It's not uncommon that swedish girls go to college in USA and play soccer there, but this fall there are two rather high profiled players going over: Yolanda Odenyo, presently with AIK in the swedish premier, has played with every youth national team from U17 and up. She has left Sweden recently, but I haven't found out where she is going. Help, anyone? Hanna Olsson, presently with Hammarby in the swedish premier, has several U21 caps. A google search tells me she is going to Northeastern Huskies. Where is that and are they any good?
Dandal If these girls have signed professional contracts and received payment to play, (I.e. Hammarby ), I am pretty sure they will be prohibited from playing NCAA Division 1 college ball. I am not sure about Division 2 and non NCAA programs like NAIA ( mostly smaller colleges that do choose not to join the NCAA ) can set their own rules on who may play. It is true that many foreign men who played briefly as a pro in their home country have gotten an education in the USA while playing soccer in an NAIA institution. Quite often these players are a few years older and probably would run afoul of NCAA age limits even if they could prove they never accepted payment to play. Now if the women played in the pro league but declined payment, I think Division 1 remains open to them. There are two Northeastern colleges - one in Boston, Massachusetts one in Oklahoma. The one is Boston is in the Colonial League. The Colonial League is not a soccer powerhouse and its been awhile since one of its member was nationally ranked, I believe. The Oklahoma team is Division 2. Is this any help?
Hanna is headed to Northeastern in Boston, MA according to their list of 2005 recruits. Seems their recruiting class was ranked high. A little additional info on Colonial. Northeastern is joining the Colonial this season for the first year after playing in the America East. The Colonial is a strong conference as teams such as James Madison and William & Mary have been ranked nationally in recent years. George Mason has a long tradition of soccer greatness although no national rankings lately. Recently, VCU and Hofstra are the better teams and both have flirted with national rankings. The Colonial just released its preseason predictions and VCU and Hofstra and were picked 1-2. Northeastern was picked 8th of 12 teams but they were ranked in their region last year and I believe are ranked in the region again this year. Don't know anything about Odenyo but would love to hear if she is headed to US for soccer.
Thank you very much fot your help, Upper90, Inc. and MountainDew. So if I got this right, the strict amateur rules only applies to NCAA Division 1, while it is possible for swedish players that have so to speak been tainted by playing in Damallsvenskan (neither Olsson, who has just graduated from highschool, nor Odenyo can be called professionals in any meaningfull sense of the word) to play for other colleges. I was trying to find out if this was a mostly soccer or mostly academic decision for the girls. Occasionally we have college teams visiting here during the summer and they are usually several steps below Damallsvenskan in quality. So my (not very well founded) impression has been that unless you find a really good college (the kind that produce U19 and U21 players for USA and Canada) this isn't a good step soccer-wise. But there are other things in life to consider. I think I remember Yolanda Odenyo being in touch with University of North Carolina last year, but I think the professionalism issue made that impossible. I still have no idea where she's heading now, I've only got her club's (AIK) statement that she's going to college in USA.
Odenyo I believe had a sister (Sasja) who played soccer at Florida International University(Miami). Sadly though she was killed in a car crash following her senior year. Perhaps she is going to FIU?
So, Yolanda Odenyo ended up at Oklahoma State (which has also a large German contingent with Feldbacher, Loiatl, Grossmann and Radtke). This article indicates that she's doing fine there: http://www.okstate.com/ViewArticle.dbml?SPSID=1508&SPID=147&DB_OEM_ID=200&ATCLID=187171