Freedom Insider

By StarCityFan

New Jersey Wildcats (6-2-1, 19 points, 3rd place) at Washington Freedom Futures (7-1-1, 22 points, 2nd place)
Saturday, July 10, 4 p.m. EDT
Maryland Soccerplex, Boyds, Md
All-time series: Washington leads 5-3-3
Last meeting: 3-3 draw at the College of New Jersey Lions Stadium, Ewing, N.J.

It’s a battle for second place in the Northeast Division this Saturday, with the winner all but assured of a playoff spot, while the loser has to rely on other teams’ results in order to get in. If you’ve ever thought about attending a W-League match but wanted to wait for a worthwhile one, then wait no longer – this is it!

The Futures are one of the elite teams in the W-League, like the others something of a regional (if not worldwide in some cases) all-star team, while most of the other teams are either doormats, who lose to everyone but each other, or middle-of-the-road teams, who beat the doormats, split among each other, and at least look respectable against the elites.

You might think being an elite team in this league is a pretty cushy position, and you’d be right – so long as there aren’t more elite teams in your division then there are places in the playoffs. Unfortunately for the Futures, this year in the Northeast Division there are three elite teams and only two playoff slots. Under those circumstances, there’s little room for slipping, slipping meaning anything other than winning.

The other two elite teams are the Hudson Valley Quickstrike Lady Blues and the New Jersey Wildcats. Washington has done well against them this season, beating Hudson Valley and tying New Jersey. As a result, the Futures were in a great position last weekend. As of Sunday morning, they were coming off a solid 3-0 win against the 4-6-0, middle-of-the-road New Jersey Rangers, thanks to two goals from Lydia Hastings and one from Furtuna Velaj, and held first place in both the division and the league. Later that day, they had what seemed to be the minor task of getting past the New York Magic, perennial league doormats who had a 1-7-0 record on the season.

By the end of the evening, though, the Magic had somehow withstood a 21-shot-on-goal barrage from the Futures attackers without letting a single one in, while Rashidah Sherman, a candidate for the league’s Golden Boot, had put in two for New York.

Just like that, the Futures went from leading both their division and the league to having a nontrivial risk of missing the playoffs entirely and turning Saturday’s match into a must-win.

Even though the Lady Blues lost to the Futures, that’s their only slip, letting them take over first place in both the division and the league. The Futures have two slips, the tie with the Wildcats and the recent loss. Finally, the Wildcats have slipped three times, tying the Futures and losing twice to the Lady Blues.

That sets the stage for the upcoming showdown. If the Futures win, they clinch a playoff spot because the Wildcats can’t catch them. If the Wildcats win and win the rest of their games, the Futures can’t catch them and will be in third place, out of playoff position (This relies on the first W-League tiebreaker being head-to-head competition, which will go in favor of whichever team wins this match).

There is some hope for the third-place team: if Hudson Valley wins the regular-season championship, which they would do if they win their last three games, they get a bye into the W-League final four and don’t figure into the divisional standings. So the third-place team would make it into the playoffs after all. But I doubt either Washington or New Jersey wants to count on that.

As indicated by the all-time series record given above, Washington and New Jersey have a long history of competition, having played a home-and-home series every year since 2005. It’s actually been something of a seesaw battle. The Wildcats back in the middle of the decade were the team to beat in the W-League, compiling a 41-1-0 record from 2004 through 2006, winning the regular season championship in 2004 and 2006 and the overall championship in 2005. Their roster featured names familiar to WPS fans like Karina LeBlanc, Kendall Fletcher, Formiga, Kelly Smith, Kacey White, Lindsey Tarpley, Heather O’Reilly, and our own Christie Welsh, Rebecca Moros, and Cat Whitehill.

The Freedom Reserves (as they were called then) mustered only an 0-3-2 record against this team, though every match was a battle (Their very first meeting, on July 9, 2005, is still one of the best women’s club matches I’ve ever seen, a hardfought 1-1 draw. The Freedom goal was scored by Joanna Lohman and assisted by Ali Krieger).

New Jersey then fell on hard times as their coach left for Sky Blue and then for the Pali Blues, and Washington chalked up five wins in a row against them. Last year they were a clear middle-of-the road team, finishing fourth out of eight in the division with a 7-6-1 record.

However, this season the Futures went up to Jersey and had their hands full, going down 2-0 after 23 minutes, pulling back to tie, then going down again 3-2 in the 48th minute before equalizing in the 60th minute on a goal by Omolyn Davis. The three goals given up by the Futures in that match are as many as they’ve given up to every other team combined this season. On the other hand, Washington hasn’t given up a goal at the SoccerPlex since the Pali Blues scored two on them in last year’s W-League championship.

So Saturday should be a real battle. Again, if you only catch one W-League game this season, this should be the one. As usual, WPS Freedom season ticket holders get free admission, as they do to all Futures matches.

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Looking at the bigger picture, picking up a point on the road at first place FC Gold Pride is a good result. However, was anyone else out there disappointed when that Marta goal found the net after the Freedom had held a 1-0 lead for most of the match?

Again, in this situation picking up a point is a good result but it sure would’ve been better to have the Freedom end the weekend in 1st.

Allie Long had a great goal in the first half and I’m still trying to figure out how she was able to get the shot off since it looked like she had at least three FCGP players closing in on her. Marta’s rebound was a great looking goal as well.

Hopefully the Freedom can keep this streak going as the newly resurgent Chicago Red Stars come to town. Chicago seemed to be the Freedom’s main nemesis last year so we can only imagine how this thing will turn out. Should be fun.

LINKS

A couple of articles to pass along:

• Hall of Freedom Inductee Nominations (WashingtonFreedom.com) – The team is taking nominations from fans in terms of who should be inducted next. For some reason I sense a Jen Grubb campaign coming…
• Freedom Newbies: “Soccer Nerd” Lene Mykjåland (Bleacher Report) – Kat Galsim has a great piece on Norwegian Lene Mykjaland, although I don’t know if nerd is the right word. Don’t believe me? I don’t think a nerd would be able to pull off tricks like these.

• Independence’s Lohman went to great lengths to improve (Philadelphia Inquirer) – A brief article talking about how Jo Lohman’s lack of PT with the Freedom last year drove her to improve her game for this year.
• Talk of World Cup runneth over at Freedom clinic (Frederick News Post) – This link came via Mark Washo’s Twitter this morning but is worth highlighting. Great to see that the World Cup is getting U.S. fans jazzed for soccer like it normally does every four years.

As always, if you find an article worth mentioning, let us know in the comments below.

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The Washington Freedom announced its 28-woman preseason roster yesterday along with the preseason schedule, so while the team is getting ready for 2010 down in Dodgertown, I figured it was a good time to look at who is on the roster. If you want a complete list of rosters, WPS web guru Amanda Vandervort has a full list of links on her personal blog.

Also, I want to apologize for the state of the Roster Tracker but the Sol disbanding really screwed things up. I am trying to find a way to display all of the rosters, along with the way each player was acquired by its current team without making it look like a fourth grader took a highlighter to my spreadsheet, highlighting everything but the conjunctions like “and” and “but.”

Ok, here’s the roster (from the Freedom’s site, most of which we already knew):

2010 28-Player Preseason Roster

(Players with numbers listed after their name are in attendance at the Florida Preseason Camp)

1. Marisa Abegg – 27

2. Brittany Bock – 5

3. Sonia Bompastor – 8

4. Mary Casey

5. Kristi Eveland – 23

6. Jill Gilbeau – 3

7. Beverly Goebel – 6

8. Sarah Huffman – 14

9. Christen Karniski

10. Madison Keller – 26

11. Allie Long – 9

12. Nikki Marshall – 17

13. Meagan McCray – 0

14. Erin McLeod – 18

15. Caitlin Miskel – 12

16. Rebeca Moros – 19

17. Mara Osher – 24

18. Lauren Robertson

19. Becky Sauerbrunn – 22

20. Homare Sawa

21. Briana Scurry – 1

22. Alex Singer – 21

23. Brittany Tegeler

24. Lisa De Vanna – 11

25. Abby Wambach – 20

26. Christie Welsh – 13

27. Cat Whitehill – 4

28. Jaimel Johnson – 2

I can’t say I’m terribly surprised by any of the names on the list and it’s good to see that some of our homegrown players such as Christen Karniski, Brittany Tegeler and Madison Keller are getting another chance to stick with the team. Karniski and Keller were both developmental players last year while Tegeler was among the final roster cuts from preseason last year.

Looking at some of the other rosters I can’t helped but feel that the Freedom failed to improve as much as every other team this offseason. The unexpected addition of Bock certainly offsets what was a quiet offseason for the Freedom but with teams FC Gold Pride adding Marta and Camille Abily, Saint Louis adding Aya Miyama, Shannon Boxx and Lindsey Tarpley and the Independence acquiring Karina LeBlanc, Heather Mitts, Lori Lindsey and Amy Rodriguez, I can’t help but think how much tougher the league will be this year and I am already questioning if this roster will be strong enough to hang with these revamped squads.

New faces popping up on the roster this preseason include Marisa Abegg (drafted by FC Gold Pride in 2009) and goalkeepers Mary Casey (former GK for Maryland who was drafted by LA one week before the team disbanded), Meagan McCray (another FC Gold Pride castoff) and Jamiel Johnson (formerly of the Breakers and Red Stars). I have no idea what the team needs so many goalkeepers for in camp but I bet at least one of this group makes the team as the developmental keeper unless 5th round pick Lauren Robertson can outplay them all.

Names that are noticeably absent? Freedom Futures GM Joanna Lohman (in camp with Philly, don’t know what that’s about), goalkeeper KJ Spisak (in camp in her hometown of St. Louis) and midfielder Kristin DeDycker.

One final roster note of interest for former WUSA Washington Freedom fans – midfielder Jen Grubb is in camp with Sky Blue FC.

To keep up with the Freedom while the players are away, make sure you are checking out the team’s official blog. Here is a quick recap of Day 1. And for those of you looking for WPS Fantasy Soccer, apparently that is on the way as well.

Now that you’ve heard what I think about the preseason roster, tell me your thoughts. Is there anyone your surprised to see isn’t back? Do you have any concerns about having six goalkeepers in camp? Let me know in the comments section below.

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In case you haven’t heard, the Freedom will once again kick off the WPS season, this time as the host in a match against the Boston Breakers on April 10 at the Maryland SoccerPlex. If you are not into the season ticket thing, today (Friday, Dec. 18) will be the only day before February to purchase single game tickets for this contest. Make sure you call before 5 p.m. ET.

The Freedom struggled against the Breakers last year, finishing with a record of 1-2-1, the only win coming at the end of the season. Boston has undergone a number of significant changes though so it will be interesting to see how that plays against a Freedom squad that should return mainly intact.

Links

A couple of articles Freedom fans should check out (I apologize for how old these are).

First, the Post’s Dan Steinberg interviews Freedom Futures GM Jo Lohman about her aspirations to become GM of a more prominent local team. It’s too bad they hired someone else for the job yesterday.

Second, speaking of the Futures, many of them are in camp with different national teams this month. It’s good to see that the future of the club has some of top stars of tomorrow.

Third, WPS has asked some experts to rank the best draft prospects by position. I am sorely lacking in my knowledge of women’s collegiate soccer so if you are looking for news on the players that should be contributing to the league in 2010, the league breakdown seems like a good place to start. And if you want to have your own debate or post your own rankings, do so below and help educate me in the process.

Finally, the Roster Tracker is back up to date and I didn’t wait a month this time to do it.

That’s it for now. As always, feel free to use this post as a place to discuss anything Freedom related.

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Interesting story from the Washington Business Journal. [UPDATE: Here is the article from the Freedom web site, which includes the new logo] Apparently, Joanna Lohman has been named the GM of the Freedom’s W-League squad. And her first item of business is changing the name of the W-League squad from the Washington Freedom to Freedom Futures according to the story.

This move is interesting on multiple fronts but the two things that jumped straight into my head are this is a good move for Lohman, who has stated before that she would love to eventually become the GM of the Washington Redskins. There is still a long way for her to go to get there but being the GM of a team is a good start to getting there so congrats to Jo.

Second is what impact will this have on Jo’s playing career. Jo was moved from the full roster to the developmental squad during the 2009 season and is currently a free agent. However, given the fact that she will only play for Washington because of her off-the-field job it seems that if she continues her career it will again be as a developmental player. It will be interesting to see how this situation develops.

Finally, one non-Freedom news item. For those starving for roster news, Saint Louis has added two international players, Swedish forward Madelaine Edlund and Brazilian midfielder Elaine. Both previously played for Umea IK.

That’s it from me. As always, feel free to comment on anything Freedom or WPS related below and have a happy and safe holiday.

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