Category — women's soccer

The expansion teams coming on board the Women’s Professional Soccer league for 2010 are gearing up for the two drafts that will fill their rosters next month.

The Atlanta Beat and the Philadelphia Independence will participate in a special expansion draft on Sept. 15, with Philly holding the No. 1 spot in the international draft that takes place a week later.

The Beat will choose first out of all the nine teams in the WPS college draft in January. In that phase, the expansion teams will have two first-round selections apiece.

Tonight the other finalist in the WPS championship game will be determined as the St. Louis Athletica plays host to New Jersey-based Sky Blue FC in a “super semifinal.” It’s one of the oddities of the WPS playoff format that awarded regular season champions Los Angeles Sol the host’s role in the finals on Saturday. Sky Blue knocked off the Washington Freedom in the first round.

As the WPS takes stock of its first season — launched in the midst of a nasty recession — commissioner Tonya Antonucci acknowledged the lack of sponsorship money led to larger-than-expected losses that totaled around $2 million for some teams:

“What it means is it will take longer to get to break even. Should the economic conditions of this year continue and if these losses were to continue for three years, then we’d have a serious issue on our hands, just like many businesses. Let’s talk in three years.”

Doesn’t this sound familiar? After three years the Women’s United Soccer Association was history. Here’s to hoping that history won’t repeat itself. It looks like the Coast Guard — yes, the U.S. Coast Guard — has come to the rescue. At least to some degree. Will others follow?

I don’t want to sound like I’m writing off the prospects of the new Atlanta Beat — as well as the Women’s Professional Soccer league — before the team gets off the ground. And not just because of the current economic predicament.

But new Beat owner Fitz Johnson is making some rather generous attendance projections when his team plays its inaugural season next spring, most likely at Kennesaw State’s new soccer facility.

Between 5,000 and 6,000 a game in a location that’s not very central to a heavily car-centered metro Atlanta area? With a fan base of young families with children that’s typically overscheduled with youth leagues, swimming lessons, vacations and other summer activities?

League-wide WPS has not averaged even that lowest figure as its first season heads into the playoffs this weekend. Its business model certainly is scaled down financially from the Women’s United Soccer Association, with team budgets around $500k each. That sounds like a reasonable amount of money, given the fixed costs of stadium rentals and cross-country travel.

I understand how difficult it is to garner media attention, corporate sponsors and partnerships and other business deals if the stated attendance estimates are any lower than what’s being said now. But the original Atlanta Beat did well to get those numbers even with some of the most vigorous marketing and promotional work in the WUSA.

Johnson speaks fondly of how he enjoyed taking his young, soccer-playing daughters to Beat games, which were models of the family-friendly marketing efforts the league felt were vital to its chances. But getting the attention of adults who aren’t van-driving parents — we’re talking about young males here — may require the kind of bad-girl presence that St. Louis goalkeeper Hope Solo provides in heavy doses. Her Athletica team has made the post-season, and anything’s bound to happen with her in the nets. Says WPS commissioner Tonya Antonucci:

“The WUSA sort of had a focus on preteen, ponytailed girls who aspired to play soccer someday, and so their messaging was around ‘cause marketing’: ‘This league is something girls deserve to have, and as a fan you ought to support this.’ We’re presenting an environment that’s not about babysitting kids but is an opportunity to watch the best and be entertained by the best.”

Solo’s got no use for the girly-girly stuff:

“For some reason, people want to think that we’re girls next door, who all get along and go shopping at the mall together. Treat us like professional athletes.”

I’m all for marketing the games played by adults to adults, and I think women’s soccer needs more bad girls like Solo. That was one of my chief complaints against WUSA’s marketing strategy. It was a shame that it was geared mostly to kids, given the individuals I enjoyed covering in Atlanta during those years.

The original Beat team had personality players like Charmaine Hooper, Briana Scurry and Nikki Serlenga that many grown-ups admired, and a personality coach and a great quote in Tom Stone. The players liked to bust his chops, and he was happy to bite back. But that dynamic existed mostly behind the scenes.

Still, Stone said plenty for public consumption, and loved being a lightning rod in a league where most of his counterparts went out of their way to be unprovocative.

During the Beat’s first season in 2001, the team played at Bobby Dodd Stadium, which prompted then-Georgia Tech football coach George O’Leary to grouse that the turf would be “torn up” by the time gridiron season arrived. Stone quipped, “I’ll ask my 120-pound players to take it easy on the field.”

The day the WUSA folded in 2003, I told him I had heard reports that young girls around metro Atlanta were crying upon hearing the news. Said Stone: “If more of those girls’ parents had brought them to our games, they wouldn’t be crying today.”

If the new Beat has characters like that, they should be able to market to adults and kids alike.

But I just don’t know if the kind of edge that Solo brings will work down here in Steel Magnolia country.

Goals near the end of either half sunk the North Atlanta Soccer Association’s Under 19 boys aspirations of a national championship Sunday as the Baltimore Casa Mia Bays claimed a 2-0 victory in the U.S. Youth Soccer Association’s national championships.

And on Friday, the Atlanta Silverbacks women’s playoff hopes came to a controversial end when Charlotte was awarded a late penalty kick to tie the game, then got the winning goal moments later it for a 2-1 win in the W-League Eastern Conference semifinals.

The Atlanta Silverbacks women will play host this weekend to the first round of the W-League Eastern Conference playoffs.

At 5 p.m. on Friday, the Washington Freedom plays Tampa Bay Hellenic, followed by the Silverbacks vs. the Charlotte Lady Eagles at 7:30 p.m. The finals will take place on Saturday, also at 7:30 p.m. All games will take place at Silverbacks Park.

Tickets are $10 a person for each day, with that admission price on Friday good for both games. The Silverbacks women have a cash-only ticket policy. Here’s more information about group tickets.

It’s the first stage of the postseason for the W-League. The Silverbacks earned the host’s role by virtue of winning the Atlantic Division with a record of 12-10-1-1 and 32 points.

Here’s how the rest of the playoff bracket shapes up.

The motion had barely been seconded when all five green bulbs lit up at once: Kennesaw State University’s ambitious plans for a $20 million soccer complex were given the unanimous approval of the Cobb Board of Commissioners.

The 5-0 vote Tuesday morning rezoned nearly 90 acres of KSU Foundation-owned land off George Busbee Parkway, Busbee Drive and Big Shanty Road for a facility that includes an 8,500-seat stadium, six other soccer fields, walking trails and picnic areas.

The stadium location has been mentioned as a possible home for the newly revived Atlanta Beat, who will begin play next spring in the Women’s Professional Soccer League.

The commissioners approved the rezoning request without comment — their action was expected following a similar vote by the Cobb planning commission.

But the Beat still has not commented except to say that no decision has been made about a venue. The team did not have a representative at the zoning meeting.

“Where are we going to play? We don’t know yet is the official answer,” Beat general manager Shawn McGee told youth coaches at a Saturday meeting of the Georgia State Soccer Association. “It’s not a big secret that there have been talks with Kennesaw State, but we’re still looking at other options.”

Beat owner T. Fitz Johnson, a Cobb resident, has said he wants his team to play in Cobb, which is among the youth soccer hotbeds in metro Atlanta. Neither he nor McGee has elaborated on any other possibilities.

KSU is expected to begin construction later this year with the intention of having the facility ready for the spring. The complex will also be the home to the school’s women’s soccer program.

Former State University of West Georgia women’s soccer coach Gareth O’Sullivan has been named the head coach of the Atlanta Beat.

The native of Ireland has been coaching professionally in Ireland, but his background includes a number of coaching and playing stints in the United States.

O’Sullivan was the first coach at West Georgia when it created the program in 2004.

His staff staff includes Kennesaw State and Georgia ODP goalkeeper coach Russ Stroud and Leslie Marcus (neé Gaston), a defender for the first Atlanta Beat franchise.

The Beat, reprising the same nickname of its Women’s United Soccer Association predecessor, begins play in the Women’s Professional Soccer league next spring.

Here’s the official release from the Beat/WPS site.

The final regular season home game was a scoreless draw, but the Atlanta Silverbacks are back in the W-League post-season.

They’ve got two road games remaining in North Carolina this week, then will learn their playoff opponent a week from now.

The New York Times takes an expansive look at the first season of Women’s Professional Soccer, mentioning Atlanta coming aboard (along with Philadelphia) next season.

Interesting comments from a Boston Breakers executive in charge of business development on how the league is trying to go beyond what was emphasized during the Women’s United Soccer Association, and an approach that is familiar in women’s pro and college team sports in general:

“We need to get out of the ghetto of being a role model for girls. You can’t make dads feel like they’re visiting Chuck E. Cheese’s.”

Clearly the fan base for women’s soccer will always be families with young children, but the sport, and the league, is being marketed to a broader base of fans at the same time. The key is making it feel like a sporting event for all fans, and not just a kiddie jamboree for some. Says Doug Logan, the first commissioner of Major League Soccer, in the same story:

“Success at the gate has to have a tribal following and not just a van of soccer-playing kids who come to one game a year. If your business model depends on youth soccer, it won’t be enough.”

Tens years (to the week) after the phenomenal event that was the 1999 Women’s World Cup, the growing pains of women’s soccer have entered a new stage.

WUSA and U.S. national team veterans are wizened from their experiences, including former Beat goalkeeper Briana Scurry, who along with former Atlanta teammate Homare Sawa is playing for the Washington Freedom of WPS:

“The fact that we’re out here, playing soccer, is what’s important. To go from nothing to something is amazing. You rarely get a second chance in life, and we’re getting one now.

“We need to make the most of it.”

The frequent speculation about the creation of a major soccer complex at Kennesaw State University is quickly turning into a reality.

The $20 million proposal calls for a cluster of facilities, including an 8,500-seat stadium that is the likely home for the newly revived Atlanta Beat, as well as additional fields.

On Tuesday the Cobb Planning Commission took up a rezoning request that will get the formal process started.

And it gave approval as easy as a penalty kick; the Cobb Board of Commissioners is expected to act on July 21.

Yet Beat owner Fitz Johnson remains shy about saying specifically where in Cobb he wants to locate his new Women’s Professional Soccer franchise.

C’mon, Fitz!

Thought I’d pass along some great reads from the world of soccer in the hours leading up to today’s U.S. vs. Spain match in the semifinals of the Confederations Cup and Atlanta’s first international match tonight at the Georgia Dome between Mexico and Venezuela. I’ve tried to find links that have some resonance with the soccer scene in Atlanta, or some other connection to the city, but I don’t want to get too provincial here either:

• John Turnbull is an Atlanta soccer writer, book editor and creator of The Global Game site, a fabulous compendium of stories about the culture of soccer around the world. He’s been in South Africa for the Confederations Cup and here writes about how preparations for next year’s World Cup are resonating through that society:

• American soccer blogging superstar du Nord sits down with Peter Wilt, CEO of the Chicago Red Stars of Women’s Professional Soccer and formerly the GM of the MLS Chicago Fire. This is Wilt’s foray into management of the women’s game, and he makes a shrewd observation that new Atlanta Beat owner Fitz Johnson and his cohorts would do well to keep in mind. The WUSA did engage in girl power and some social advocacy, but not to the degree that is seen in women’s basketball. WPS has to avoid falling into that trap if it wants to successfully market itself beyond its base of young girls and their families:

“I think in women’s soccer there’s a sense that it should be promoted as a cause, a social cause for women’s rights. Girl Power. That was never the case with MLS or men’s soccer. WPS in general, and Chicago in particular, made a point of saying no, this is about entertainment. This is a great athletic sport. It’s absolutely a good thing for women and a good thing for girls. But we really believe that the product as a sport, as entertainment, is worthy of your investment.”

• And finally, the U.S. Soccer site has named Atlanta’s Brewhouse Café as its June bar of the month. That’s been my soccer oasis in Atlanta for many years, and I just may head down there this afternoon to catch the Confederations Cup before going over to the Dome.

What a great day of soccer in Atlanta beyond!