Posted: May 23, 2018
SANTA CLARA, Calif. – Santa Clara men's soccer released its 2018 schedule featuring six home matches and face five teams that qualified for the 2017 NCAA tournament. Head coach Cam Rast made the announcement.
"We're excited about our schedule. We want to play against teams that will test us and give a good sense of where we are so that we can continue to be a team that improves and get better," said Rast.
Among the 17 regular season matches, six will be played at home and 11 on the road including in four states - Virginia, Missouri, Georgia and Ohio. The Broncos will play four of the 2017 NCAA tournament teams on the road and one at home.
"We're playing in several different states and we're looking forward to that. Anytime you get a chance to travel and a lot of it is before the classes start, so it should allow us to focus on the matches and get good results," said Rast.
Santa Clara plays a pair of exhibition matches at home against Sacramento State on Aug. 15 and San José State on Aug. 19, before opening the 2018 regular season hosting San Diego State on Aug. 24, followed by UAB on Aug. 26.
The Broncos then play seven of the next eight matches on the road starting with two matches in Virginia against NCAA tournament qualifiers Old Dominion (Aug. 31) and VCU (Sept. 2). A week later, the Broncos travel to Missouri State (Sept. 10) before returning to California play a trio of in-state schools at UC Davis (Sept. 15), at Cal Poly (Sept. 18) and its lone home match in September against NCAA tournament qualifier Cal (Sept. 22).
Santa Clara closes out its non-conference schedule on the road against Georgia State (Sept. 29) and Xavier (Oct. 2).
"Old Dominion and VCU both had really good years. You look at UC Davis, they had a solid year even though they didn't make the tournament but they were in the conference tournament. Cal's always going to be a good match for us and it's a local rivalry," said Rast.
The West Coast Conference schedule consists of a seven match single round-robin format for all eight WCC teams. The points system will be used to determine conference standings where each team will receive three points for a win and one point for a tie. Last season, the top two teams, conference champion San Francisco and runner-up Pacific, went to the NCAA tournament.
The Broncos will host three conference matches at Stevens Stadium against LMU (Oct. 7), Gonzaga (Oct. 26) and Portland (Oct. 28).
Four conference road matches await the Broncos including playing the two schools that qualified for the NCAA tournament last season in Pacific (Oct. 13) and San Francisco (Nov. 4). They will also travel to Saint Mary's (Oct. 21) and San Diego (Nov. 9).
"We've spread our conference schedule a little bit more and tried to allow for more rest as we get late in the season. Hopefully, that will allow for better performance," said the Broncos head coach.
Tickets for the 2018 season will go on sale starting Tuesday, May 29th at 10 a.m. PT. Contact the ticket office by calling (408) 554-4660 or email BroncoTickets@scu.edu