Time for a little word association, sports fans.

Okay, Ivy League soccer?

Mind gone blank, eh? Never been down to the Business School field?

Funny, but those same words make more than a few heads around the league spin. Visions of the God of Parity dance in the heads of informed soccer sources like some bastardized cousin of the sugar plum fairy.

In a general sense, parity means balance and equality; in Ivy Title jargon, it means a toss-up. There is no consensus on championship squad, although many tentatively bestow the early-season jinx on Princeton.

But that's a pie-in-the-sky guesstimation, at best, because every squad--with the possible exception of Brown--has a legitimate shot at the crown in the very short (seven games) Ivy season. Princeton gets the early honors mostly on the strength of a possibly phenomenal recruiting year, with Tiger coach Bill Muse counting on the freshmen to shore up the offense and improve last year's 8-4-3 mark.

Crimson coach George Ford and others expect an even campaign partly because of the relative importance of the defense as the dominent unit on most ivy squads. This prompts speculation that an emerging offensive powerhouse--Princeton or any other team--may upset the balance in the league and run away with the title.

In this regard, Princeton may well be the favorite. Muse's charges lost three times in the last campaign by one goal, prompting an intensive recruiting drive--matched by U Penn and Yale--for the highly touted Uri Fishman, an explosive scorer who played his high school soccer in Connecticut.

Fishman--a Soviet Jewish immigrant--tallied 96 times over the last two prep seasons, garnering All-American honors. Still, high school success does not necessarily translate into college scoring, especially in the highly competitive, and at times highly physical Ivy League.

Jim and John Bowen--a pair of twins who paced last year's team, and who played on the East Regional squad at the national sports festival in Syracuse this summer--are back in the Tiger midfield. The defense should be strong in spite of the loss of a few veterans, with Jim Anderson vying with freshman Thomas Roberts for the starting goalie job.

Last year's defending co-champions, Pennsylvania and Columbia should crowd the top this year, too. Of the two, Penn will have a more difficult time repeating. The Quakers scored just 19 goals over 15 games last year. Their 9-3-3 final record reflects a dependence on defense. Harvard tied U Penn, 2-2, in Philadelphia.

But the authors of 12 of those 19 tallies lost to graduation, more pressure than ever will land on the defense, which gave up just 14 goals last season. To make matters worse, all Ivy goaltender Jim Tabak is gone, along with top scorers Eric Omsberg (4 goals) and Nick Pitrowski (8 goals.)

Much of the rest of the defense is intact with J.B. DeLaney at sweeper, co-captain Dave Miller at stopper, and seniors Tom Moore and Damon Vigiano at the wingbacks. Vigiano specializes in one-on-one defense, frequently marking the opposition's most potent scorer. Michael Moore will step into the twines without any varsity experience.

Penn's fortunes depend on whatever firepower Bob Seddon can manage to squeeze out of a short line of returnees and a gaggle of talented but untried freshmen. Prominent among the latter group is Keith Omsburg, who scored 45 goals his last high school season. Striker Bruce Becker is another possible key, with Kevin Kinnevy the leading returning scorer. Graduate Petrowski and Eric Omsberg--last year's leading scorers--were pressure players par excellence, scoring most of their goals in the last five or ten minutes of a game so the Quakers will need to find a comparable pair of sparkplugs.

Columbia enters the season in better shape, in spite of the recent loss of Amar Ali to the U.S. Junior National Team. Other losses will force position changes from last year's 12-1-2 squad, which zapped Harvard 3-1 in the 1980 Ivy opener. The two squads open the Ivy slate again this year in New York.