STANFORD — As an African-American soccer player, Bryce Marion had heard hateful words slung his way on the pitch before. But it didn’t make it any less shocking that night in Bloomington, Indiana.

“When it first started happening I was a little surprised,” the Stanford midfielder recounted this week. “I was thinking, ‘Are they really saying this?’ ”

It was early in the season during a heated game at IU that fans yelled racial slurs at Marion, a junior from Cypress, Texas. When asked about it this week on the eve of the College Cup, Marion said he refused to let it affect his play in helping the No. 5 Cardinal reach the sport’s final four where it faces North Carolina on Friday night in Houston.

“It’s something I’ve dealt with in the past,” Marion said. “I didn’t let it affect me too much.”

Related Articles Stanford men’s soccer keeps clean sheet on path to College Cup Marion’s mother said Stanford coach Jeremy Gunn apologized to her and her husband for the incident after the Sept. 4 game that ended in a double-overtime 0-0 tie. Schundreia Marion said she and her family didn’t hear the abusive language during the first half because they sat on the opposite side of the field.

But players near the other side heard a fan shout the N-word as Marion ran down the flank in a stadium filled with 4,081 fans.

“I just looked at him, ‘That’s just not OK,’ ” said Marion, a management science and engineering major.

The fans’ behavior came to light as reigning national champion Stanford (14-3-4) prepares to play in the College Cup near Marion’s hometown. Denver and Wake Forest meet in the first semifinal game with the winners advancing to the title match Sunday.

Marion’s experience in Indiana is a reminder of soccer’s well-documented history of racism, particularly in Europe. In August, a referee ended a Spanish league season opener after 30 minutes because fans hurled abusive chants at Athletic Bilbao’s first black player in the team’s 118-year history.

Questionable fan behavior also has reached U.S. soccer fields. In the past year, officials have investigated claims that fans shouted racial slurs at boys and girls games in Massachusetts, New York, Oklahoma and Wisconsin, according to news reports.

Witnesses said the Indiana situation escalated in the stands as referees handed out six yellow cards to the teams, including two in the first half that led to the ejection of a Hoosier defensive star. Indiana fans became angered at calls against one of country’s best men’s college soccer programs. They started lashing out at the Cardinal, which plays an aggressive brand of soccer.

Indiana student Nicholas Hunt heard some of the taunts directed at Marion while on the Hoosiers bench collecting data for a sports marketing class. Hunt said as players walked off the field at halftime a student yelled at Marion, “Go back to the country you came from, you look like you’re just fresh off the boat.”

Hunt said the fan also threw something at the Stanford midfielder. He said security officials ejected the fan from the stadium.

The student added that some fans also yelled at Stanford star Foster Langsdorf, who has led the Cardinal with 15 goals this year. Hunt said he heard one fan call the forward “a Nazi.”

Langsdorf upset fans for punching an Indiana player in the groin area — an incident that was captured on video but missed by the referee. The Stanford striker had suffered hard fouls beforehand.

Indiana officials declined to comment, a soccer team spokesman said Wednesday. Stanford’s Gunn also declined to comment when contacted this week.

Marion said he appreciated how officials handled the situation after telling coaches and referees what happened when subbing out in the first half.

The speedy winger also praised Indiana coaches and players for their support. Hoosiers star Tanner Thompson “was pretty heartbroken that had happened,” Marion said of the brother of former Stanford player Ty Thompson and the Earthquakes’ Tommy Thompson.

“They have African Americans on their team as well,” Marion added. “An attack like that isn’t just an attack on me — it’s an attack on an entire race.”

Hunt, the Indiana student, said Hoosiers fans had embraced Femi Hollinger-Janzen, a four-year starter from the African country of Benin.

“Everybody loved Femi,” he said of the forward who joined Major League Soccer this year. “ IU is a very diverse campus. You don’t expect that. It was very shocking to me. It’s not something that you see a bunch at IU.”

The verbal assault on Marion came three weeks after another Stanford junior from the Houston area, Simone Manuel, became the first African-American woman to win an Olympic gold medal in swimming.

Schundreia Marion said she became angry when first hearing about what happened.

“You want to protect your child from that no matter how old they are,” she said.

The mother said her children — Branndon Marion is a freshman hurdler at Cal — were not exposed to racial issues living in Norway and Alaska as kids. The family lived in those cold-weather locales because of Tony Marion’s work as a petroleum engineer.

“Being exposed to different people and different cultures helped prepare me for moments like I had in Indiana,” Bryce Marion said.

The parents discussed racism with their four boys before relocating to the Houston area when Bryce was entering seventh grade.

“It’s heartbreaking but this has been a part of understanding our life,” Schundreia said of being African-American. “At some point in time, you are almost 100 percent guaranteed someone is going to shout a racial slur at you.”

Marion said he had experienced slurs while playing for Texans SC Houston from 2010-13 and the Houston Dynamo Academy from 2013-14. But the Indiana game was the only time he heard such taunts in college.

“He needs to make sure he has the tools to deal with it because it is not going to be the last time that he experiences it,” Schundreia Marion said.