Barber-Scotia School, an HBCU positioned in Harmony, North Carolina, has formally introduced its inaugural soccer schedule for the 2025 season. This marks the primary time within the establishment’s storied historical past that it’ll discipline a soccer workforce, ushering in what the varsity has proudly referred to as the “Period of SABER Soccer.”
The Sabers will play eight video games of their debut season as members of the New South Athletic Convention (NSAC). The schedule kicks off on September 6 with a house matchup in opposition to Central Worldwide School. Different highlights embrace Virginia College Lynchburg (Sept. 13), Clayton State (Oct. 11), Apprentice College (Oct. 25), and Gordon State School (Nov. 8). The season will conclude with the NSAC Championship Sport on November 15 in Atlanta. Residence recreation places and ticket info can be introduced quickly.
The announcement, delivered with the taglines #BSCRising and #SaberPrideMagnified, was framed as greater than the beginning of a soccer workforce. “That is resilience, pleasure, and the rebirth of a convention that may perpetually change the panorama of our beloved establishment,” the varsity said.
HBCU redemption story loading?
This isn’t Barber-Scotia’s first brush with soccer. In 2003, the school employed present VUL head coach Tim Newman as its first soccer coach in 137 years. Newman, a former semipro coach, was tasked with constructing this system from the bottom up. Plans referred to as for the workforce to start a 10-game membership schedule in 2004. Nonetheless, Barber-Scotia, then within the NAIA, misplaced its accreditation that summer time amid monetary and administrative turmoil. With out accreditation, college students had been ineligible for federal monetary assist, and the soccer program collapsed earlier than it might play a recreation.
Based in 1867 as Scotia Seminary, Barber-Scotia has performed a pioneering function in HBCU historical past, significantly as the primary establishment created to coach newly freed Black girls after the Civil Struggle. Through the years, it developed right into a coeducational liberal arts faculty, however monetary struggles within the 2000s pressured it to reimagine its future.
Becoming a member of the NSAC in 2024 and now launching soccer, Barber-Scotia is signaling a brand new period of stability and ambition. The addition of soccer is anticipated to energise campus life, entice new college students, and restore the varsity’s presence within the Harmony group.
For Barber-Scotia, the long-awaited kickoff in 2025 represents not only a new program, however the realization of a dream deferred for greater than twenty years.
