Sasho Cirovski Calls for NCAA Reform

Sasho Cirovski thinks college soccer needs a makeover.

Speaking at a press conference Monday, the coach of the No. 1-ranked Maryland men’s soccer team — who, in his 24 seasons with the program, has led the Terrapins to 22 NCAA tournament appearances and two national championships — detailed his concerns with the compressed nature of the college soccer season and the limited scholarship resources available to his sport. He also spoke candidly about issues of concussions, youth development and the importance of fostering a nurturing environment for his players.

Cirovski said that in addition to winning national championships and getting the Terps a new soccer stadium, one of his greatest ambitions as a leading Division I coach is to help change the season schedule for college soccer, which he called “archaic.”

For nearly 60 years, Cirovski said, college soccer has centered around a highly-condensed competitive fall season, in which teams play upwards of 20 regular-season games over a period of about 12 weeks, in hopes of getting into a position to vye for conference and national championships. “And then we have an equally long season in the spring, but play only about five games that don’t count,” Cirovski said.

The contrast between such a high-pressure fall season and a “practice” spring season tailored exclusively to training and development, Cirovski said, not only creates scheduling imbalance for student athletes — “you miss about 10 days of school in the fall, [whereas] you miss zero in the spring,” he said — but also means recovery time between games is at a minimum in the fall, which heightens the risk of injury.

Reducing the number of midweek games, Cirovski said, would go a long way toward giving student athletes “proper rest and recovery” — something which he believes the NCAA has done very little to address.

In addition, Cirovski said, a busy fall season always risks teams’ biggest games being affected by inclement weather, while the already-packed nature of the fall sports lineup lessens opportunities for television coverage of college soccer.

As an alternative, Cirovski — who currently serves as the National Soccer Coaches Association of America’s Division I men’s committee chair — said he and a number of his coaching peers are proposing a merge of the two seasons into one longer season, stretched over fall and spring semesters.

“What we recommend is to take the two seasons and make them both part of one season,” Cirovski said. He pointed to other college sports whose regular seasons last through more than one semester, such as golf, track and field, basketball and ice hockey.

Cirovski said that he and some of his colleagues have been working on a proposal to this effect to submit to the NCAA Division I council, which could be voted on as early as next January.

“I think the number one objection [to the proposal] is that people don’t like change,” Cirovski said. “[But] if it’s the right thing to do, what’s wrong with that?

“I can’t imagine this will not pass at some point in time,” he added.

Another NCAA rule that Cirovski wants changed is the allocation of scholarship money in college soccer, particularly in the men’s game. “Men’s soccer has 9.9 scholarships [including partial scholarships] for 26 players, on average” he said. That, he added, is the “lowest percentage of scholarships per starting lineup or per roster size of any Division I sport in the country.” Yet soccer also has one of the highest participation rates among male athletes in the United States, he said.

“So you tell me where the fairness is,” Cirovski said.

In addition to advocating schedule changes as a means to reduce injuries, Cirovski spoke of a need for more nuanced in-game and in-season protocol in college athletics when it comes to treating injuries and handling players’ recoveries.

“One of the things that I think coaches need to do is make sure players know when, where and how to take proper risks in the game of soccer,” he said. “And not be [so] careless and reckless in what you do to hurt yourself or hurt somebody else.”

He spoke particularly about the dangers of concussions. “I don’t think you’re ever going to get rid of the full risk of concussions,” Cirovski said. But he stressed the importance of allowing proper recovery time after such injuries, and praised efforts — such as those of former Maryland and U.S. national team forward Taylor Twellman — to raise awareness for concussion safety amongst players and coaches.

Cirovski also addressed the nature of youth development in the country, and highlighted what he sees as a paradox of elite-level youth systems such as the MLS academies. While he praised these systems for producing more technically and tactically versed athletes, Cirovski — who was born in Macedonia and raised in Canada — said he believes such standardization of training has, to some extent, detracted from the competitive edge and individual creativity in top American players.

“The game has improved [in this country] almost exponentially,” Cirovski said. “But the one area where we haven’t improved that much is the quality of the greatest players, the special players.”

Because we live in such a team-oriented society, he said, “sometimes the individual has lost the time, or the love, to develop their own set of skills.”

Still, he conceded, the benefits of a team-oriented mindset are not to be discounted. At Maryland, he said, “it’s very, very important that my staff and everyone around me shows a total nurturing, caring environment. But we also push them very, very hard.”

 

Mia O’Neill is in the graduate program at the Philip Merrill College of Journalism.