As the National Women’s Soccer League plays its championship game on Saturday, a group of Black players and allies will host an event to highlight young players with the potential to go on to college or professional careers.
More than 20 young players from around the country will join coaches, scouts, agents and professional football players in a three-day event that begins Saturday at Prairie View A&M, a historically black land-grant university in Prairie View, Texas.
The Next Wave Showcase is the result of a partnership between the Black Women’s Player Collective and Black Star, which aims to foster the growth of soccer in Black communities. BWPC is a nonprofit organization founded in 2020 by Black players from the National Women’s Soccer League.
Imani Dorsey, who played for Gotham FC and the Utah Royals and retired this season after eight years in the NWSL, said one of the organization’s missions is to increase opportunities for Black girls and women at all levels of sports. Only 12% of this year’s NWSL players self-identified as black.
“This is definitely a step up as we continue to build and increase our championship program and increase the kind of impact we hope to have,” Dorsey said. “It’s been very important to us from the beginning to try to continue to create avenues and opportunities for young girls, especially black girls, to increase their representation and how much exposure they get in soccer.”
Now that the NWSL is in place, events like this are valuable to players. abolished the college draft. The Gainbridge Super League, which sits at the top of the U.S. women’s soccer pyramid along with the NWSL, also just completed its first season and is operating without a draft.
This was the first year that players aimed to go pro without being drafted. The Next Wave Showcase, sponsored by Allstate, is designed to get players still in the high school level into the pipeline so they don’t have to start from scratch.
NWSL has addressed the larger problem of talent identification by: Addition of player combine. The first two will be held in Florida in December. One combine will be for players ages 18 to 23, and the other will be for players ages 13 to 17. Approximately 60 players are invited to each combine, with players selected based on input from across the soccer ecosystem.
“We definitely plan on continuing to grow this,” said Patrick Rose, Director of Black Star and Cultural Marketing at Four Soccer. “This is our first event so we’re really excited to be hosting our first event, but we really hope that this is kind of a stepping stone for us to do a lot more down the road, especially as the game continues to grow, as the women’s game grows. I think this is an opportunity to build on this foundation and it’s going to be something that players, coaches and people looking for talent can look forward to for years to come.”
The three-day showcase, which is free to invitees, will not only focus on soccer, but also cover topics that are often overlooked in competitive sports, such as college admissions, career planning, nutrition, and mental health.
The Texas showcase will coincide with the celebrations surrounding the NWSL Championship Game between Gotham and the Washington Spirit on Saturday in San Jose, California.
“It’s hard no matter what level you’re at. You don’t always know what to do and there are times when you need support and guidance. There are a lot of things we can do to help with that transition, whether it’s the transition to soccer or life after soccer,” Dorsey said. “We know that Black women’s experiences are always layered, complex, and difficult, and sometimes it helps to have someone to talk to about that.”
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