June 5, 2009
SAN DIEGO -
Complete Schedule in PDF Format
San Diego State men's soccer head coach Lev Kirshner has announced its schedule for the 2009 season. The 18-match slate includes four former national champions and seven games against 2008 NCAA tournament teams.
Two of the squads the Aztecs will meet earned national seeds in last year's tourney (No. 4 Michigan State and No. 15 UC Santa Barbara) and three were conference champions.
"This fall will, inarguably, be the best schedule San Diego State men's soccer has ever played," Kirshner said. "It is a national schedule that, coupled with our Pac-10 league ties, allows us to compete against the best players and programs this country has to offer."
Following a two-match exhibition schedule that includes a friendly against UC San Diego and 2008 NCAA tourney team Cal Poly, SDSU kicks off its regular season Tuesday, Sept. 1 when it plays host to Loyola Marymount University.
The Aztecs will then host a busy couple of days (Sept. 7-8) with the program's Alumni, Family and Friends Weekend. The weekend will begin with the annual Alumni Match on Saturday at 1 p.m. and will end with SDSU meeting San Diego at 1 p.m. Sunday.
The match, the first meeting between the two schools since 2005 when San Diego State came away as 1-0 victors, will be a part of a fundraiser event that the Aztecs are hosting with Grassroot Soccer to accrue monies for AIDS/HIV education in Africa.
The following weekend, San Diego State will host the second annual The Courtyard Marriott, San Diego Central Soccer Tournament where it will meet Ivy League's University of Pennsylvania (Sept. 11) and Wisconsin (Sept. 13). The Quakers went 11-3-4 last year en route to sharing the Ivy League title, while the Big Ten's Badgers finished No. 38 in the final RPI to become one of the first squads left out of the NCAA tournament. Wisconsin won the NCAA championship in 1995.
Following a match against Wisconsin-Green Bay on Sept. 18, SDSU plays host to Nike's Aztec Soccer Classic against perennial national power UC Santa Barbara (Sept. 25) and Princeton (Sept. 27). The Gauchos, who won a national title in 2006, will be making their first trip to the SDSU Sports Deck since 2004. The Aztecs and Tigers will be meeting for the first time.
San Diego State begins its fifth season of Pac-10 play on Oct. 2 with a game at Washington. SDSU will play each team in the conference (Oregon State, California, Stanford, UCLA and the Huskies) twice in a home-and-home series. Last season, the four-time NCAA champion Bruins went 7-1-2 in league play to capture the Pac-10 title.
The Aztecs wrap up their non-conference slate on Nov. 1 with a stern test against Michigan State in East Lansing, Mich. Last season, the Spartans earned the No. 4 overall seed after winning the Big Ten championship and going 13-5-2. Michigan State is two-time co-national champions (1967-68).
SDSU's final regular season home game will be on Nov. 8 at noon against Oregon State, where there will be a special pregame ceremony honoring the Aztec seniors.