAU and a really athletic family as a whole. She’s coming from a really high level club in Phoenix … We’re pretty fortunate to get her.”

Clarke is excited about his foreign freshmen who he thinks can contribute right away. Molly Widmark, a 5-foot-3-inch forward from Falun, Sweden, is a wide attacking player and is a winner, according to Clarke. Lova Sjölund is a 5-foot-8-inch midfielder from Täby, Sweden, who Clarke thinks can compliment junior midfielder Ann Spence and replace some of the production the team loss with Gabi Meraz-Fishbein’s graduation.

The third foreign freshman is 5-foot-9-inch forward Isla Witham, from Sydney, Australia. Clarke thinks she’ll do well at the center forward position and she has the versatility to play outside.

Clarke believes all three foreign freshmen will be ready to contribute because they have been playing against women back home.

Finding foreign players who can contribute can be tough because there’s an app all the agencies are on that are trying to get their players over to the U.S. It takes time to develop a rapport with an agent and find one that responds in a timely matter, according to Clarke.

“I’ve been trying for a couple years to try and find the right fit with foreign kids,” Clarke said. “We’ve made some effort, probably for the last three years, and had some kids say no. The same agent we’ve been using, she played Division II at Bridgeport (Connecticut) … She was a Swedish kid that played D2 so she’s got a really good idea of the level that we need. So the most important thing is finding an agent that has played at the level and has an idea of what it’s like.”

Clarke is also excited about his American freshmen. Cadence Smith, a 5-foot-6-inch defender out of San Diego, is an athletic, taller player who can run things down in the back. Tristen Fought, a 5-foot-7-inch midfielder from McKinney, Texas, is coming off a knee injury, but turned down Division I schools to go to FLC. Clarke thinks she can be a difference maker once she’s fit and healthy.

The Skyhawks are bringing in two freshmen from the region. Addyson Carpentier, a 5-foot-4-inch defender from Albuquerque, has a toughness Clarke has seen from other Albuquerque players and is a technically sound player.

Defender Adde Neiman graduated from Durango High School in 2024, after playing soccer and basketball for the Demons, and is listed as a freshman on the Skyhawks’ roster. Clarke complimented her on her play in the spring and said she has a very good understanding of the system and how FLC communicates. Clarke said she’s a very good culture piece for the Skyhawks.

The Skyhawks open their season at home against St. Mary’s University on Sept. 4 at 7 p.m.

This article is part of The Durango Herald’s Offseason Acquisitions series. The first part was on the FLC men’s soccer team, followed by the FLC football team. Be on the lookout for a FLC women’s soccer season preview in a few weeks.

bkelly@durangoherald.com

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The Pahrump Valley High School girls soccer program is adding a new pair of helping hands to the organization this fall season.

During the first day of soccer tryouts Saturday morning, athletic trainer Maddie Sandoval exclaimed in excitement the following news: “I just got accepted!”

After volunteer coaching and serving as the athletic trainer for the past four years, Sandoval will now fulfill a more hands-on role as assistant coach to the girls soccer varsity program.

“It’s an amazing feeling seeing these girls develop and grow, and watch them progress in the game that I know that they love, and being a pillar in that,” Sandoval said. “I used to only see them from a standpoint of healing, but now I get to officially help them on the field as well as off the field in their recovery.”

With the experience of playing two years of college soccer in Kansas, Sandoval aims to bolster the junior varsity program to the caliber of the varsity program.

“It’s refreshing to be able to coach now because I have matured a lot mentally and emotionally since then,” Sandoval said. “I’ve seen quite a few of our returners really step up into that leadership position. I really want them to keep being leaders and not dictators.”

Contact Jacob Powers at jpowers@pvtimes.com. Follow @jaypowers__ on X.

BETHANY — Last week, Dr. John Cunningham and his group of coaches finished up this year’s Bethany Soccer Camps on the campus of Bethany College, where Cunningham’s camp got its namesake. Putting young soccer players, from elementary schoolers to high school seniors, through the wringer, it was one more successful outing for a camp that stretches back longer than any of its campers have been alive– longer than many of their parents’ lives, too.

Last week was the conclusion of the 51st Bethany Soccer Camps, an impressive distinction for the camp, which started in 1974, and an impressive accomplishment for Cunningham, now 82 years old. Make no mistake though– he remembers its beginnings like it was yesterday.

“1974, it started with a team from Annandale, Virginia, which got in touch with me through one of my alumni guys, and they wanted to do a pre-training kind of thing before they went on to Toronto, Canada for a major tournament,” Cunningham, who then had been the men’s soccer coach at Bethany since the 1967 season, said. “So we accomplished that, and they wound up winning their tournament, and decided they wanted to come back the next year, but they’d like to do more. So, that’s kind of how it started.

“A guy by the name of David ‘Fuzzy’ Williams, and Paul Denfeld, both from Annandale, were in the first group to do this. So on every shirt that we now give away, we have Fuzzy as both the founder of Bethany soccer and Bethany Soccer Camps, as well as our little logo that we put on there.”

Cunningham and Williams ran the camp annually in the summers, and over the years, they adapted it to different challenges, and opportunities, that presented themselves.

“In 1981 Dr. [Todd] Bullard, the new president of Bethany College, had at that time indicated that he didn’t want to have sport programs under the college name, because he was concerned at that point with sport injuries and things like that,” Cunningham said. “So I was basically forced into not running it from the college, but running it as a small corporation.

“In hindsight, it’s the best thing that ever happened, because over the years, presidents and policies changed at every college, but I have done camps in Toronto; I have done camps in Tampa, Florida; and Orlando. So not only do we have the residential camp at Bethany, we also have an extension where we take the camp and our coaches and go out to various locations.”

Bethany Soccer Camps, which continued its residential camp in Bethany while also organizing ‘day camps’ in local areas like St. Clairsville and Magnolia, as well as farther-reaching areas, has since grown to take in teams from near and far.

“From 1974 to about 1980 it was a lot of the local teams– Brooke High School, Wheeling Park, Central, and so on, and then over a period of time, it’s gone away from that more so to where now we’re servicing more Pittsburgh, Ohio, some in Maryland, some Virginia,” Cunningham said “It’s been all over. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed all 51 years. It’s been a great experience and lots and lots of still wonderful contacts of people that are soccer-related through Bethany Soccer Camps. It’s been rewarding from that standpoint.”

Rewarding for Cunningham, certainly, and, according to former campers like Wheeling University men’s soccer coach Brandon Regan and West Liberty men’s soccer coach Sean Regan, rewarding for the game of soccer in turn.

“He’s been part of my life since, forever, to be honest with you,” Brandon Regan said. “My dad [Jim Regan] worked for him, played for him, so we were always around the Bethany soccer community and Dr. JC was the main man.”

“Those three weeks of camps were the most fun I’d had. My dad was working with him as a coach and he brought us kids along to participate. Have some really good memories from those camps, I remember some really good coaches from those camps, and I became a goalkeeper– JC had a really good friend in Fuzzy Williams who ran the goalkeeper camp for a long time. He was my mentor as a player, and again when I got into coaching. I learned a lot not just about being a goal keeper, but being a professional, now being a college coach, from people in those camps.”

Cunningham won the admiration of many of his former campers and coaches, a number of whom went on to help grow the sport in their own way, like the Regans.

“At this point there are probably, I’d say, no less than 50 to 60 people that are now coaching that have, in fact, gone through the Bethany Soccer Camps as campers or whatever,” Cunningham said. “And we’ve had I think probably close to 15,000 campers to have gone through Bethany over that period of time.”

“JC has been a cornerstone of American soccer for well over 50 years,” Sean Regan wrote via email to The Intelligencer. “A true legend in the soccer camp world. JC has been a mentor for hundreds of Ohio Valley youth soccer players and to this day is an advocate of the ‘beautiful game.’”

The roots that Cunningham put down in 1974 have, in the 51 years since, branched out all across the Ohio Valley.

“We had a youth group that was basically age 8 through probably 10 and 11, 12, and then we had the junior high group separate, and then we had the senior high school boys and the senior high school girls,” Cunningham said, recounting camps from years past. “So we actually ran four weeks of camp back-to-back. Now, as I look back about that, I don’t know how the heck we did it, time-wise and everything else, but they were wonderful experiences.

“We were the forerunners to local soccer, there was very little soccer, particularly in Brooke County, and just starting in Ohio County with Jim Regan, who was one of my players, actually my first Canadian player, who started it there over in St. Clairsville. So many of the icons of the local soccer scene now– Joe Pepe from Brooke, Steve Kopcha from Central– these were all people who were either campers or worked for me or went to Bethany. And so my original goal and Fuzzy’s and the other’s was to provide a place where soccer would be properly developed and have the opportunity to grow. And it has sure done that.”

Cunningham, who has traveled across the United States as well as Europe, did not know of another camp continuously organized by the same people for as long as Bethany Soccer Camps has. His 51-year run may well be the longest.

“An individual running a camp for over 50 years is amazing,” Randy Shah, a former player at Bethany for Cunningham, and a coach at Bethany Soccer Camps for nine years, said. “Especially with a more niche sport like soccer where, soccer has had tremendous growth in the US, but thinking back 50 years ago, how many soccer players were there? This camp has educated kids in the sport, given them an opportunity to play and to build relationships through sports.”

“We have a wonderful group of alumni and former campers that come back every year and work the camp,” Cunningham said.

“It created this really competitive environment that you couldn’t really get anywhere else,” Brandon Regan, who attended Bethany Soccer Camps in the 90’s, said. “You were playing against teams you wouldn’t play usually. It became really a Mecca for high school soccer in the area.”

Playing collegiately at Slippery Rock, beginning the soccer program at Bethany where he coached from 1967 to 2001, winning the soccer national championship in 1994, and Cunningham’s 51-year-old Bethany Soccer Camps have amounted to a life dedicated to soccer. After this year, though, Cunningham may be ready to hand over the reins.

“This is probably the last year that I want to be the lead of all of it,” Cunningham said, noting that there were alumni who expressed interest in taking over organizing the camps.

If Cunningham is indeed riding off into the sunset, he’s left a lasting legacy on the pitch.

“Legendary is absolutely the word to describe him as an individual and as a leader for soccer,” Shah said. “To this day, Bethany is still recognized as maybe the smallest school to ever win a national championship in soccer. I mean at the time, I think we had maybe 600 students and we won the championship in ’94.”

“It’s been a wonderful, wonderful life experience,” Cunningham said. “And being able to add these camps to that experience, it was just a blessing for me and for so many others.”

“Looking back, those 51 years have been super, all from 1974 forward.”

TERRE HAUTE, Ind. – Indiana State women’s soccer was among the teams listed as the United Soccer Coaches Association announced the College Team Academic Award winners. The award recognizes teams for their exemplary performance in the classroom during the 2024-25 academic year.
 
Indiana State posted a team grade-point average of 3.72 over the 2024-25 academic year on their way to being honored on the list. It marks the seventh consecutive season the Sycamores have been on the list and 20th overall in program history.
 
A total of 697 soccer teams (283 men, 414 women) posted a team grade point average of 3.0 or higher, thereby earning the United Soccer Coaches Team Academic Award for the 2024-25 academic year.
 
Of that total, 151 schools had both their men’s and women’s programs recognized.
 
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