East Lansing, Mich. —\u00a0\u00a0Michigan State debuts at No. 12 in the United Soccer Coaches pre-season national poll, released on Thursday, July 31.\u00a0 It is the highest pre-season ranking for the Spartans in program history.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
MSU, which advanced to the Round of 16 in the NCAA Division I Championship in each of the last two seasons, completed the 2024 campaign with a 14-3-5 overall record, and were ranked No. 14 in the final poll of the season. \u00a0<\/p>\n
MSU is one of eight Big Ten programs that appear in the preseason top 25, and the Spartans will take on six of the other seven during the course of the upcoming season. \u00a0MSU will also test itself with a game against preseason No. 2 Notre Dame at home on Sept. 4, and will tangle with No. 9 TCU in its exhibition game at DeMartin Stadium next Saturday (Aug. 9). \u00a0<\/p>\n
The 2025 edition of the Spartans began pre-season camp on Tuesday, welcoming nine freshmen and two junior transfers to its roster of 19 returning players. \u00a0Michigan State returns its leading goal scorer from a year ago in junior Bella Najera<\/a><\/a> and will be bolstered by the return of both graduate student Regan Dalton<\/a><\/a> and senior Emerson Sargeant<\/a><\/a>, who each missed most of last season with injury. \u00a0Defensive stalwarts and seniors Sofia Beerworth<\/a><\/a> and Maggie Illig<\/a>,<\/a> and sophomore standout Julia Belli<\/a>,<\/a> all started at least 20 games a year ago and will help anchor the defense. \u00a0 Both Illig and Najera earned All-Big Ten honors a year ago, with Illig also earning All-Region honors. \u00a0<\/p>\n 2025 United Soccer Coaches Division I Pre-season Poll\u00a0 Also receiving votes: Saint Louis \u00a0(17), \u00a0Georgia (16), BYU (12), Auburn University (9), \u00a0Memphis (9), Georgetown (9), \u00a0California (8), Clemson (6), Pepperdine (5), \u00a0Kentucky (2)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"East Lansing, Mich. —\u00a0\u00a0Michigan State debuts at No. 12 in the United Soccer Coaches pre-season national poll, released…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":38181,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[440],"tags":[49,48,561,82],"class_list":["post-38180","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-soccer","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-soccer","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38180","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38180"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38180\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/38181"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38180"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38180"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38180"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0School, Points \u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0 2024 W-L-T \u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0
\n1\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0North Carolina, 200\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a022-5-0
\n2\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0Notre Dame, 190\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a014-4-4
\n3\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0Florida State, 177\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a015-2-4
\n4\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0Duke, 172\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a018-3-1
\n5\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0USC, 158\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a018-1-4
\n6\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0Arkansas, 154\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a016-2-3
\n7\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0Stanford, 141\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a016-5-2
\n8\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0UCLA, 126\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a017-4-3
\n9\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0TCU, 123\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a017-4-2
\n10\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0Wake Forest , 114\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a016-4-4
\n11\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0Penn State , 112\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a015-7-3
\n12\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0Michigan State, 107\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a014-3-5
\n13\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0Iowa, 91\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a015-3-4
\n14\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0Virginia Tech, 87\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a014-6-3
\n15\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0Virginia, 76\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a013-5-1
\n16\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0Santa Clara, 70\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a013-4-4
\n17\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0Vanderbilt, 67\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a010-4-7
\n18\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0Ohio State, 61\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a014-6-3
\n19\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0Texas, 59\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a017-4-2
\n20\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0Mississippi State, 47\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a019-3-0
\n21\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0South Carolina, 45\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a011-4-7
\n22\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0Oklahoma State, 43\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a014-5-3
\n23\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0Wisconsin, 37\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a010-6-5
\n24\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0Minnesota, 26\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a014-5-3
\n25\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0Texas Tech , 24\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a015-5-2<\/p>\n