Ottawa Fury will host 2012 W-League Championship This also means they're automatically seeded into the W-League Final Four. Since they were last year's regular-season champions, that's not much of a concern. The downside is that if they stick with last year's playoff format, the #5 team in their division will make the playoffs. Last year that would have been the 3-7-2 Hamilton Rage.
Honest question - What keeps these leagues from working together? Business plans? Philosophies? Any indications that WPS teams join in? Can't we all just get along?
They hate each other with the fire of 10,000 suns? Seriously, the WPSL broke away from the W-League in 1997 when a bunch of teams on the west coast didn't like the way the W-League was being run. Neither side has come anywhere close to forgiving the other. We have a new local team (the Maryland Capitols) in the WPSL who would love to play an exhibition match or two with the W-League DC United Women, but neither league will approve the match. I'd be astonished if no WPS teams maintained an interim presence in the W-League or WPSL. The Flash have already said that they will (and they were in the W-League before they joined WPS). Sky Blue was also a W-League team before the WPS started up, and Coach Gabarra has considerable experience keeping a team together at an amateur level when the league behind the professional version falters. You'd think that women's club soccer would be a small enough pie not to be worth fighting over, but apparently not.
Thanks What is it about WPSL that keeps them growing? Are they all the same level? Do you have some kind of championship?
It's cheaper and easier to start a WPSL franchise than a W-League franchise. Teams in these leagues go from pretty inept to near-WPS level (particularly when there was no WPS to siphon off the best players - the 2005 New Jersey Wildcats had a roster including Heather O'Reilly, Karina LeBlanc, Cat Whitehill, Kacey White, and Christie Welsh). Both leagues have championships. If you're asking about upper and lower divisions, then, no, there's just one level and one championship for each league (though this was not always true for the W-League). My impression based on the few teams I've seen is that the W-League is somewhat better overall: I watched both the WPSL Chesapeake Charge and the W-League DC United Women last year and even though the Charge were a very good WPSL team and the DCU Women a mediocre W-League team, I would have bet on DCU had they played head-to-head.
I doubt it. The USSF doesn't seem to care that much about women's soccer except for the national team.
WPSL Elite League 2012: Semi-Pro, Semi-WPS, Semi-Early? From a Boston Breakers press release: Note: The Philadelphia Independence will not be a part of the WPSL or W-League this year, according to a Jeff Kassouf tweet. Teams so far: -Boston Breakers -Western New York Flash -Chicago Red Stars -FC Indiana WPSL press release Sounds like they are going to keep this regional (eastern US only).
An Eastern WPSL elite division.... I like it. =-) Though too bad a western equivalent (inclusion?) won't be ready until 2013.
W-League Conferences. http://wleague.uslsoccer.com/home/598799.html Schedule http://wleague.uslsoccer.com/schedules/index_E.html
Kind of a freaky structure, throwing most of the teams into the Eastern Conference. Also means that the seven-team Central Conference gets two representatives in the Final Four, while the fifteen-team Eastern Conference gets one. Also interesting that the DCU Women have "moved" south and will be playing mostly Virginia teams this year, as contrasted with the New York/New Jersey teams they were with last year.
According to the LA Viking website http://www.vikingsc.net/page/show/40...ngs-2011-2012- they are going to be part of WPSL Elite for 2012. Their roster lists Ali Riley, Leigh Ann Robinson and Beverly Goebel. Maybe there will be other west coast teams???
Yeah, that's a little disappointing, seeing as I'm way out here in San Diego. But there's always WPSL's non-elite league. I think our county will have at least two teams (Red Diamonds and Sea Lions?) in that league. Eager to see their schedule. Kind of woso-starved out here.
No word on when the WPSL Elite will start right? Maybe early May? May to September for a 5 month season would be nice.
I actually hope they have different schedule for the Elite league and let it go longer. Usually the WPSL ends on July 13st. Many college programs start fall training beginning-middle of August.
Last year the WPSL season started in mid-May and ended in late July. I'd be very surprised if WPSL Elite did anything different. I'm expecting eight teams total and a 14-match, home-and-home schedule, which should fit into that timeframe without too much trouble. I can't speak for the northern teams, but both the Charge (who are in) and the Capitols (who have applied) are heavily dependent on college players. There's no way they could play into September or even much into August.
I also assume the Red Stars will have a combo of college and former WPS players like they did last year. Unless Arnim decides to go all-pro and have a team of all paid players. I'm not so sure he is ready for that yet. But you never know.
(Disclaimer: I know there's a huge gap time- and subject-wise between the previous post and this one, but I felt like starting a new thread for this wasn't quite appropriate with this thread already here, sooo...) Perfect teams, other undefeated teams, and power rankings: Looking at WPSL results, I started thinking about the perfect teams of the league, which led to me looking up the perfect W-League teams as well, which then reminded me of a post that was kind of lost in the WPSLEL12 thread that linked to the AmWoSo Power Rankings collaborative project. I'm hoping a new ranking comes out today or tomorrow since the previous two were listed on the 11th and the 4th (the latter of which being the one Ben James Ben had initially linked to). I'm not very well in-tune with the WPSL proper or the W-League, so I'd love to hear what people think are the strongest conferences, etc., and why teams like FCD and San Diego didn't make the top12 while teams like the NJWildcats did (which I assume follows from the conferences thing?)
My impression is that the W-League is significantly stronger than the WPSL, though that's based on snapshots. Last year I followed the W-League DC United Women and the WPSL Chesapeake Charge and thought the former was by far the better team even though they didn't even qualify for the playoffs while the Charge made the WPSL "Elite Eight", one playoff win from going to the national semifinals. This year I'm following those two teams (with the Charge now in the WPSL Elite) as well as the Maryland Capitols, a new WPSL team, and would still say the same thing, and would add that the Capitols aren't as strong as either of the other two despite being undefeated in their division. Another data point: according to Twitter, the W-League Pali Blues downed the WPSL San Diego Sea Lions recently even though Pali was missing a bunch of its best players. Both teams have perfect records in their divisions, and the Sea Lions have scored 18 goals while allowing just 1. I'm not part of the "power rankings" thinktank, but my impression is that they're looking at results whenever possible and then at rosters. That's easy for the WPSL Elite where you have a bunch of good teams playing each other, but tougher for the W-League and the WPSL because there may only be one good team in a division. If they beat up on their rivals 8-1 and 9-1 (as FC Dallas has done), does that say that the team is good or that the opposition is terrible? The conclusion seems to be the latter for now. As for specific divisions, the toughest this year after the WPSL Elite has to be the W-League's Western Conference, which has at least two outstanding teams and at least five good ones. I thought DCU's division was going to be a bunch of patsies, but it turns out that Fredericksburg and Virginia Beach have put together pretty good teams. So I'd be hard put to choose between the three Eastern Conference divisions for which is the toughest, though the Central Conference is (in my opinion) weaker than any of them, with Ottawa the only good team and already assured of making the W-League Final Four as the hosts.