School URL
University of Memphis
NCAA DI • AAC
Date: September 24, 2026
Would Recommend
Tags
My experience with this NCAA women’s soccer program has been extremely troubling. What should be an environment where young women are challenged, developed, supported, and encouraged to love the game can instead feel like an environment built around fear, excessive pressure, and humiliation. The treatment of players can be cruel. The standards are relentlessly demanding, but the greater concern is how those standards are enforced. Fitness testing has become such a dominant part of the program that it can feel less like athletic preparation and more like a mechanism for controlling players. The fitness requirements can be unreasonable, and failing a test can have immediate consequences for a player’s opportunity to see the field. When playing time is effectively tied to passing these fitness tests, players can feel that their soccer ability, tactical understanding, work ethic, and contributions to the team are secondary to meeting a physical benchmark. That creates enormous pressure and can leave athletes feeling that one failed test can determine their value within the program. The way players are spoken to is perhaps even more concerning. Team meetings should be places where athletes receive honest feedback and learn how to improve. Instead, players can feel personally singled out and attacked by the coaching staff. Being criticized for performance is one thing; being made to feel personally diminished by multiple coaches is something entirely different. There is a difference between demanding accountability and tearing down a young athlete. The cumulative effect of this environment can be devastating. Players who once loved soccer can begin to dread training, meetings, fitness testing, and even games. The passion that brought them to college to play the sport can gradually disappear. When athletes become afraid of making mistakes or failing a physical test, development and enjoyment suffer. College athletes already face enormous academic, physical, and emotional demands. They should not have to wonder whether their coaching environment is going to undermine their confidence or make them question their worth as athletes. There is nothing wrong with demanding excellence. There is nothing wrong with conditioning athletes or holding them accountable. But excellence does not require humiliation, intimidation, or unreasonable standards. A coach can be demanding without being demeaning. A fitness program can be rigorous without becoming punitive. And accountability can be enforced without attacking players personally. This program needs to take a serious look at the culture being created by its coaching staff. The question should not simply be whether players are winning games or passing fitness tests. The question should also be what is happening to the young women inside the program—and whether the methods being used are developing confident athletes or simply teaching them to endure an environment they have come to fear. Players deserve to be challenged. They deserve accountability. They deserve high standards. They also deserve respect. No collegiate athlete should have to sacrifice their love of soccer, their confidence, or their sense of dignity in order to earn the opportunity to play.
