As her college graduation approached, UCLA midfielder Sofia Cook had a choice to make. Did she want to take her last year of college eligibility, or did she want to turn pro? In previous years, she could have thrown her name into the National Women’s Soccer League draft, crossed her fingers and hoped for the best. Now, thanks to the work of the NWSL Players Association’s advocacy for draft elimination, her future was entirely in her own hands.
With the abolishment of the draft, players coming out of college now have more control over their destinies, which was part of Cook’s motivation to begin her professional playing career and when NJ/NY Gotham FC showed interest, she knew it was the perfect place for her.
“It felt nice to have a say and be able to control your own destiny so you’re not ending up in a city you don’t necessarily have to live in,” Cook said, noting that Gotham’s location and style of play were significant draws for her to sign with the NJ/NY side. “I definitely wanted to play here.”
With the elimination of the draft comes not only increased opportunity for player choice, but a new ecosystem of college recruitment strategies for the various NWSL teams. Instead of the bottom-of-the-table teams getting first dibs at the best players coming out of college, teams must now attract top talent, while accounting for club identity, roster needs and the salary cap..
“We see the college draft going away as an incredible opportunity,” Gotham FC general manager Yael Averbuch West says. “College players are now being viewed and assessed in relation to the rest of the talent pool. We’re really excited about the depth of talent in the college game, and we’re watching those players.”
Building and maintaining a club identity
Bay FC’s Sporting Director Matt Potter knows a thing or two about successful NWSL rosters, having coached the Kansas City Current to an NWSL championship appearance in 2022. As he works through recruitment in the offseason at Bay FC, he is fully focused on maintaining the club identity and scouting players who will not only complement the roster, but develop and thrive.
“We already had a process in place that we were following in terms of monitoring and tracking players,” Potter says. “Once the draft went away, it was very clear that ownership saw this as an opportunity versus some people who have seen it as, ‘what are we going to do now?’”
Bay has added several new hires into its scouting department, including a head of global scouting and recruitment and two domestic leads. Between them, the club covers the whole gamut of available talent from professional to college to youth and wants to become known as a club for player development.
“We want to make sure we capture the domestic market really well and then obviously complement that with the international markets,” Potter says. “We already had these processes in place and [with the draft elimination] it’s becoming bigger and broader for us, because it’s a key point of emphasis.”
This offseason, Bay FC has brought in several college signings: midfielder Taylor Huff (Florida State), forward Karlie Lema (California) and midfielder Hannah Bebar (Duke). Without the constraints of the draft, Bay FC seized on the opportunity to be able to find out more about the player on both a performance and personal level, identifying a more well-rounded and mutually beneficial fit.
“With the draft there were four rounds and everybody fought for those top five picks, and then really it’s about a scramble for fit in the draft and what we recognize is important to us,” Potter says. “Now we’ve been able to say, we really feel the group that we have was a culture fit.”
