NAIA stands for National Association of
Intercollegiate Athletics. It is an association that organizes sports events
for colleges and universities. It has an open policy for colleges and
universities outside of the US. At one point it had four Canadian colleges and
a college in the Bahamas associated with it and up until 2009 it was the only
international association of its kind. It now has over 290 member institutions.
Its headquarters are in Kansas, Missouri. One of the most interesting
programs is the NAIA soccer program.
Soccer
is not a very popular sport in the US, well not as popular as it is in the rest
of the world, so any support that it can get is welcome. And NAIA has been
supporting men’s soccer since 1959 and women’s soccer since 1984. NAIA soccer
is a great program for the young athlete that is a lover of this sport, but
being in America, he or she has a hard time playing it. In 1937 a group of
local leader and Dr. James Naismith organized a National College Basketball
Tournament in which several small colleges participated. Pretty soon it
expanded to including football tournaments and now there are over 16 sports
being supported by NAIA.
The
NAIA soccer program can be viewed on their official website. There you can get
weekly reports, see what schools are participating, get some statistics,
regular season records, the championship history, an archive of the headlines
and an archive of the seasons. You can also see which NAIA players have become
Pros. There also news regarding the championship. And you can also check the
women’s soccer page. There are also links to NAIA merchandise, and other sports
events like baseball, golf, tennis, basketball and some emerging sports like
bowling, competitive cheer and dance and men’s volleyball. All in all NAIA is a
great program for student athletes.
No comments:
Post a Comment