New Soccer Team Coming to Brooklyn College

Soccer appears to be catching on all around New York — and it’s coming to Brooklyn in full force.   Brooklyn College will be adding a womens’ soccer team next fall, as will two other schools in the CUNY system.   As the City University of New York Athletic Conference associate director Kim Santoiemma said, “Because of the growth of the sport, schools are adding teams.”

Eager Athletes

After announcing the new team two weeks ago, Brooklyn College has already received 65 applications from eager athletes.   And — the new sport addition comes at the perfect time, as the school’s multi-purpose athletic field is scheduled to be finished in the summer of 2012.

As Bruce Filosa, the school athletic director said,

“We had a field that was in disrepair. We knew we wanted to start a new program but we didn’t want to do it before we had a field.”

Ready for Tryouts

Athletes like Christine Alexis are eager for the new opportunity. Alexis, for instance, from Midwood, played soccer on her high school team but hasn’t had an outlet for her interest at Brooklyn College. Now is her big chance. She’s training for the tryouts and hoping to make the team’s inaugural squad.

As Alexis explained,

“I’m very excited.   It was such a fun experience traveling and meeting different girls. It would mean a lot to go back to that atmosphere.”

Others even considered changing colleges since they wanted to be able to play women’s soccer — now they won’t have to do so.

With the addition of these new soccer teams, the CUNY Athletic Conference will now qualify to send one team to the 64-team National College Athletic Association female soccer tournament for the first time next year.