W-Soccer: WPSL Update

[DanFreibergerForHeisman]

The 2012 regular season is over and there has been quite a bit of SMU news.

American Eagles (based in Irving) added Shelby Redman, Allegra Nigh, and Emily Hairston who all played a significant role with the team. They qualified for the playoffs and will be playing this Wednesday or Thursday at Oklahoma FC with the winner advancing to face FC Dallas with a WPSL final four berth on the line.

FC Dallas won their division with an impressive 12-1-0 record (and a 61-9 goal differential) and featured seven SMU players during the season.

Courtney Webb settled in as the top goalkeeper and had a nice season, including a run of three straight clean sheets at one point.

Leslie Briggs scored a ton of goals (statistics are not very accurate unfortunately but it is well over a goal per game) and also was honored with a WPSL player of the week award which is impressive in a 71-team league with a 12-week season...

Laura Flanagan played a significant role on defense and also pitched in with some scoring.

Kaitlyn Eidson was a presence on defense in the games she played (now we know why she probably missed a few games here and there...)

Katherine Cox was a starter on defense earlier in the season but disappeared. Kenzie Scovill also played a bit.

But, the big SMU revelation with FC Dallas this summer has been Courtney Smith. She joined the team a couple of weeks into the season and instantly became the first choice left back. She has looked perfectly at home anchoring a back line with the likes of Eidson and Alina Garciamendez (Stanford, Mexican national team). The highlight of the summer for me was one time when Smith looked totally comfortable in a sequence of one-touch passes with Casey Nogueira and Kerri Hanks as the team moved the ball through the midfield. It will be exciting to see her bring this experience and confidence back to The Hilltop this fall!

FC Dallas starts their playoffs this weekend (no time announced yet).

Unfortunately, the WPSL can suffer some attrition at playoff time with the colleges calling players back for conditioning earlier and earlier each summer. I can't imagine the players getting better soccer experience than the WPSL playoffs but I guess each coach has to make his/her decision based on what is best for their program. Hopefully, the SMU players will all have the chance to be involved in their playoffs this week (and next week if they win).

[DanFreibergerForHeisman]

By the way, FC Dallas "refused" to participate in the WPSL playoffs, so there wasn't any game this weekend.

Apparently, there was some discrepancy between what was presented to the teams at the general meetings this spring and what the league actually did with the playoffs so FC Dallas said screw it.

So, no more SMU WPSL action this season and we are left counting down the days until the team reports - which I believe is August 1.

At least we have the US WNT in the Olympics to tide us over until the exhibition match against Missouri (which is only 20 days away!!!!!)