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NCAA Division I Men and Women's Soccer Returns to Fox Soccer Channel for Fifth Season

Live, Exclusive NSCAA College Game of the Week Coverage Will Feature the Nation’s Elite Teams and Players

Los Angeles, CA – August 13, 2009 – For the fifth consecutive season, the stars of NCAA Division I soccer will have an opportunity to shine on Fox Soccer Channel.

Under an ongoing agreement with the National Soccer Coaches Association of America (NSCAA), Fox Soccer Channel’s live and exclusive NSCAA College Game of the Week telecasts will include eight women’s and 12 men’s matches. All but one of the women’s matches will be featured on Sunday afternoon, while 11 of the 12 men’s matches will be played on Friday nights.

The 20-game telecast schedule announced today features eight men’s and eight women’s teams ranked in the NSCAA pre-season national rankings. Fox Soccer Channel’s exciting college slate will kick off on Friday, Sept. 4 at 11 p.m. ET when the Memphis men’s side travels to Bradley. A rematch of the 2008 NCAA title game will then be on tap when reigning national champion and pre-season No. 1 Maryland hosts Atlantic Coast Conference rival North Carolina (No. 2 in the NSCAA pre-season rankings) on Friday, Sept. 25 at 8 p.m. ET.

Women’s action commences on Sunday, Sept. 20, at 5 p.m. ET when Boston University will host Harvard to close out a weekend featuring a pair of Beantown derbies. Two days earlier, Boston University’s men’s side will host cross-town rival Boston College at 8 p.m. ET. The women’s schedule is loaded with top-flight teams, as 10 of the 16 College Game of the Week participants advanced to the 2008 NCAA Tournament, including all four semifinalists (eventual champion North Carolina, Notre Dame, Stanford and UCLA). The men’s schedule will feature 11 teams that were selected to last year’s NCAA Tournament.

"Fox Soccer Channel is pleased to once again be the home for the best in NCAA Division I soccer, bringing viewers the pride, passion and rivalries of the collegiate game,” said David Sternberg, executive vice president and general manager of Fox Soccer Channel. "Our live and exclusive NSCAA College Game of the Week package is a key component of Fox Soccer Channel’s year-round coverage of the top international and domestic soccer competitions.”

Some of the brightest stars in the collegiate game will appear this season on Fox Soccer Channel. A total of 27 players – 21 women and six men – scheduled to appear on NSCAA College Game of the Week telecasts recently were named to the 2009 Missouri Athletic Club Hermann Trophy Watch List. Presented annually to the top NCAA Division I male and female players in the country, the two MAC Hermann Trophy winners are selected by a vote of current Division I NSCAA member coaches.

Play-by-play responsibilities will be handled by Dean Linke, radio voice of the United Soccer Leagues’ Carolina RailHawks. He will be joined in the booth for the NSCAA College Game of the Week men’s telecasts by color commentator Keith Tabatznik, who recorded 220 career wins in 22 years as men’s soccer coach at Georgetown University. The primary color analyst for the women’s games will be Kyndra de St. Aubin, a former collegiate soccer player at the University of Minnesota who has covered the Milwaukee professional and collegiate sports scene for ESPN Radio and does television work for ESPN and the Big 10 Network.

“The NSCAA is proud to celebrate five years of working with Fox Soccer Channel to showcase NCAA Division I soccer,” said Randy Waldrum, NSCAA President and Notre Dame women’s coach. “This partnership has helped raise the visibility of the sport in the past four years, and we look forward to offering another exciting schedule featuring some of the nation’s top programs, players and regional rivalries.”

Following is the complete schedule for Fox Soccer Channel’s 2009 NSCAA College Game of the Week telecasts:

Schedule of NCAA Division I Men’s Soccer Coverage on Fox Soccer Channel*
Date Teams Time
Friday, September 4 Bradley vs. Memphis 11:00 p.m. ET
Friday, September 11 UC Santa Barbara (16) vs. Rutgers 11:00 p.m. ET
Sunday, September 13 Louisville (25) vs. Illinois-Chicago (10) 5:00 p.m. ET
Friday, September 18 Boston University (24) vs.
Boston College 8:00 p.m. ET
Friday, September 25 Maryland (1) vs. North Carolina (2) 8:00 p.m. ET
Friday, October 2 UC Santa Barbara (16) vs. Indiana (7) 11:00 p.m. ET
Friday, October 9 West Virginia vs. Connecticut (12) 8:00 p.m. ET
Friday, October 16 Binghamton vs. Boston College 8:00 p.m. ET
Friday, October 23 Evansville vs. Drake 8:00 p.m. ET
Friday, October 30 Bucknell vs. Lafayette 8:00 p.m. ET
Friday, November 6 Santa Clara vs. San Francisco 11:00 p.m. ET
Friday, November 13 Princeton vs. Yale 8:00 p.m. ET

Schedule of NCAA Division I Women’s Soccer Coverage on Fox Soccer Channel*
Date Teams Time
Sunday, September 20 Boston University vs. Harvard 5:00 p.m. ET
Sunday, September 27 North Carolina (1) vs. Wake Forest 5:00 p.m. ET
Sunday, October 4 Northern Colorado vs. Wyoming 5:00 p.m. ET
Sunday, October 11 Texas A&M (7) vs. Loyola-Chicago 5:00 p.m. ET
Sunday, October 25 Notre Dame (3) vs. Georgetown 6:00 p.m. ET
Friday, October 30 UCLA (5) vs. Southern California (8) 10:00 p.m. ET
Sunday, November 1 Santa Clara (22) vs. Portland (4) 5:00 p.m. ET
Sunday, November 8 Stanford (2) vs. California 5:00 p.m. ET**
* Schedule subject to change; home teams are listed first; numbers in parentheses denote NSCAA pre-season Division I top 25 ranking.
** Match will be televised on a one-hour delay
 
About Fox Soccer Channel
Fox Soccer Channel offers the most comprehensive coverage of world-class soccer available in the United States, including England’s Barclays Premier League, Italy’s Serie A, Major League Soccer, Women’s Professional Soccer, the Argentine First Division and the Australian Hyundai A-League, as well as such global tournaments as the English FA Cup, FIFA Club World Cup, CONCACAF Champions League™ and 2010 FIFA World Cup™ qualifiers. Fox Soccer Channel serves as the primary U.S. television destination for the UEFA Champions League, with additional coverage on a number of other Fox-affiliated networks. The Official Broadcast Partner of the United States Youth Soccer Association, Fox Soccer Channel also televises the United Soccer Leagues and NCAA Division I college men’s and women’s soccer. The Nielsen-rated channel reaches more than 34 million cable and satellite households nationwide.

Fox Soccer Channel is one of 28 national and regional programming networks within Fox Networks Group, an operating unit of the News Corporation (NYSE:NWS). These broadcast, cable, satellite and telephony delivered networks reach more than half a billion U.S. television homes, and represent one of the media industry's most diverse collections of programming operations. Fox Networks Group consists of FOX Sports, Fox Broadcasting Company, Fox Cable Networks and Fox Networks Engineering & Operations. For more information, visit America’s most visited online soccer destination at foxsoccer.com.

About NSCAA
Based in Kansas City, Kansas, the NSCAA is the largest coaches' organization in the United States. Since its founding in 1941, it has grown to include more than 27,000 members who coach both genders at all levels of the sport. In addition to a national rankings program for colleges and high schools, NSCAA offers an extensive recognition program that presents nearly 10,000 individual awards every year. It fulfills its mission of coaching education through a nationwide program of clinics and week-long courses, teaching more than 7,000 soccer coaches each year.


Contact:
Chelsea Hettrick
mPRm Public Relations
323-933-3399 x4261
chettrick@mPRm.com

Ben Alkaly
Fox Soccer Channel
310 444 8642
ben.alkaly@fox.com
 

Craig Bohnert
NSCAA
800 458 0678
cbohnert@nscaa.com

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