Tag: tonya antonucci

soccer

WPS seasons change: Freedom advance, Scurry says goodbye, Antonucci out?

Posted on by Beau Dure

Updated below with Hope Solo comments, expansion news

The Maryland SoccerPlex is a good bit cooler today that it was this summer. Rather than worrying about heatstroke, those of us in short-sleeve shirts wish we had brought jackets.

As the seasons change, the WPS regular season ended as well, with a thrilling finale, a heartfelt farewell and worrisome news off the field.

With the Washington Freedom possibly needing a win to reach the playoffs, depending on the result in the concurrent Sky Blue FC-Boston game, Becky Sauerbrunn and Abby Wambach found their timing in the 88th minute. Sauerbrunn’s ball put Wambach in space behind the Atlanta back line. Hope Solo, who already had a couple of good saves, came out toward the top of the box. Wambach chipped her national teammate for the goal.

“It’s not really my style of goal, but I’ll take it,” Wambach said.

As it turned out, defending champion Sky Blue never got their goal, and the Freedom didn’t technically need that goal. Wambach says the Freedom players only got a couple of updates while focusing on their own game, but the Freedom were very happy to go through on a high note.

From the pressbox and the Twittersphere, the game was played under a cloud. Anonymous sources told The Washington Post‘s Steven Goff, who was unusually present at the game, that WPS Commissioner Tonya Antonucci would step down. The league office declined comment.

More ominous from Goff’s post: “Current investors, including the Hendricks family, which operates the Washington Freedom, have yet to decide whether to continue funding the league, sources said.”

Players shrugged off the news. Solo was most insistent: “I think you’re going to see a league next season. There are always those rumors. You just go on. I don’t think it’s going anywhere anytime soon.”

Solo and teammate Lori Chalupny started the year in St. Louis before the Athletica folded. Chalupny, icing her shin and saying she’s still awaiting word from the national team that she’s cleared to play for them after a concussion, laughed about all the drama she has endured through the year. She says she isn’t thinking ahead to anything except starting her coaching career with storied St. Louis youth club Scott Gallagher.

Solo said she’s has worse years but this one was up there. “I’ve never been on a losing team. You learn a lot. I don’t regret it. I miss St. Louis, I still have great respect for (former Athletica owner) Jeff Cooper.”

And she insists the Beat will be back stronger. “You can see that we’re going to be contenders next season.”

Meanwhile, Washington prepared a video montage to bid farewell to longtime U.S. national team goalkeeper Briana Scurry. Solo’s thoughts: “I wish her all the best. She’s had an amazing career. Everybody should be applauding.”

The Freedom battled back from a long winless streak this season. One of the changes they made was symbolic: Wambach and Cat Whitehill both wore a captain’s armband, which Whitehill said was designed to make sure everyone kept an eye on the team’s leadership.

Washington had to keep the faith during that drought. Whitehill also talked about keeping faith in WPS while the rumors swirl.

“The confidence comes from the fact that we want it. We believe in each other, we believe in this league, and we’re going to do whatever it takes. We all knew that the first five years were going to be hard. People bought into it, literally and figuratively, and it’s been great.”

Updates: One bit of news in Goff’s post that bears emphasizing is that the league also seems set on expansion to Buffalo/Rochester. Mixed messages, perhaps, or at least a sign of optimism.

Now here’s where it gets curious: A few minutes after Hope Solo told me with a smile that there would be a league next year, she Tweets the following:

Its official, the refs are straight bad. Its clear the league wanted dc in playoffs. I have truly never seen anything like this. Its sad.

A goal taken away with no explanation, one offsides call against dc, many against atlanta. An amazing all ball tackle for a red.

We play with 10, DC with 12. Players punched in the face. Free corners. I am done playing in a league where the game is no longer … In control of the players.

As I Tweeted a few times during the game, the ref had a poor night. But I saw several calls go against the Freedom — two very good shouts for penalties, including one that was as clear as it could be, plus a disallowed goal on what we’re told was an offside call even though a Beat defender joined Solo on the goal line.

Biased? No. But not good. Solo has a right to be frustrated. But is officiating that much better in the Frauenbundesliga? We’ll have to ask Jenna at All White Kit.

Worth noting: The Federation, not leagues, are in charge of refs. Officiating was a particular concern of Antonucci’s.

5
soccer

WPS welcomes the sound of sponsors in Season 2

Posted on by Beau Dure
Washington Freedom video board
Wait until you hear the speakers ...

What do you see in this picture? Most likely, you see a new scoreboard with video that you wouldn’t have seen at the Maryland SoccerPlex last season at a Washington Freedom game.

Cat Whitehill sees something more specific.

“The most exciting thing – look at all the sponsors around it,” the Freedom defender said Thursday. “The money that it took to go in there – we have it.”

That’s one of the storylines of Women’s Professional Soccer, Season 2. Your buddies or your favorite news outlet (or possibly the ownership group of the now-dormant Los Angeles Sol) might not have much interest in WPS, but plenty of people with money do.

“The teams coming back, on average, are up just over double where they were last year in terms of team sponsorship dollars,” says WPS commissioner Tonya Antonucci.

At the national level, the corporate money is flowing as well. Puma was already on board. During last season, WPS added presenting sponsors of the championship game (MedImmune) and the All-Star Game (U.S. Coast Guard). This season, look for Citi logos on everything — backdrops for interviews, uniforms, etc.

Dive down to the grass-roots level, and everything’s also trending upward.

“For five of the six teams that are returning, they’re above where they were this time last year in season-ticket sales,” Antonucci said in March. “On average, they’re up 17% across the league. That’s a substantial number.”

WPS will keep the goals reasonable.

“We’re shooting for a 5-10% increase from 2009 into 2010,” Antonucci says. “Our average attendance was just over 4,600 when you include the playoffs. That will push us into 5,000 per game.”

That would be quite an accomplishment, given the sophomore slumps that usually strike sports teams and leagues. MLS dropped from a 17,406 average in its 1996 debut year to 14,619 in 1997. The Washington Nationals no longer pack ’em in.

The good news for most organizations in Year 2 is that the start-up hiccups are gone. Christie Welsh, who is returning to her W-League roots in Washington after stints with Los Angeles and St. Louis last year, recalls that one game in St. Louis was played at noon because the venue was reserved for a wedding later that day.

“We were moving practice fields,” Welsh says. “Every day was like a new adventure in a way.”

Now that the old Anheuser-Busch Center or Soccer Park has spent a full year in the hands of St. Louis Soccer United, Athletica’s parent company under the leadership of Jeff Cooper, such scheduling conflicts are less likely.

Most teams put a lot of effort into reshuffling their rosters in the offseason — Soccer America has a simple yet thorough examination — with an influx of foreign players from European powers such as Umea and Arsenal. That’s another sign of a confident league.

The exception to the reshuffling is Washington. Welsh is technically new but says Washington feels like home after her time there in the W-League. “Importing players every year from all over isn’t our philosophy,” Abby Wambach says.

Yet with Wambach, Whitehill and goalkeeper Erin McLeod healthy in preseason, the team should have a smoother start compared with last season.

As a whole, though, the league isn’t easy to predict.

“My husband asked me the other day who I thought would be 1 through 8 in the standings, and I said it’s really hard because the talent is there,” Whitehill says. “Last year, the talent was there, but there were spots where you could pick on a team and say, ‘Hey, let’s exploit that.'”

So we’ll let Scott French do the predicting instead. Wait a minute … St. Louis first? Atlanta last?

If you want coverage of WPS, you’ll have to scrounge. The TV deal with Fox Soccer Channel and Fox Sports Net is still in place, but mainstream media have been cutting back. Look for a good online source like the new women’s soccer blog All White Kit or some random multisport blog you might be reading right now.

0