NE Mutiny Moves to New League
- Updated: December 15, 2015
Photo credit: New England Mutiny
The New England Mutiny, who garnered plenty of success in the WPSL over the past decade, will play in the newly-formed United Women’s Soccer league (UWS) next year.
According to a masslive.com report, the move comes in the wake of a 2015 campaign in which there were grumblings about the WPSL’s scheduling and playoff seeding.
“We were getting to get a little disenchanted with what was going on,” Mutiny owner Joe Ferrara told masslive.com. “There was a bit of a debacle with the playoff structure and facilities were less than adequate at some of our matches.”
After the Mutiny reeled off a record of 8-1-0 during the 2015 regular season, they were immediately confronted with playoff scheduling snafus. Originally, the Mutiny were set to meet Seacoast United Phantoms in Medford, Mass. in the East Regional semifinals before the New Hampshire outfit dropped out due to lack of players.
The WPSL briefly awarded the win to the Mutiny before reshuffling the playoff field. As a result, the Mutiny were tasked with playing Yankee Lady FC in Trumbull, Ct., a game which the Longmeadow, Mass. side won before succumbing to the Boston Breakers Reserves in the East Regional Final.
The WPSL did not immediately return a request for comment regarding its playoff structure and facility standards.
Despite its longstanding affiliation with the WPSL, Ferrara, who’s helping spearhead the new league, is optimistic about starting anew.
“It was pretty much born from the idea of a group of like-minded organizations across the country,” Ferrara said. “But particularly here in the Northeast, of having a league where the standards are high … to fall in line with being a second division team tier under the National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL).”
The UWS is set to officially launch on Wednesday. In addition to the Mutiny, the league will also include fellow WPSL exile Lancater Inferno, as well as a trio of New York-based outfits formerly of the W-League, which folded last month.
Ferrara said that UWS will be a true national league, and will have two regional conferences. The season will kick off during the first weekend in May, and he said that players and supporters alike will see a much better product than the one they’d been accustomed to seeing in recent years.
“First and foremost, it’s providing a professional experience for the players and for the fans,” Ferrara said. “The teams in this league are committed and go through a screening process in terms of the minimum standards that should be met, because players need to play in proper facilities, they need proper training methodology, when you go on the road, there needs to showers — just basic, simple stuff like that.”
Ferrara, whose Mutiny reached the WPSL finals in 2007 and semifinals in 2013, believes that the UWS will provide clubs a better alternative to the WPSL.
“We’re really excited to go into this new direction,” Ferrara said. “It was very important that we had teams that were joining the league that were of the same mindset that we were. To see the quality of teams that are forming this new league, both regionally and nationally, is something that we’re really excited about.”
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