Small Market, Grand Designs - Sioux Falls City looking to expand
Sioux Falls City's jump to USL-W is an expansion in every sense, as an energized Sporting Director Joe De May told us this evening.
I think when the ownership group started out they had grand designs at that time... Things have evolved and the women's sports landscape has really kind of taken off exponentially.
While WPSL PRO was "right in front of" the club and WPSL "has been a great platform for us, there's a lot of things from the USLW perspective that align a little bit better with what we try to do on our end." That included the ears of sponsors pricking up more at the prospect of D1 as opposed to D3.
The club sees viable expansion models from the men's side, most clearly with Minneapolis City. The top of their organizational pyramid would be a USL Super League professional team, with a professional reserve side in the WPSL PRO and a pre-professional team at the USL-W level.
The WPSL has a clause in its membership manual allowing for a two year "pause", which City are going to take advantage of, before re-opening that branch to "provide that level for those players who, are primarily focused more on their college development, and that's probably going to be the end of their competitive soccer careers."
The more teams, the more opportunities women have to play, but more clubs at more levels offers people a better chance of finding their level instead of warming the bench at a higher level.
How can you provide those players with those opportunities to play at a high level? But still be in a pro environment as well. So we think there's a place for both leagues.
Sioux Falls City is riding a wave but, like a well-coached team on the pitch, its shape remains.
I think it can be adaptable, flexible, but as long as you're keeping your core values and your main priorities at the core, then you're okay. You know, it's when you start bending your core values (that problems occur).
It is both a compressed and a fluid timeline, with a hopeful professional presence from South Dakota by 2027. With the Professional League Standards as they currently are written, division 1 women's leagues need 75% of their teams in TV markets of 750,000 - which Sioux Falls is not. Super League's got eight teams, but they have two teams that are underneath that 750,000 so they're right at the 75%.
We're cheering for more big cities to join because even if we were already in 2025 to do that, unless they had another big city join the league to offset another small market club like us coming on board, we couldn't do it.
De May is firm in his resolve that the club expands according to its needs rather than because of a league, with every league a possible destination for their sides. He is however, also insistent that they have an ongoing and healthy relationship with WPSL.
We just think that both leagues have something to offer and we're trying to navigate that the way through that to make it happen and At this point, we felt we needed to make the jump to USLW to do that with clearly stating to WPSL, hey, our intention is not to leave you.
In fact, De May foresees some professional reserve teams in the WPSL PRO.
I think that's a very sustainable path for the league. We envision ourselves taking part in that.
We will be watching. Stay tuned to our coverage.
The sadness of an Open Cup half-empty
The 110 year old Lamar Hunt US Open Cup is being threatened by current events. The regional governing body Concacaf have seemingly sided with MLS. Since the facts have been well-covered by others, I'm gonna stick with the light that the tournament brings and the emotional attachment many have to it. At the time of publication, the format for this year (and future years) has not yet been made public, and we will update you when it is.
Multiple rounds of Open Division Qualifiers for the Open Cup are conducted by teams of hard-working amateurs. The amateur team that lasts longest gets $25000. It's the same for the longest lasting D2 pro and D3 pro teams. Call me naïve if you want, but I feel like the Open Division is the best of us as a football nation. I love the amateur clubs who play their way through to face the professionals, and especially those who win such matches. This site wouldn't exist without our passion for amateur football. Others prefer the pride-filled matches between teams in different professional divisions, or different leagues at the same level. Also, let me say it is a travesty that women's football doesn't have a parallel tournament to the one we're discussing here. Nonetheless, the Cup is the connective tissue of of US football's body.
I have a t-shirt from thecup.us, it celebrates the historic clubs to have won the title 4 times. Working with that site for the last few years, it has provided me a privileged window into this tournament and provided a personal, emotional tie between me in flyover country and this vast, messy country. It's a landscape where Bethlehem Steel in Pennsylvania and Maccabee Los Angeles are the most successful clubs ever, and where a stunning panoply of teams from across the nation have won at least once.
It's ongoing history too, back in 2018, I was privileged to witness chaos on the turf when Dakota Fusion travelled to University of Minnesota Duluth and played out a 4-4 draw with Duluth FC. The game ended in a spectacular penalty shootout victory for the home side. It was the only time North Dakota has seen itself reflected in national football. DFC have qualified for the tournament again this year, this is their pinned tweet:
https://twitter.com/DuluthFC/status/1734708795975082333
I firmly believe that if the Cup did not exist, it wouldn't be created now and the fear is that any withdrawal by professional sides now will be difficult to reverse. Maybe the cancellations due to Covid 19 in 2020 and 2021 gave some people the impression that the history can be taken for granted.
There is an emerging belief among some football followers that amateur clubs should concentrate on the USASA Amateur Cup, but even that has a carrot at the end in the form of participation in the US Open Cup.
I believe that the Open Cup folding would also put a damper on the division 2 and 3 men's clubs who have no promotion to a higher division to dream of, and therefore can dream (sometimes even realize) victories against those larger clubs. These games provide a spotlight to professional players seeking to move up, as well as to pre-draft prospects from colleges big and small in a way that March Madness does for basketball. They provide a spotlight to the volunteers who literally make fields playable and clubs function.
It's not perfect, but it is a festival of possibility in a country where football is otherwise wedged into silos and I believe that unwinding MLS participation is the start of a steady process of debasing the tournament in a way which is very difficult to reverse and the horizon will seem darker without it.