Dante Estrada | Long Beach Current

As the 2025 Big West women’s soccer regular season heads to a close, teams race to finish at the top of the conference standings ahead of the postseason tournament, starting on Nov. 2. 

With no host school set for either the women’s or men’s soccer tournaments,  Big West schools have the rare opportunity to play to earn a home playoff game, with the No. 3 and No. 4 seeded teams hosting the No. 6 and No. 5 seeds, respectively, in the first round. 

After the top two-ranked Big West teams receive a bye through the first round, the semifinals and finals will take place at the home of whichever team takes the regular-season crown, incentivizing teams to earn home-field advantage in their aim to capture the conference title.

However, this opportunity is not afforded to any other programs in the Big West, as every other sport has a designated site for the postseason tournament, set before the year even begins. 

While this setup may be more convenient for all parties involved, it often robs campus communities of their chance to support and be involved in the biggest games of their favorite team’s season. 

Long Beach State will be the host of the championship tournaments for women’s volleyball, women’s water polo and track and field, but other programs like men’s volleyball, the crown jewel of LBSU athletics, will not get the chance to host a playoff game regardless of how well they play. 

Last season, LBSU’s race against the University of Hawai’i for the No. 1 seed was a must-see showdown between two of the top-ranked teams in the nation, with The Beach narrowly finishing a game ahead to win the regular season crown before losing to the Rainbow Warriors in the conference title game. 

Despite LBSU surging ahead of Hawai’i in the conference standings, the match to decide the winner of the stacked Big West men’s volleyball conference was hosted by the Warriors, as the location was predetermined before the season began. 

While the 2025 men’s volleyball season brought major hype and excitement to campus all season long, LBSU fans deserved an opportunity to cheer on their team in their home of the Walter Pyramid in the postseason. 

Adopting the format that soccer already has in place for other sports in the conference would create exhilarating stakes late in every sport’s regular season and would result in much more engaged student fanbases for the great student athletes who call the Big West home.Â