RUSSELLVILLE, Ark. – On Thursday (Aug. 12), the Great American Conference released its preseason poll for the 2021 men's soccer season. Fort Hays State was picked second by the coaches. All head coaches cast a ballot and cannot vote for their own team. The GAC governs the men's soccer conference that combines schools from both the GAC and MIAA footprints.
Rogers State goes into the season as the unanimous top choice of coaches around the conference, receiving all six first-place votes possible, while Fort Hays State picked up the other first-place vote available.
Rogers State topped the standings in an abbreviated spring competition season in 2020-21 and won the four-team post-season tournament that followed the short six-game conference slate. In 2019, Fort Hays State was the GAC/MIAA regular season champion, topping a 14-game conference standings race, then fell to Rogers State on penalty kicks in the GAC Tournament Championship game that season. With a full slate of games lined up for the teams in the fall of 2021 following the COVID-19 altered season, the teams will play a 12-game conference schedule this year playing each team home and away. The conference lost Oklahoma Baptist, which discontinued its men's soccer program in 2020.
The preseason poll is pretty much a carbon copy of the standings for the abbreviated 2020-21 season. Newman and Ouachita Baptist tied for last in the standings during that shortened slate. Rankings 1-5 in the preseason poll are exactly how the 2020-21 standings lined up.
The Tigers open their season on Thursday, September 2 at Colorado State-Pueblo and return to Hays for their first home game on Sunday, September 5 against MSU Denver. The Tigers will be looking for a fourth conference regular season title in the program's young history, now entering their 11th season after the program began in 2011. Fort Hays State has been established as one of the top programs in NCAA Division II year-in, year-out, holding the nation's longest streak of consecutive years making the NCAA Tournament which is currently at eight in a row.
Below is the GAC/MIAA Men's Soccer Preseason Poll for 2021.
Rank School Total 1st Place Votes
1 Rogers State 36 6
2 Fort Hays State 31 1
3 Northeastern State 24
4 Southern Nazarene 20
5 Harding 17
6 Newman 13
7 Ouachita Baptist 6