Hello M.Washo checking into the Fan Corner

September 2009 MW blog
Hello Freedom fans,
I decided that since we are on the eve of the 2010 WPS expansion draft, it might be a good idea to post my first Freedom Blog. With everything going on in Social media these days, it is tough to break through the clutter, however we believe it is important for fans following our team to have places where they can seek official information. Therefore, I will be posting from time to time on both Big Soccer, as well as on the Freedom Fan corner pages on our website www.washingtonfreedom.com
We are creating 3 profiles on as many social networking mediums as possible (Freedom Front Office- official team news or DCFreedom on Twitter and Washington Freedom on Face book, plus our good friend Glory). We are also encouraging all of our players to be active on social media as well, so please search out your favorite Freedom players, we hope you enjoy following them (the one’s active at least- we’re working on it).
Following are a few updates from the GM’s desk:
Expansion Draft
For those of you following the rules of the expansion draft, each WPS team is only allowed to protect 10 players. If/when a player is chosen, teams can then pull back two players, and each existing WPS team can only lose 3 players. Our coaching staff had difficult decisions protecting only 10, and if we had our way we wouldn’t lose any players in this draft. Being able to only protect 10 players means a handful of starting players or players who saw good playing time had to be left unprotected. However, the mere fact we are having an expansion draft is clearly good news for WPS. The more teams in WPS, means the league is able to extend our reach and foot-print in the US which helps attract fans, ticket buyers and new sponsors to the league. I am sure you will all see the news of players selected by WPS expansion teams. I believe Steve Goff got his hands on our protected list not too long ago, search him out on Twitter and you will see it if you haven’t already.
Freedom players on loan or playing over-seas
We have a lot of Freedom players actively playing either on loan or training with foreign teams. Ali Krieger is with FC Frankfurt, Sonia Bompastor is with PSG in France, Sawa is at NTV Beleza in Japan (Rebecca Moros and Joanna Lohman are training with this team as well thanks to Sawa), Lisa De Vanna is with Perth Glory in Australia, Sarah Senty is training in Sweden, and Sarah Huffman is still looking at various options to play as is Alex Singer. Cat and Abby will be active with the US National team. We wish all our players good luck and much success keeping soccer fit during the WPS off-season.
Busy time for the front office
While the technical/team side of the Freedom have been busy preparing for the expansion draft, plus scouting college games and working on player loans etc… our front office has been heavy into 2010 business planning and budgeting. We are also strong into our season ticket renewal campaign, as well as new season ticket sales. We have great new pricing and package offerings for 2010. We are also in many, many active new corporate partnership discussions for 2010. We feel very energized and excited by many of the sponsor conversations we are in at the moment. Hopefully in future blog posts I’ll be able to share good sponsorship news with all our fans. We need the support of corporate America in order for this league to survive.
Grassroots Marketing/special events
Even though we are done playing WPS games this season, we are still out and about in the soccer community this fall. We are trying to attend as many youth soccer tournaments and games as we can, plus attending all United and US Soccer games at RFK. Please visit our website often for event updates and appearances. We also have a handful of players staying here in the DC area; players like Bri, KJ, Erin McLeod, and Emily Janss have offered to go on appearances for the Freedom in the off-season. Cat Whitehill is attending the Greater Washington Sports Alliance Sneaker ball tomorrow night for example. Last but not least, we are planning a handful of off-season special events; we will keep everyone posted via official team announcements (Corporate/community and season ticket events).
This closes the brief update on the eve of the WPS expansion draft. I’ll check back soon with relevant information and updates as we feel is necessary. As always, we appreciate all of our fans support and your help spreading the word about the Freedom. We got off to a great start in 2009, but there are a lot more exciting things in store for next season.
Thank you again for the support!
Mark Washo
www.twitter.com/mwasho_dcgm