Biggest loss for the W-league for 2003 will be Maryland. They have been a strong team every season. As much as teams like Long Island and Boston will be happy that they ra enot on their schedule, they will be sad to see them go from a competition standpoint.
Money is the root of most teams leaving the league. Does anyone know anything about the organization, what kind of youth leagues they have and such? Did the owners have kids that were on the team and now are moving on? Were they owned by a group of people or one or two brave souls? All I know about Maryland is they had a very good team, they played one game in Memphis last year, and while we beat them 5 - 0 it really was alot closer game than that. I was so far off on my statements about KC Mystics - I said I couldn't believe they were not returning when in truth, it was amazing they lasted 3 years - we'd have to know alot more information before guessing about Maryland. But you can bet that money had something to do with it, and while the teams usually lose money, sometimes there are other reasons the owners keep them around and when the reason leaves (such as kids playing on the teams, etc) they decide to quit throwing money down the tubes.
Money is probably a big factor for the Pride. They have had a sweet deal with Pepsi over the years and that could have ended. The Pride were one of thos teams that never relied to heavily on the youth for their team. And I believe they didn't have any teams in the Y-League. So without a pipeline of players, loss of a major sponser, they just decided to pack it up. As I said in the original post, they were always one of the top teams in the Northeast and will be missed.
The pride was becoming one of THE successful W-League teams but they got caught in a struggle by the two majority owners. One of them ended up with ownership of the team but the other ended up with much of the team worth. Over the last two years the team has been falling apart as the owner did not put as much time into it as they group had before. It is similar to the Springfield Sirens situation from what I hear, but there is also talk of the Sirens finallyl coming back into the league. Time will tell, it is hard enough to sit out one year and come back, this will be Springfield's sedond. As for Maryland, it would be nice for someone to take them over that has a renewed passion. Funny thing is if the team had kept losing money rather than making money, the ownership battle might not have happened and the team would still be around.