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Mission
Contact: Nicholas Cicero, Email group officers
Mission
Previously, Cornell men’s club soccer had three soccer teams for which students could try out for: Cornell Mundial FC, CUFC (Arsenal), and Cornell United. Each team carried about thirty students on their roster for eleven starting positions each game. Hundreds of students made their way to the fields behind Appel with the goal of being given one of a handful of spots that each soccer club had available. Appel fields were so packed with hopeful club members that only those players that excelled in small spaces could make a name for themselves during tryouts. These select few players with high individual skill succeeded in joining one of the three club teams available. Those players that did not excel on a soccer field packed with hundreds of players were left without a team to further pursue the sport that they may have been playing for their entire lives. We do not believe that the logistics of this process or the evaluation criteria were optimal.
Prior to the creation of Cornell Academy FC, Cornell men’s club soccer has only two soccer teams: Cornell Mundial FC and Cornell Santos. At a university that consists of over 14,300+ undergraduate students, sixty club soccer spots is not nearly enough for Cornell University to provide to their soccer community. With only two teams this fall instead of the three teams that Cornell had last fall, more hopeful students will be left off of a club soccer team because, with only 11 starting positions per team, there are only so many players that a club team can hold on their roster.
The following is the ratio of undergraduate student population to club soccer teams at our Ivy peers in ascending order: Princeton- 2650 undergraduate students to one club soccer team, Harvard- 3600 undergraduate students to one club soccer team, Dartmouth- 4200 undergraduate students to one club soccer team, Yale- 5400 undergraduate students to one club soccer team, UPenn- 10300 undergraduate students to one club soccer team. Columbia and Brown do not participate in club soccer. The average of our ivy peers that do participate in club soccer is 5230 undergraduate students per club soccer team.
Cornell is significantly above the average (at about 7150) and is above every ivy except for UPenn. We believe that as Cornell continues to approach the ratio at UPenn, there will be fewer opportunities for readily interested soccer players from participating actively. We aim to create the greatest amount of opportunities for these players. Furthermore, we believe that exclusivity should not be a primary determining factor of success of Cornell Sports Clubs, as it is not in Cornell’s approach to academics.
The reason for the merger of Cornell United and CUFC (Arsenal) into one soccer team would initially appear to make sense: one team will have more talent than two separate teams and this greater level of talent will therefore win more games. However, this logic is flawed in that talent alone does not win games: hard work and team work does. Cornell Academy FC will not only replace the void left by the lack of a third team at Cornell this fall, but also this club’s purpose is to both provide a club soccer team to those athletes overlooked by the traditional club soccer tryout system and to fundamentally change the relationship between Cornell club soccer and the non-club soccer community at Cornell. The athletes that that Cornell club soccer community does not currently provide for are those that may lack the individual, flashy skill that would differentiate them in a tryout of hundreds of players but that have the qualities most important to forming a successful team: selflessness, passion, work ethic, and soccer IQ. Additionally, under the current club soccer regime at Cornell, there is tremendous separation and exclusivity between club soccer teams and the non-club soccer community at Cornell. It is Cornell Academy FC’s purpose to further unite these two separate communities by allowing students to tryout for our team at any point during the academic year by attending practices. These practices will allow for non-club members to feel included and given a fair chance to join the very exclusive club soccer system at Cornell. This will also allow for more opportunities for non-club members to train and potentially qualify for our team. Even with our approval, Cornell club soccer will still have countless students who wish to play soccer but did not make a club soccer team. By reaching out to the non-club Cornell community, Cornell Academy FC will help solve this problem.
Membership Benefits
Lifetime membership
