How the NWSL is adjusting to its new normal without drafts

Photo Credit: Jessica Alcheh-USA TODAY Sports

Since 2012, each Friday of the annual United Soccer Coaches Convention – which is currently taking place in Chicago – was typically National Women’s Soccer League Draft day. This year, the convention center ballroom sits empty.

The NWSL eliminated all drafts, collegiate and expansion, last summer upon the ratification of a new collective bargaining agreement, which goes into full effect next week. In doing so, the NWSL became the first major U.S. professional sports league to eliminate the entry draft entirely.

Now, incoming college players are free agents just like every other out-of-contract player in the NWSL – which is also a brand-new concept as of last summer.

Everyone, from incoming professional players to coaches, general managers and agents, is trying to make sense of the new system in the first offseason in league history without a draft.

“This is the Wild, Wild West,” Racing Louisville FC interim general manager Caitlyn Milby said this week. “No one knows what’s happening. No one knows how to do it. No one knows if they are doing it right. We won’t know if we’re doing it right for a little bit of time.”

The benefits for players are obvious: a freedom of choice that did not previously exist. The old system, which is still predominantly how other major U.S. sports operate, gave the worst teams in the league first access to the best college players via a reverse draft order, all in the name of parity. The result through the years, as several NWSL teams were plagued by scandals, was top players forgoing the NWSL Draft or refusing to play for the team that selected them, and instead negotiating their futures abroad.

Players leaving college now negotiate mutually with teams like their more experienced colleagues do upon entering free agency.

“It was definitely a bit surprising, but I think just being able to have control in your journey and in my own process was definitely kind of a really cool opportunity,” said defender Lilly Reale, who signed for NJ/NY Gotham FC in January after a standout college career at UCLA. “[It] just definitely caught me by surprise, but for the most part, it was a really awesome situation. Couldn’t have been more grateful for it.”