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Where fans fuel champions.
Simple. Secure. Direct.
Fan Power Rankings: Fans + Fire up + Rally Pit activity + Posts. Fuel athletes and engage to level up!
Stanford fields a Division I soccer program in the ACC, with the Cardinal representing the school across the modern era of college athletics. The program record reflects 3 national championships. The Cardinal are preparing for the soccer season as the schedule progresses. Stanford enters this season with 27 athletes on the roster. The Cardinal play home games on the Stanford campus. The Cardinal open the season on August 16, 2026 at Mustang Memorial Field at Spanos Stadium. The Cardinal are anchored in a long Stanford athletic tradition. When fans fuel a Cardinal athlete on RallyFuel, 90% lands directly with the athlete — funding training, recovery, and the realities of college sports.
Stanford's national championships all arrived in a three-year burst. The Cardinal won the NCAA title in 2015, 2016 and 2017, and consecutive titles are rare enough in men's college soccer to make that run the defining fact about the program. Before it, Stanford twice reached the College Cup final, in 1998 and 2002, and lost both. Its first NCAA tournament appearance came in 1962, though the program's roots run further back, to league titles in the 1910s and 1920s when college soccer was organized through club competition.
The 2017 team holds or shares most of the modern team records: 19 wins, two losses, 16 shutouts and nine goals conceded across the season, with an unbeaten run that stretched 21 matches into the following year. The 2001 side, which also won 19 and lost two, owns the best winning percentage at .886. Those records reach back only to 1977, which matters, because the highest scoring team in program history is the 1978 group, with 90 goals.
That season belonged to Ted Rafalovich, who scored 28 goals and added 23 assists for 79 points, figures that have stood as single season records ever since. He finished his career with 152 points and 62 assists. Willie Guicci scored more goals, 56. The late seventies were a different sport and the leaderboards reflect it, with no one from the championship era approaching those totals.
In goal, Adam Zapala set the standard: 46 career shutouts and a 0.63 goals against average across more than 8,000 minutes from 1997 to 2000, including 15 clean sheets in 1998 alone.
Stanford has sent players to the professional game steadily since MLS launched. Ryan Nelsen, taken fourth overall in 2001, played seven seasons in the Premier League with Blackburn, Tottenham and QPR, captained New Zealand at the 2010 World Cup and later managed Toronto FC. Chad Marshall, the second overall pick in 2004, spent fifteen seasons with Columbus and Seattle. Jordan Morris, who signed with Seattle as a homegrown player rather than entering the draft, became the most capped international the program has produced, with more than 50 appearances for the United States. Tomas Hilliard-Arce went second overall in 2018 and Brandon Vincent fourth in 2016, giving Stanford three top five picks, with Ousseni Bouda taken eighth in 2022.
Home matches are at Cagan Stadium on campus. Conference affiliation has shifted with the broader realignment of college athletics, and the program's seven Pac-12 championships, won between 2001 and 2020, belong to a chapter that has closed.
Four things came out because they expire: the running tournament-appearance count, the tournament streak's end year, the current conference stated as fact, and next season's schedule. Morris's cap total is now phrased as a floor, since that number only moves one direction.
