Like many in College Park, longtime Maryland men's soccer coach Sasho Cirovski was surprised when university president Wallace D. Loh announced in November 2012 that the Terps would be moving to the Big Ten Conference in 2014. And like many of his coaching colleagues and the school's fans, Cirovski was skeptical.
Coming from a league with national soccer powers, Cirovski feared that leaving the Atlantic Coast Conference after 61 years might hurt his program. The Big Ten had only one traditional soccer powerhouse, Indiana, and the second half of the conference schedule featured games in increasingly colder weather.