Soccer is the world’s most popular sport and is growing in the United States. Women’s college soccer exemplifies this growth, where during the same period of time participation has more than tripled. There are now over 25,000 athletes representing 1,000 NCAA women’s soccer teams on a yearly basis. NCAA rules, specifically regarding substitutions and the chronological proximity of competitions, make it different than any other league in the world. The majority of research efforts have quantified the physiological demands and performance determinants at various levels in men’s soccer. Recent studies have focused on similar variables in women’s soccer at the professional level in Europe. Women’s soccer in general, and American college soccer in particular, is still vastly underrepresented in the soccer literature. First, this thesis seeks to quantify the training load (TL) of NCAA women’s soccer athletes through 13 weeks of the competitive season. Training load is defined here as exercise intensity as measured by mean heart rate and time spent in the top two heart rate zones – 85-89% and 90-100% of peak heart rate. There is a significant difference in intensity between games and training sessions resulting in dissimilarity in TL between starters and nonstarters through the season. In addition, there is a difference in mean heart rate and distribution of time spent in each heart rate zone in starters between games played within 48 hours. And finally, there is a decrease in time in the highest heart rate zone in games as the season progresses. Next, training status, defined as body composition and VO_2peak, is evaluated before and after a 6-week offseason high intensity interval training intervention. Time in the 85-100% heart rate zones, with this method of conditioning, correlates with improvements in training status. Therefore, HIIT may be an effective protocol in a welltrained college athlete cohort to maximize competition performance and minimize training time. In short, this thesis provides benchmarks for NCAA soccer athletes as well as coaches with implications for training methods and protocols.