Reviews, courage dominates, and Rose Lavelle dazzles

If Lisa Baird had planned a first week of the National Women’s Soccer League’s return, it’s hard to imagine it would have gone much better than before.

The NWSL is now a little over a week in their Challenge Cup, with a couple of matches for Tuesday, but we’ve already seen high profile performance on a website that has had no reported health injuries and a wider than expected audience and settling into a new normal .

So what are the biggest takeaways so far?

Women’s football has wide appeal

The league’s opener on CBS didn’t just break previous records for viewership – it broke them.

There are important lessons to be learned from this data. The biggest of these is what decision-makers should have been aware of for a long time: bring quality women’s football to a place that people can easily access, market it properly, and the audience will follow. To understand this, one only has to watch the national team’s growing audience, and some who are still trying to differentiate between club and national team football in this country seem more silly than ever.

It’s not just the crowd, either: Sky Blue FC broke its previous one-day merchandise sales brands when the team released their latest kits.

“Sky Blue FC had over $ 30,000 in merchandise sales on June 25, an all-time high for the club,” said a club press release. “This almost doubled the club’s previous daily record. The best-selling product of the two days was the 2020 main jersey, which accounted for more than half of total sales. “

Sky Blue FC is like an argument for the accessibility of women’s football in the microcosm. They moved to another location and the number of visitors exploded. They added a proactive, responsive GM in Alyse LaHue and attracted players rather than repelling them. Then they put together a marketing plan and made it easy for people to buy the merchandise, and fans did.

The team is still a work in progress – how much of one is hard to say as any squad that is freed from high-profile attacking talents Carli Lloyd and Mallory Pugh before the start of the games will face trouble. But it’s another example of the reality of women’s sports in America: just make it a little easier, and people will.

As for the reviews themselves, don’t turn around and blame NWSL for no longer having games on terrestrial television. Lisa Baird doesn’t take calls from CBS executives begging to put more games on CBS and refuses to force the network to keep them on CBS All Access, a paid app, instead.

But aside from the potential for CBS to televise more games on either the main network or the CBS Sports Network – this sets a different bar for things ranging from the number of games on TV in the next two seasons of a three-year contract with the league and CBS, not to mention later TV deals.

It’s a lonely data point, but one that will help shape the next steps.

North Carolina’s courage is what we thought it was

We are in the middle of the Courage Era in NWSL, and it was true no matter what happened in Utah this summer. But the fleeting, altered nature of the league suggested that circumstances might weaken some of the defending champions’ dominance.

The early returns suggest: No, the size remains.

To give you a feel for it, the Courage beat the Chicago Red Stars, last season’s finalists, 15-5 in Sunday’s matchup. Abby Erceg scored late to give the courage a 1-0 win and a 3-0 start. Here’s how Erceg described the post-game performance:

“Our performance in the first half wasn’t as good as we would have liked. When we got out [for the second half], we wanted to be a little sharper, a little faster. We took advantage of that in a standard situation, and of course I was very happy about that. “

That means: dominance has become routine. They do it without their first-round pick, Ally Watt, who lost for the season to a cruciate ligament rupture after injuring herself in the opener. It’s just a machine, and while knockout games are a chance for an underdog to shock the world, it would be really shocking if anyone other than Courage wins this season.

Rose Lavelle looks like an MVP

It’s a real team effort that makes North Carolina’s courage so hard to beat, which actually works against the MVP cases of people like Lynn Williams and Debinha, who will both be joining this conversation.

But it’s hard to find a player whose fortunes rise and fall more with her performance than Rose Lavelle, who has managed to reach the level in Utah that has been expected of her since the Boston Breakers made her first choice in the draft 2017.

Now with the Washington Spirit, this video sums up how she played with the rest of the league.

Or there is this, a more substantial example.

It is noticeable that lavelle, although it is still young in every respect, has been shown to have an effect on its surroundings. Coach Richie Burke credits her for helping Andi Sullivan improve in the game, and Ashley Hatch has looked more dangerous at Lavelle’s side too.

“Yes, I love playing with Hatchy,” Lavelle said at a press conference earlier this month. “I think she works so hard and does so many runs behind but can also combine great things – I love when I have a striker that I can bounce off and slip through, so I love being with her and to play with me. “I’m happy to play with her.”

Lavelle is 25 and has already established herself well in the national team conversation. But this performance in front of several USWNT representatives will only consolidate their future as a supporting pillar.