Remember last year when we spoke to the WPSL PRO project director? If not, you can catch up on that conversation here. While priorities haven't changed, the timeline has, with March 2028 now marking the point when the world's largest amateur women's soccer league will have a fully professional division, slotted in below the dueling D1s of NWSL and USL Super League and with visions of a two-tiered model to completely link the existing short-season amateur clubs and the full March to November professionals. We sat down with director Gina Prodan Kelly to get caught up on the embryonic league.
Right now we're so unclear, disconnected in soccer that, you know, pursuing a career in any part of soccer is really nebulous and it's like, you take some shots in the dark. There's no connectivity across player pathways. It's not easy to pursue a career, you know, as a referee, as a coach... especially if you're a woman or a member of an underrepresented part of the population. So what we kept hearing was we all need to go at something together. We want this league to be a gathering force. So we want to bring as many people to the table, not to design by committee, but to fully understand the full scope of the full landscape.
The launch in 2028 will be in one region, probably in the East, with a gradual rollout to other regions and with the idea that opponents in each region will be within easy driving distance of one another. The national involvement comes in postseason as it does in countless other leagues in this country.
There's no reason why, in a country where we consistently outperform the planet in women's soccer, we shouldn't have a stronger ecosystem, and we shouldn't have a complete pyramid. And that's what we're setting out to build. And we want to build this league with the stakeholders in mind
So why the delay? Prodan Kelly gave a few reasons, not least of which is the desire for clubs launching into the professional space to be able to pay their players a living wage.
The exact number of participants is not yet set but is expected to be between 12 and 16 at launch, with gradual year-on-year growth.
Our goal is to have an incubator program and an accelerator program. The incubator would be launched in WPSL and with full transparency, we'd love to be able to work with USL as well and have a team in USLW or in WPSL as your incubator.
NSJ: Is there a possibility of a longer season amateur league to bridge the gap with the professional level? Because I know many WPSL teams will play between 8 and 12 games. I think it's 10 around here normally. And then moving them to 16 to 20 before they go into a professional, which is gonna be 24 to 30 typically.
That is something we have talked about, and I know WPSL in particular is considering, but what I think is when we think about the idea of an accelerating incubator, is it starting in a summer league, and then is there a middle league? The challenge there would be players because WPSL right now is very heavily college players. So that's something where we'd have to clearly understand who those players are. You know how many players there are. Are teams able to get those who are like post-collegiate or high school? But we just need to make sure the teams we have on board for it are on board for that. Everybody's like, let's get through sanctioning and figure it out, but it's still an active conversation. We're just trying to not commit to it until we feel confident it's going to happen. We'd love to do it because it would be a shame not to play in 27.
Next month, through to Fall, we will be running a series of profiles of key areas of the country where WPSL PRO is looking to make a difference. The league's statistics show that 35,000 elite women are fighting for 625 professional roster spots. Our profiles begin with the enterprising Texans of Austin Rise FC.
