Jerry West, eat your heart out

Our summer session is coming to an end. There are 2 games left and then the “fall” (though starting in August) session begins shortly after. And I have a problem. Finding talented women soccer players in Northern Virginia is sandpaper-instead-of-toilet-paper rough. I don’t know what it is, but seemingly every team in our league and others is looking for female players. Male players are a dime a dozen. I told Deep Cover last night that if I needed to register a full male team and put them on the field by Sunday I could do it. I think I could with a day to spare. So now I’m on this journey trying to replace no less than 5 pretty good female players who are leaving for various reasons, including but not limited to job and school.

I’ve only been co-steering (as in, co-captain) this ship for a season and a half. Our first year we were a coed team comprised almost entirely of randoms who didn’t know one-another thrown together on a soccer field. One might draw the conclusion that we wouldn’t do very well. One would be right: we won 3 of 24 games and tied 3 others. Oh, and one of those wins was a forfeit. The 2nd season brought 7 wins. Last year was our 3rd season and, due to various departures and also my willingness to get involved, I became a co-captain and did most of the recruiting. Roughly 50% of our roster was new and we started out with a string of victories back-to-back (6 or 7 games) and ended up winning more than half of our games. We returned mostly the same roster for this session (we’re playing 2 shorter sessions instead of 1 long season in this new league) and have enjoyed decent success. With the end of the session I’m back to needing new female players.

Recruiting is not an exact science. There are places online where you can go to find players, such as playerlists.com where you can post an ad as a team looking for players or post an ad as a player looking for a team. It’s not limited to soccer but soccer is mostly what you’ll find. Think of it as match.com for athletes. Without the pictures. Or the dating. Ok, maybe that was a bad comparison. I have other mechanisms that I use but I won’t reveal them – trade secrets, you know. This one’s going to be difficult because there is little time between now and the start of the “fall”. Here’s hoping I can work my magic and put a quality side on the field when we get back up and running.

In the meantime… if any of you bloggers/readers are/happen to know a female soccer player with measurable experience, feel free to contact me/us. There’s an e-mail link on my profile thingy. Hey, I’ll take what help I can get.