This week, we look at the draw for the CONCACAF Olympic Qualification Tournament to be held next February, examine the recent folding of the 21 year old W-League in North America and review the NCAA Division 1 playoffs in the U.S., with the final four teams for the College Cup now determined.
CONCACAF RELEASES DRAW FOR 2016 WOMEN'S OLYMPIC QUALIFYING CHAMPIONSHIP
CONCACAF announced the draw for their 2016 Women's Olympic Qualifying Championship on November 23rd in Miami. The championships will be held from February 10 through 21 at Toyota Stadium in Frisco, Texas (a suburb of Dallas and home to MLS side FC Dallas) and BBVA Compass Stadium in Houston (home to the Dash of NWSL and Dynamo of MLS).
Group A, based in Frisco, will comprise Costa Rica, Mexico, Puerto Rico and the U.S.A., with all but Puerto Rico representing the region at the 2015 Women's World Cup in Canada. Group B, based in Houston, will see Canada, Guatemala, Guyana and Trinidad and Tobago face-off. The all-important semifinals will be staged in Houston on Friday, February 19, with the winners of those matches advancing to Rio de Janeiro for next summer's Olympic Games.
The final will be on Sunday February 21, again in Houston. Four teams have already qualified for the 12-team Olympic Football Tournament: Brazil and Colombia from South America, and France and Germany from Europe (as the top European finishers at the 2015 Women's World Cup since third place England does not participate in Olympic Games as a separate entity from Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales).
Two teams will qualify from Africa and Asia and one more will qualify from Europe after a mini-tournament in March featuring Sweden, Netherlands, Norway and Switzerland. New Zealand, who made the quarterfinals in London in 2012, are expected to advance from Oceania.
W-LEAGUE FOLDS AFTER 21 SEASONS
The United Soccer Leagues (USL) announced recently that the W-League for women will not return in 2016. The league was launched in 1995 as an amateur league, playing during the North American summer. The league helped to develop a number of national team players through the years, both in North America and abroad.
Seventeen of the 23 members of the 2015 World Cup Champions played in the W-League at some point in their careers. It had a high of 48 teams in 2008 but fielded only 18 teams in 2015, and folded after more teams pulled out after the summer season ended--the Atlanta Silverbacks and Arizona Strikers (Yuma). Particularly damaging is that they lost many of their West Coast franchises since the end of the 2014 season and those western teams that remained were unsure if the league would be around—unfortunately they turned out to be right.
The only summer national amateur league for players currently in North America is the Women's Premier Soccer League. Commissioner and League Founder Jerry Zanelli originally had his Sacramento-based California Storm play in the W-League but then started the WPSL with a few other defecting W-League sides in 1998 (three years after the start of the W-League).
The WPSL has always differentiated itself with a much lower entrance expense and operating costs—a model which remains to this day. One coach who has operated teams in both leagues said that you can run a WPSL team in California for $20,000—while W-League entry fees alone approached that sum, plus W-League teams generally had much higher travel costs. The WPSL had 82 teams in 2015 in 13 conferences across the country, with teams in Canada and one in the Mexican border town of Tijuana.
WPSL does tend to be a bit laissez-faire in its operation, to the frustration of some. Over the past five years, teams routinely made the playoffs but couldn't play for financial reasons or because too many players have returned to college pre-season training. One team this season chose to play in a U.S. Cup tournament rather than the playoffs. I get the sense that some teams actually plan their budgets to not participate in the playoffs, even though they are a consistent playoff contender. The precedence has been set by other teams and the WPSL just names a second place team to go on. I never attended a WPSL game without checking with a coach or PR rep to ensure that it was actually being held. I drove over four hours round trip to one game a few years ago that ended up being an intersquad game because their opponent only showed up with a few players, with the others going home early because they wanted to ensure that they were home with their families for Sunday church services.
Hopefully the WPSL will tighten up these sorts of inefficiencies, but with the “all comers" approach it is hard to manage with so many teams and not everyone is committed at the same level. The plus side of WPSL is that, unlike the USL's W-league, which ran professional and amateur men's leagues as well, the WPSL has always been solely dedicated to the women's game.
Some W-League teams are considering or have joined the WPSL for 2016. In an exclusive interview with Tribal Football late last week, Jerry Zanelli confirmed that four former W-League franchises have joined the WPSL for next summer: Dayton Dutch Lions, New Jersey Wildcats, Braddock Road (Virginia) Stars Elite and the 2015 champions Washington Spirit Reserves. The Seattle Sounders Women are looking at joining as are the three Colorado clubs (Pride, Storm and Rush). A few W-League clubs enquired but couldn't join the WPSL because the territory rights were held by other clubs: the Santa Clarita Blue Heat, New York Magic, North Jersey Valkyries and Long Island Rough Riders.
Zanelli said that the latter three were exploring forming a regional league. Zanelli said he felt that he did not expect the Charlotte Lady Eagles and Carolina Elite Cobras (Greer, South Carolina) to join his league in 2016. Zanelli also indicated that he would not pursue the two Canadian W-League clubs: Laval Comets, who hosted the 2015 W-League finals and Quebec Dynamo ARSQ because of travel costs—the only Canadian city he is interested in is Vancouver, just over the border. Zanelli expects to easily have over 100 franchises for 2016—a record for any women's league in North America, a number which includes new franchises in Tyler, Texas and Toledo, Ohio. The U.S. Soccer Federation has talked about launching a summer college circuit for women, much like they currently run the NWSL professional league.
This reporter actually went to the first W-League championships in Cincinnati in 1995, held in conjunction with a U.S. Soccer annual convention. The W-League filled in as a place for pro players during the dark days between WUSA and WPS (2004-2008) in particular, but always was a home to high school, college and post-high school players. Vancouver Whitecaps some years had attendances of 2,000-3,000 fans a game, still more than some NWSL sides draw. Standards were high on the field; I went to games where I would be impressed with a midfielder or defender and follow that player during her collegiate career. I saw W-League games in Charlotte, Cleveland, Columbus, Detroit, Kansas City, Los Angeles, Seattle, Toronto and points in between.
I watched current or future national teamers for Norway, Australia, Canada, the U.S., Mexico, England and Ireland. I saw Mexican international Maribel Dominguez in one of her first games in America score at will and end up as the League MVP. The last championship game with Washington Spirit Reserves defeating Colorado Pride 2-1 was one of the best ever, with end-to-end action and talented and innovative attacking play.
The end of the W-League is sad, but the state of women's soccer right now in North America has never been better, in part due to a successful Women's World Cup in Canada and strong crowds for U.S. National Team victory Tour matches. With U.S. Soccer's involvement, a reserve league for NWSL sides (even on a regional basis) could help further the sport as well.
NCAA DIVISION 1 PLAYOFFS REVIEW
The NCAA Division I playoffs reduced from 32 to 4 teams over the past two weeks, beginning with a series of four team knockout groups for rounds 2- 3, cutting the field from 32 to 8. The four quarterfinal results on November 27-28 were: Duke stunned host Stanford 3-2 on penalty kicks after a 1-1 tie, Penn State defeated West Virginia 2-0, Florida State defeated Texas A&M 5-0, and last season's finalist Virginia fell to Rutgers on penalty kicks after a scoreless deadlock. Rutgers, the alma mater of U.S. international and 2015 Women's World Cup star Carli Lloyd, has made the College Cup for the first time ever.
Rutgers head coach Mike O'Neill—a native of New Jersey who has a USSF “A" License and a KNVB Dutch International Badge—described the win after the game: “It's big. This is where we want to be. This is where we want the Rutgers women's soccer program to be every year; we want to be competing for championships. I know that the goal of the team and the goal of the seniors when they came here is they wanted to make sure by the time they left, that this program was one of the top five programs in the country. That's the way they wanted to leave it and that's the expectation and that's where they are."
The College Cup is now set with Florida State versus Duke and Rutgers versus Penn State next weekend in Cary, North Carolina, with the winners meeting on Sunday December 6 for the title. Defending champions Florida State are the only team to repeat in the College Cup from last season, as Virginia, Stanford and Texas A&M all fell in the semifinals.
In the third round on November 21st and 22, Duke upset Florida at home. In the second round on November 19th and 20th, four Atlantic Coast Conference teams were eliminated, with North Carolina Tarheels, the most surprising of all. North Carolina has won 21 NCAA titles in 34 seasons but lost for the first time in the round of 16 to Texas A&M 1-0. Other ACC teams that fell included: Notre Dame, Clemson and Virginia Tech, to Connecticut, Mississippi and Ohio State respectively.
NCAA Division I Women's Tournament Schedule:
QUARTERFINALS
Duke 1 Stanford 1 (Duke wins on penalty kicks 3-2)
Florida State 5 Texas A&M 0
Penn State 2 West Virginia 0
Rutgers 0 Virginia 0 (Rutgers wins on penalty kicks 7-6)
THIRD ROUND
Florida 1 Duke 2
Florida State 2 Auburn 0
Penn State 4 Ohio State 0
Rutgers 4 Connecticut 0
Stanford 3 Arizona 0
Texas A&M 1 Mississippi 1 (Texas A&M wins 5-4 on penalties.)
Virginia 2 USC 0
West Virginia 5 Loyola Marymount 2
SECOND ROUND
Auburn 3 Texas Tech 2
Clemson 1 Mississippi 1 (Mississippi wins 5-4 on penalties.)
Duke 2 FGCU 0
Florida 5 William & Mary 2
Florida State 5 South Alabama 0
Loyola Marymount 1 Minnesota 0
North Carolina 0 Texas A&M 1
Notre Dame 0 Connecticut 2
Penn State 6 Boston Univ. 0
Rutgers 2 Hofstra 0
Santa Clara 1 Arizona 2
Southern California 3 Princeton 0
Stanford 2 BYU 1
Virginia 2 UNCW 0
Virginia Tech 0 Ohio State 1
West Virginia 4 Northwestern 0