Chicago State University is transferring towards establishing a Division I soccer program, forming a college committee to evaluate the potential of making a workforce.
The faculty on Thursday introduced the committee members at a information convention Thursday. They embody former NFL gamers Howard Griffith, Vaughn Bryant, Tom Thayer and Otis Wilson, together with a number of Chicago highschool soccer coaches, group leaders and faculty officers.
The committee ought to present a suggestion on the speculative soccer program’s future this spring, CSU athletic director Monique Carroll mentioned.
“If that is favorable, we could be looking at Chicago’s only Division I program, right here on the South Side,” Carroll mentioned. “We will potentially start football as early as fall 2025.”
The college already has carried out a feasibility examine on the prospect of the soccer program, and the exploratory committee is now the “next step,” Carroll mentioned. The committee additionally will think about including new girls’s sports activities groups.
Various questions in regards to the attainable soccer program have but to be answered. It is unclear how the workforce could be paid for or the place it could play video games. But as soccer helmets with inexperienced Cougar decals sat earlier than faculty officers, a marching band opened the information convention with brassy tunes and a muscled mascot danced, faculty leaders had been clearly optimistic this system would develop into a actuality.
“I think that the important work of the committee is to look and see what’s the road map, what are the steps that need to happen,” Carroll mentioned. “Is it fall ‘24, ‘25, ‘26? To really come up with actionable items and timetables.”
She additionally acknowledged the committee may decide that this system shouldn’t go ahead.
The public college within the Far South Side’s Roseland neighborhood is Illinois’ solely four-year college federally designated as predominantly Black. The faculty has at instances struggled with excessive–profile lawsuits and low enrollment within the final decade, together with enrolling simply 86 freshmen in fall 2016. But freshmen and sophomore enrollment has grown sharply over the past 12 months, Chicago State President Zaldwaynaka “Z” Scott mentioned.
Overall enrollment decreased 2.1% in 2022, with 2,296 college students enrolled within the fall, based on a college information launch.
The attainable soccer program “is one part of our ongoing focus to improve the quality of student life, to make Chicago State University a more attractive destination for new students and to contribute to the ongoing economic development of our community,” Scott mentioned.
The college operates seven males’s and eight girls’s Division I sports activities applications. The Cougars left the Western Athletic Conference in June, although Carroll mentioned she expects the college will be a part of a brand new convention within the subsequent 12 months, a choice that probably will likely be affected by the prospect of a soccer program.
The college’s baseball workforce was reduce two years in the past, a transfer Carroll pinned on financial uncertainty in the course of the pandemic. But the college since has added a males’s soccer workforce, she added. Carroll mentioned she is assured the college would be capable of set up the workforce financially, including that school soccer groups usually generate income.
When Scott was requested whether or not the potential soccer workforce may play video games at Soldier Field amid the Chicago Bears’ growing plans to go away the stadium for a brand new one in Arlington Heights, Scott answered with fun, “If it’s available.”
The workforce would compete within the Football Championship Subdivision, the second degree of NCAA Division I soccer, a college spokesperson mentioned.
“I hope that, at the end of this committee, we find that we’re able to move forward with this football program,” mentioned Griffith, a South Side native and two-time Super Bowl champion. “It can bring so many other people into your program. It could have such an important impact for our community.”
Griffith mentioned the committee’s suggestion finally will likely be handed to school leaders who will make a closing choice. The committee must take its time to kind a considerate suggestion, he added.
The new workforce could possibly be an funding within the South Side and its younger folks, Griffith mentioned.
“It’s not necessarily about are people playing in the NBA, the NFL or going on and playing any professional sports but the opportunity to have an education,” he mentioned.
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Source: www.bostonherald.com