Youth soccer club

[lawpoke87]

Looking forward to the soccer updates for the Tufts Fighting Elephants and especially Z. Yeah…I looked up the mascot .

 

[TulsaRulzOSUdrools]

Not really a youth soccer post, but my son made one of the Tufts club soccer teams (they have 2). They compete intercollegiately and each of the two has made the national tournament within the last 5 years. Out of the 70 or so new students that tried out, they took 12 and my son is one of the 4 GKs between the two teams. His team is designated the A team but he says that's just a differentiator between the 2. Greek life is not a big thing at Tufts so this is a good thing for him to get connected (I don't think he'd even consider Greek life but who knows) and he seems to already have bonded with many team players as they had a club BBQ at one of the upperclassman's apartment yesterday.

Glad he gets to continue playing. And he always likes going into situations like this knowing no one knows him or his game and he will be evaluated solely on his playing ability. I'll share a schedule when we know and anyone in the New England area should stop by and watch.

Good stuff. I wish they had club soccer when I was at TU. I think it would have been a ton of fun. I know the team even won the national title at one point.

 

[TU_BLA]

Looking forward to the soccer updates for the Tufts Fighting Elephants and especially Z. Yeah…I looked up the mascot .

Fighting Jumbos to be accurate. Story is PT Barnum preserved his famed elephant Jumbo through taxidermy and donated her to Tufts. Stuffed elephant was a fixture in the library until a devastating fire destroyed all but the tail, which was saved by a professor who went into the fire to try and "rescue" Jumbo but only the tail remained. I believe the tail is still on campus. In honor of Jumno, Tufts had a bronze sculpture of her made and it stands outside the library (it's pretty damn cool actually) and that's how Tufts became the Jumbos as the nickname/mascot.

I always love cool stories about how schools got mascots/nicknames like this one and Tulsa's

 

[TU_BLA]

My son played his first club game at Tufts today. A 4-0 win bs Connecticut College. My son said the other team got a red card in the first 5 minutes.

 

[lawpoke87]

My son played his first club game at Tufts today. A 4-0 win bs Connecticut College. My son said the other team got a red card in the first 5 minutes.

Jumbos 🎉🎉🎉🎉👏👏👏👏

 

[TU_BLA]

Game 2 was Sunday out in Springfield, MA. Springfield is way out west (about 2 hrs west of Boston) and south almost on the Connecticut border. It's closer to Hartford than it is to Boston. It's also out towards the Berkshires so little mountains. They played Springfield College and won 6-0. They ate at a Jamaican restaurant in Springfield after the game and apparently the guy was ecstatic to have them. Took pictures with them and posted stuff on IG with them. Apparently the group has stopped in at this restaurant before.

I knew the 2 club teams at Tufts were pretty good just looking at past records and it's not like they're only playing little tiny liberal arts colleges. My son's squad plays against a Harvard team later on in the season. The other club team seems to have drawn a division where they play Boston University, Northeastern, UMASS Lowell, all D1 schools with much higher UG enrollment than Tufts (Tufts has about 6500 UGs, and about 6000 grad students between it's law and policy grad schools, business school, and dental school (the dental school is apparently very highly rated among the best in the country). Anyway, they'll be part of a regional later on with a chance to advance to a collegiate cup championship tournament in Round Rock TX in November. Last year their region was represented by Northeastern (apparently they have a really good club program at Northeastern as 1 men's team and 2 women's teams made it to the top flight and open tournaments. Babson represented the region in the men's open bracket. (Don't ask me how they determine cup and open). My son has been told the games that will really be tight and competitive will be against Babson, Harvard, WPI, and the other Tufts' team.

You can follow their exploits on IG. My son's team is @tuftsuniversityfootballclub and the other team is @tuftsclubsoccer_brown