SJSU will be the practice home of the club for its inaugural season in the National Women’s Soccer League, which kicks off March 17 against Angel City in Los Angeles. Bay FC will play its home games at PayPal Park.

The team had 23 players take the practice field Tuesday, though a few were missing, notably Barcelona’s Asisat Oshoala and Madrid’s Racheal Kundananji, a pair of prolific scorers and two of the best players in Europe who will be joining the squad soon.

Until Tuesday, the club had been couch-hopping from place to place while practicing on three different training grounds in a hectic preseason that began in early February.

“We’re excited to be in Northern California, for the players to get settled in,” said head coach Albertin Montoya, the longtime club director at Mountain View Los Altos. “That’s really important. And for the coaching staff to get into their offices and get the lay of the land. Now we’ve got a great field here in San Jose State that we’re looking forward to playing on. We’re excited to get home and get started.”

Montoya began Tuesday’s training session by calling his team together and congratulating Scarlett Camberos, a former player with the Mexican women’s national team, on Mexico’s 2-0 victory over the United States in the CONCACAF Gold Cup on Monday. It was just the second time Mexico has beaten the U.S. women in 43 tries, and the first since 2010.

Montoya’s job will be to elevate the level of play of a talented roster that includes several players like Camberos, who have already been tested at the international level.

Historically, it’s been hard for expansion teams in the NWSL to make an immediate impact. The San Diego Wave is the only team to have been competitive in its first year as an expansion franchise.

But Bay FC has already invested heavily in its roster while luring several top players from Europe, including Kundananji, who commanded an estimated $789,000 transfer fee that set a new worldwide record for women’s soccer.

Deyna Castellanos, the captain of the Venezuela women’s national team and a proven goal-scorer who could operate out of an attacking midfield role for Bay FC, said the talented roster has big expectations.

“Winning the league, winning everything,” she said. “That’s the goal for all of us. We know it will be a hard year for us but we’re here to take the challenge. We like that.”

Montoya has been vocal about his desire to play a possession-heavy brand of soccer out of a 4-3-3 formation. General manager Lucy Rushton tried to recruit players who could fit. And through two preseason games, Bay FC out-possessed Angel City and San Diego, Montoya said.

“Preseason went really well for us,” he said. “We achieved what we wanted to do, getting the team to understand the way we want to possess the ball. And also controlling the tempo of the game as much as possible.”

Montoya wants to play out of the back with possession rather than using a more freestyle approach of clearing the ball up the field to escape danger.

“Obviously it’s a different style that most of the players are not used to,” Castellanos said. “But they’re getting what Albertin is asking from us. That’s something we wanted.”

Melissa Lowder, a former Santa Clara University standout competing to be the team’s starting goalie, said Montoya’s desire to play calmly out of the back has encouraged the players to solve problems.

“We were able to do that, build confidence playing out of the back under pressure in a real game scenario against a real opponent,” she said.

Bay FC will rely on some veteran center backs to control the tempo.

The club will likely deploy two-time NWSL champion Emily Menges, 31, and former Arsenal standout Jen Beattie, 32, to lead the squad from the back line, though Kayla Sharples, 26, has had a strong preseason and could push for playing time.

Savy King, the team’s first-round pick at No. 2 overall out of North Carolina, is transitioning from center back to left back, while veteran Caprice Dydasco is expected to play right back.

Positions have yet to be decided upon, however, as Montoya has made it a point to make every player earn their starting spot, no matter their pedigree.

“The coaches have really pushed us,” Lowder said. “We’ll be excited to show that to everybody.”

Montoya also wants his team to press high up the pitch to create quick counter-attacking opportunities.

“That’s going to be part of our DNA, hunting the ball down, having a mentality of winning it back as soon as possible,” he said.

It’s the trendy way of playing the game at the highest levels across the world. The question is whether or not Bay FC will have enough time to get its fitness and chemistry right before their first match on March 17.

“The chemistry has been absolutely incredible,” Montoya said. “Now the challenge is going to be when these other players arrive, because we have some really good players coming in who will have an immediate impact.”

Bay FC will continue training at SJSU until leaving for Los Angeles ahead of its season opener. The club plans to open practices to the public at some point this season.

Good first impressions, though, weren’t limited to Bay FC’s side.

When all the pieces come together#BayFC #WeCameToPlay @MayaDoms pic.twitter.com/0oPhe1gVG1

— Bay Football Club (@wearebayfc) February 21, 2024

San Diego’s Elyse Bennett also scored a goal and assisted on the game-winning goal in her first game with the Wave, which handed Bay FC a 2-1 loss at the Empire Polo Grounds in Indio. Bennett, the daughter of former Green Bay Packers star Edgar Bennett, set up Amirah Ali’s winning goal at the 78-minute mark.

Bay FC had tied the match at 1-1 eight minutes into the second half when Doms one-timed a corner kick into the net from 10 yards out to set off an exuberant celebration.

“I got a little too excited for a scrimmage, maybe .. but it felt really good,” said Doms, a former star midfielder at Stanford who was the eighth overall pick in the recent NWSL draft.

Bay FC will be back in action at the Coachella Valley Invitational on Saturday, when the Bay Area squad faces Angel City at 1 p.m.

On Tuesday, the club announced it has signed 23-year-old Zambian striker Racheal Kundananji from Madrid CFF. According to multiple reports, Bay FC paid a transfer fee of €735,000 — nearly $800,000 — which is nearly double the world record for a women’s soccer league. The move makes Kundananji the most expensive women’s soccer player in the world.

Kundananji scored 25 goals in the 2022-23 season, second-most in her league. The 24-year-old has represented Zambia in the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup in Australia and in the Tokyo 2020 Summer Olympics.

She has signed with the club through 2027 with an option for the 2028 season, Bay FC said in a release. Kundananji will be added to the team’s roster once she receives her visa.

“We are delighted to add Racheal to our group,” Bay FC General Manager Lucy Rushton said in a news release. “She is a tremendous talent with dynamic attacking qualities and an incredible physical profile who has produced for both club and country. Racheal has a composure in front of goal and a natural ability to score with different types of finishes and from various locations. We believe she will continue to grow and develop at our club, showcasing her skillset and adding to the array of exciting attacking talent we have here.”

The Kundananji acquisition comes less than two weeks after Bay FC signed Asisat Oshoala, one of the best women’s players in the world, from FC Barcelona.

The club is currently in Southern California for preseason training and will play in the Coachella Valley Invitational preseason tournament in Indio this weekend. Bay FC opens its regular season March 16 with a road date at Angel City FC in Los Angeles.

Bay FC is one of two teams joining the NWSL this season — along with the Utah Royals — to bring America’s top women’s soccer league to 14 teams.

In the Bay Area, Bay FC will compete with the San Jose Earthquakes of the MLS as well as the Oakland Roots (USL Championship) and Oakland Soul (USL W League) for attention. Kundananji could very well be the biggest attraction in the region.

“This is the culmination of a lot of work behind the scenes,” Bay FC director of scouting and strategy Austin Buchanan said in the release. “Due to the club and ownership group’s continued support and drive to raise the bar across women’s sport, we are able to bring a true young talent like Racheal to the league. After what has been over a year’s worth of work seen come to fruition, I cannot wait to welcome Racheal to Bay FC and the NWSL.”

Thursday, it was announced which team completed the stunning deal: Bay FC.

The expansion franchise will pay a reported fee of about $162,000 to lure Oshoala to the Bay Area, where she’ll join a nearly full roster that has been training in Santa Barbara ahead of its first preseason game scheduled for Feb. 20.

Bay FC talent evaluators have been scouting in Europe for months to prepare for a moment like this one, and the club now has a face and a name to be the star of the franchise in its inaugural season.

“To have the opportunity to add a player of Asisat’s quality, experience and winning pedigree to our roster is an exciting and important day for the club and the NWSL,” Bay FC general manager Lucy Rushton said in a statement. “She brings a top-class mentality to the field combined with pace and technical ability that allows her to lead the line, while also giving those players around her the license to be creative and thrive in space. Asisat is a proven goal-scorer at the most elite levels of world football, and she comes here to continue that with Bay FC.”

Oshoala, a Nigerian international and six-time African Women’s Footballer of the Year, has played in the last three World Cups in 2015, 2019 and 2023, helping Nigeria advance to the Round of 16 in each of the last two tournaments.

She’s spent the last five seasons at Barcelona, where she scored 107 goals in 149 career appearances. She led Barcelona in scoring in three of her five seasons, tying a league record with 19 goals in 2022, while leading the club to two UEFA Women’s Champions League titles and four league titles.

She was also a nominee for the women’s Ballon d’Or, which goes to the world’s best footballer, in both 2022 and 2023.

Oshoala was reportedly upset with her playing time at Barcelona this season, when she has started just three of the team’s 14 league games, though she has scored eight times. Her contract was set to expire in June.

Pending the receipt of her P-1 visa and International Transfer Certificate, Oshoala will join Bay FC and lock into a contract through 2026 with an option for 2027.

“I know it’s a big change,” she told CBS Sports. “I understand the challenge I have ahead of me. I know anything is possible. It’s just about the mindset. It’s about what we can build together as a team.”

Oshoala said she’s met with Bay FC coach Albertin Montoya and she sees eye-to-eye with the way he wants to play.

“Albertin’s personality will have a positive impact on the girls,” she said. “In terms of style of play I feel like this is a new team. It’s the first year, so players are getting to know each other and getting to play together from the jump is going to be so hard, I’m not going to lie about that.

“The style of football Albertin wants to play is to keep the ball, play attacking football, which I really love as well. And coming from Barca as well will be interesting to have the same pattern of football. In the NWSL it’s majorly about athleticism but I think he wants to do something different. I like his vision. I also understand we’ll need time to get that going, a new team coming into the league, you need time, a couple of months to build to be successful with that pattern of football. But I know it’s something that’s achievable.”

Expansion teams have historically struggled in the NWSL, though the San Diego Wave changed that narrative with a strong debut season in 2022 followed by a 2023 season in which the Wave finished with the league’s best record.

A proven winner at every level, Oshoala said the club needs to “go for everything” this year.

Bay FC will kick off its preseason at the 2024 Coachella Valley Invitational at the Empire Polo Club from Feb. 20-24.

The club’s first regular season game will be in Los Angeles against Angel City on March 16, and the first home game will take place at PayPal Park against the Houston Dash on March 30.

Bay FC, the Bay Area’s expansion franchise in the National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL), announced its full season schedule on Thursday.

The team has already begun preseason training in Santa Barbara as it looks to prepare for a 26-game campaign that will kick off on the road against Angel City FC in Los Angeles on Saturday, March 16.

After a date with the Washington Spirit on the road on Saturday, March 23, Bay FC will return to its training facility at San Jose State ahead to prepare for its inaugural home match March 30 against the Houston Dash at PayPal Park, also the home of the San Jose Earthquakes.

Individual game tickets are not on sale, but season ticket deposits can be made on Bay FC’s website.

“It’s going to be one hell of a team,” general manager Lucy Rushton said Monday at Bay FC’s media day. “We’re going to be really competitive.”

Bay FC will play 13 home games, most of them on the weekends, from March 30 until its final home game on Oct. 19.

Eight of the league’s 14 teams will qualify for the postseason, which begins Nov. 9.

The long season features about one game a week with a long break from July 8 through Aug. 18 while the Paris 2024 Olympics are taking place. During the break, the NWSL will organize a tournament featuring all 14 clubs beginning on July 19.

The promotional schedule for Bay FC’s home games have yet to be released but the club said it plans to host Asian American Heritage Night, Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander (AANHPI) Heritage Night, Pride Night, Juneteenth Night, Latino Heritage Night and more.

All Bay FC matches can be streamed online. The NWSL recently signed a four-year media rights agreement with CBS Sports, ESPN, Prime Video and Scripps Sports. Each regular season weekend will begin with Friday night matches on Prime Video.

All games not on one of those four networks will be available on NWSL+, a free streaming service.

“We have a lot of potential to be really great,” said Bay FC coach Albertin Montoya. “It’s our time to grind, gain some chemistry and see what we’re about. I’m really excited to see where that takes us.”

With their first-ever kit revealed in a conference room of San Jose’s DoubleTree Hotel, the soccer legends realized they had done it, they had completed the checklist of starting an expansion franchise in the National Women’s Soccer League that will begin play in March.

“I just think about what’s going to happen in those jerseys and the life these players are going to breathe into them, the things we’re going to see them do and celebrate with them,” Slaton said. “That’s what gives me goosebumps.”

A chance to see the roster together for the first time, the Bay FC co-owners hosted a media event on Monday afternoon less than two months before they’re to kick off their inaugural season at PayPal Park.

The big question: how does this club, one of two expansion teams along with the Utah Royals, expect to compete in a league that has 12 returning teams and has historically been difficult for expansion teams?

For inspiration, Bay FC is looking at the San Diego Wave, which entered the NWSL as an expansion franchise in 2022 and immediately made a run. The Wave finished third (10-6-6) in its inaugural season and made it all the way to the league semifinals, then won the NWSL Shield with the league’s best regular season record in 2023.

“It was awesome to see San Diego’s success as an expansion team and I’m hoping and foreseeing that’ll be the same for us,” said Alex Loera, the club’s first acquisition who could quarterback the attack from a holding midfield role.

A standout at Santa Clara who won a national title with the Broncos in 2020, Loera expects to fit Bay FC’s possession-based style perfectly as a prolific long-range passer who is comfortable playing any position.

But because Bay FC has needed to build much of its roster through the college draft and the expansion draft, many of the players available to them are on the younger side.

General manager Lucy Rushton tried to counteract the youth by adding several veterans through trades and free agency.

“Getting a player like Alex Loera is a really important piece because she’s got both; she’s really young (24) but has experience in the league,” Rushton said. “For us to get a player like that early, that was a person we could build the team around.”

Rushton then built a back line that will center around 31-year-old Emily Menges, a two-time NWSL Champion and NWSL Shield winner in 10 seasons in the league with Thorns FC.

Getting traded was “very bizarre,” Menges said. “Someone told me when I got picked up by Bay FC that it’s good, I was too comfortable in Portland. I actually think that’s true. This will challenge me in different ways.”

Menges and veteran Caprice Dydasco, a 31-year-old who is one of the most experienced defenders in the NWSL, expect to create a solid back line for coach Albertin Montoya.

Montoya, the longtime Mountain View Los Altos coach who also coached FC Gold Pride, a women’s professional club in the Bay Area that lasted only one season in 2009, said he’s already seen “incredible energy” during optional workouts.

Loera noted, “We had optional training and almost everybody showed up. The culture and the chemistry, you can already feel it. It’s truly going to be an incredible season.”

The club is hoping to get immediate impacts from Savvy King, the No. 2 overall draft pick out of the University of North Carolina, and Maya Doms, a five-year player at Stanford.

And with the international window now open, Rushton expects to add several “big names” to the roster in the next week or two.

“I’m excited that there’s youth on our roster,” said Wagner, a San Jose native and two-time gold medalist while playing for the United States Women’s National Team. “One of the things we set out to do when we first started this club was to be a place of development and opportunity. And I think you’re seeing that reflected in the roster. Yes we have incredible experience with some of the NWSL veterans, but for the most part we’ve got young, hungry talent. That’s where things get exciting.”

The team will travel to Santa Barbara on Tuesday to begin its preseason preparation before it plays in the Coachella Valley Invitational exhibition tournament starting on Feb. 7.

Tickets are on sale for the regular season, which begins in March. The schedule is expected to be released as soon as this week.

Selecting No. 2 and No. 8 overall at the National Women’s Soccer League draft in Anaheim, Bay FC selected King and Doms, respectively, to bolster its roster ahead of its inaugural season.

“I’m so excited and I love the Bay so much and I love the coaches and I can’t wait to see where this next step takes me,” King told reporters at the draft.

King, who turns 19 in February, made headlines in August after UNC coach Anson Dorrance, in his 47th year, called King’s debut “the best first-game performance by a freshman in the history of our program,” according to The Daily Tar Heel.

Reached by email on Friday, Dorrance said Bay FC fans “will love watching her. She is special.”

UNC saw back-to-back players drafted with the first two picks on Friday. The Utah Royals, the other expansion team in the NWSL this year, chose UNC midfielder Ally Sentnor at No. 1 overall before King went No. 2.

“I still can’t believe it,” King said. “I almost cried, because I felt my mom starting to cry. And I was like, ‘I just gotta keep it together, keep it together.’ It’s just surreal. Those are the moments you wait for your whole life. That’s something I’ve been dreaming of forever. To finally have it happen is absolutely amazing.”

King anchored a UNC defense that allowed just seven shots per game while making a run to the College Cup quarterfinals, where the Tar Heels lost to BYU, 4-3. She finished the season leading the team in minutes played and saw the full 90 minutes in 19 of her 23 games, earning her All-ACC Second Team honors.

Leaving North Carolina after just one season “was hard because of how much I really love it at UNC,” she said. “It helped me grow so much. But this was the next step.”

King also has experience playing for the United States Women’s National Team at the U-15, U-17 and U-20 levels. She was one of five nominees for the 2023 U.S. Soccer Young Female Player of the Year.

Welcome to #BayFC, Savy King! #WeCameToPlay #NWSLDraft pic.twitter.com/u4htxnCBQU

— Bay Football Club (@wearebayfc) January 13, 2024

Before landing at Chapel Hill, King was a star at Agoura High School in Southern California, where she was a four-year track and field letterwinner and played wide receiver on the girl’s flag football team. She was the team’s MVP and set school records with six interceptions and four touchdowns in a single game.

King should slide in immediately as an impact center-back for Bay FC, which now has a strong defensive line with fellow center-back Emily Menges, an NWSL champion with Portland in 2017, and fullbacks Caprice Dydasco and Alyssa Malonson.

Doms, selected at No. 8 overall, is a familiar name in the Bay Area.

Born in San Francisco, she prepped at Davis Senior High School before arriving at Stanford in 2019. She won a national championship with the Cardinal while finishing on the All-Pac-12 freshman team during her freshman year, then went on to lead the team in scoring with 25 points as a junior in 2021 and led the team again with 30 points as a fifth-year senior in 2023.

Bay FC also had draft selections at No. 30, No. 34, and No. 55 in Friday night’s draft.

At No. 30 overall, the club selected Jamie Shepherd, a fifth-year senior at BYU who set the record for most career games in the team’s history with 108. A possession-based center-midfielder, she finished her career with 14 goals and 21 assists.

At No. 34 overall, the club chose Caroline Conti, a fifth-year senior from Clemson. The forward put together a remarkable five-year career in which she scored 27 goals with 20 assists for the Tigers.

Bay FC wrapped up its draft with the selection of another BYU player, fifth-year senior defender Laveni Vaka, at No. 55 overall. A Utah native, Vaka represented Tonga at the international level in 2022. She led BYU in minutes played last season, when the Cougars advanced to the College Cup semifinals before losing to Stanford.

Bay FC now has 16 players on its roster. NWSL clubs are allowed to take between 22 and 26 players into the regular season, which begins in March.

By position:

Goalkeepers (one): Katelyn Rowland

Defenders (five): Caprice Dydasco, Savy King, Alyssa Malonson, Emily Menges, Laveni Vaka

Midfielders (six): Joelle Anderson, Dorian Bailey, Maya Doms, Sierra Enge, Alex Loera, Jamie Shepherd

Forwards (four): Tess Boade, Scarlett Camberos, Caroline Conti, Rachel Hill

Rushton left her job at Reading Football Club in England to help start Atlanta United FC as an expansion team in Major League Soccer in 2016. Atlanta won the MLS Cup the very next season.

Friday night was the NWSL expansion draft and Bay FC had the first overall pick, selecting 24-year-old fullback Alyssa Malonson from OL Reign.

“We were really delighted when we saw Alyssa’s name on that sheet,” Rushton said. “She’s a young player. She’s so exciting.  Her ability and her ceiling is so high. Most importantly she fits our style of play. She’s a fullback who wants the ball.”

Bay FC made five selections in the expansion draft to bring its roster to 12 players. Clubs are allowed to take between 22 and 26 players into the regular season, which begins in March.

Rushton said she expects to start utilizing free agency and international signings to build the rest of the roster.

Here’s a breakdown of the players Bay FC selected on Friday and where their roster stands so far.

EXPANSION DRAFT SELECTIONS

No. 1 overall: Alyssa Malonson, 24, defender, OL Reign

Skinny: Bay FC wants outside defenders who can attack, and they’re hoping Malonson can fit the bill. At Auburn, she finished her career as the program’s record holder for games played and games started while playing for five seasons, earning SEC Defender of the Year and second-team All-American in her final season. She played a year professionally in Denmark before making her NWSL debut for OL Reign in June.

No. 3 overall: Tess Boade, 24, midfielder, North Carolina Courage

Skinny: After five years playing for Duke, Boade stayed in North Carolina to join the Courage prior to the 2022 season. She scored one goal with two assists in 13 games with the Courage this season.

No. 5 overall: Rachel Hill, 28, forward, San Diego Wave

Skinny: Hill was a standout at the University of Connecticut, where she was a first-team All-American and finished her career with 61 goals in 89 games, ranking second in program history. She made her professional debut in 2017 and has since played in Australia, Sweden and the United States. She played alongside Rowland in the U-20 World Cup in 2014.

No. 6: Katelyn Rowland, 29, goalkeeper, North Carolina Courage

Skinny: Bay FC wanted a veteran goalkeeper and they got one in Rowland, a Walnut Creek native and four-time NWSL champion. Before her professional career, she set NCAA records for career clean sheets (55) and single-season clean sheets (19) during her collegiate career at UCLA. She was the starting goalie for the United States Women’s Youth National Team in the U-20 World Cup in 2014.

No. 7: Sierra Enge, 23, midfielder, San Diego Wave

Skinny: A national champion while playing for Stanford in 2019, Enge will return to the Bay Area after just one year in San Diego.

PLAYERS ACQUIRED BEFORE THE EXPANSION DRAFT

Alex Loera, 24, defender/midfielder

Acquired: in a trade with the Kansas City Current in exchange for $175,000 in allocation money and protection in the expansion draft.

Skinny: Loera was the club’s first-ever signing and someone they’re hoping can excel in a holding defensive midfielder role. Served as a captain while playing at Santa Clara University (2017-2021), where she won the school’s second NCAA Division I national championship in 2020.

Caprice Dydasco, 30, fullback

Acquired: signed a three-year deal through 2026.

Skinny: Originally from Honolulu, Dydasco helped UCLA win its first NCAA Championship in 2013. An attacking-minded fullback who has played more than 10,000 minutes in the NWSL, Dydasco is one of the most experienced players in the league’s history.

Ellie Jean, 26, defender

Acquired: from NJ/NY Gotham FC in exchange for protection in the expansion draft. Bay FC also received $130,000 in allocation money from Louisville.

Skinny: During her collegiate career at Penn State from 2015-19, the Nittany Lions won a national championship. Won the 2023 NWSL title with Gotham.

Emily Menges, 31, center back

Acquired: from Portland Thorns FC in exchange for $75,000 in allocation money and protection in the expansion draft.

Skinny: The former Georgetown standout is a two-time NWSL Champion and NWSL Shield winner across 10 seasons in the league with Thorns FC.

Scarlett Camberos, 23, winger

Acquired: from Angel City FC in exchange for $50,000 in allocation money and protection in the expansion draft.

Skinny: A speedy forward, Camberos attended UC-Irvine from 2018-21, registering 17 goals and 10 assists in 57 games. The San Diego native is also a member of the Mexico women’s national team (13 appearances, two goals).

Acquired: from the Washington Spirit in exchange for protection in the expansion draft.

Skinny: As a collegiate player, Bailey played in 86 games for North Carolina, scoring 17 goals and 17 assists while winning a NCAA Championship in 2017. Over five years with the Spirit, helped the club win the 2021 NWSL Championship.

Joelle Anderson, 25, midfielder

Acquired: along with $25,000 in allocation money from the Houston Dash in exchange for protection in the expansion draft.

Skinny: At Pepperdine from 2017-21, the San Jose native appeared in 88 matches, tallying 35 goals and 24 assists. She’s scored twice in two NWSL seasons with Houston.

By position:

Goalkeepers (one): Katelyn Rowland

Defenders (four): Caprice Dydasco, Ellie Jean, Alyssa Malonson, Emily Menges

Midfielders (four): Joelle Anderson, Dorian Bailey, Sierra Enge, Alex Loera

Forwards (three): Tess Boade, Scarlett Camberos, Rachel Hill

The National Women’s Soccer League completed its expansion draft on Friday night, and Bay FC made five selections to bolster its roster ahead of its inaugural season that will begin at PayPal Park in March.

Most notably, Bay FC landed 28-year-old goalie Katelyn Rowland, a former United States Women’s Youth National Team goalie who started in the 2014 U-20 World Cup. Rowland has since put together a decorated professional career in which she is one of just three players in NWSL history to have won four championships.

“Every good team needs a good goalkeeper,” said Bay FC general manager Lucy Rushton. “We’ve come into the draft having a strong feeling that we’d have a good goalkeeper available in the pool of players in this league. When we saw Katelyn’s name there it was a no brainer for us. We were really excited to see her name.”

Rowland is expected to compete for the No. 1 job, though Bay FC has been scouting some of the world’s best goalkeepers internationally and remains hopeful to bolster its roster via players overseas.

Rowland was taken with the sixth overall selection in the draft, which also included expansion team Utah Royals.

Bay FC made five picks out of a possible 12, while Utah selected only two players.

The roster now sits at 12 players. Teams are allowed to bring between 22 and 26 players to their regular season roster.

“It’s exactly where I wanted it to be,” Rushton said. “Positionally we can still see where we can bring in a couple people. International players, we have been looking abroad and want to bring in players internationally. That’s our focus now. We’ve had a good three or four solid months to acquire players in the NWSL, now we need to shift our focus internationally.”

The expansion draft offered an interesting opportunity for Bay FC, not only in that the club was allowed to select players who were left unprotected by other clubs, but also in that it allowed the expansion teams to leverage the draft as a way to acquire players ahead of time.

Rushton made five deals on Tuesday alone and seven overall as she was able to acquire players and allocation money in exchange for protection in the expansion draft.

There has been talk about the expansion draft needing an overhaul, but Rushton disagrees.

“I think it’s imperative and essential,” Rushton said. “Without it it would’ve been very difficult for us to amass a roster within the NWSL at these prices. I think having the draft made it essential for teams to move or lose players. They knew that. So we were able to do some business.

“If you take the draft away the prices for those players for an expansion team become absolutely insane because the teams know there is a need and there’s no implications on them if they don’t make the trade. It’s essential for that reason.”

Head coach Albertin Montoya made another interesting point about building out a roster: players coming to the Bay Area have to contend with Bay Area cost of living prices, and many have shown resistance to coming for that reason.

“They’re like, ‘we might have to rethink this,’” he said.

Montoya said he’s thrilled with where the roster is after the expansion draft. The club has now added a pair of electric fullbacks in Caprice Dydasco, who was their first-ever free agent signing in November, and on Friday they used their No. 1 overall pick to select Alyssa Malonson, a 24-year-old defender from OL Reign.

Malonson recently finished her collegiate career at Auburn, where she was the program’s record holder for games played and games started while earning SEC Defender of the Year and second-team All-American in her final season. She played a year professionally in Denmark before making her NWSL debut for OL Reign in June.

Rushton and Montoya said they were able to speak with all possible draft selections ahead of time, and they got the sense that Malonson really wanted to be in the Bay Area.

“She’s so exciting,” Rushton said. “Her ability and her ceiling is so high. Most importantly she fits our style of play. She’s a fullback who wants the ball. She drives with the ball, is able to come into half spaces and connect with people. To us, when we talk about positional profiles and what we’re looking for in players, she checks so many boxes.”

Bay FC has made it a point to build a roster mixed with young players and veterans.

After selecting Malonson, the club chose Tess Boade, 24, a midfielder from the North Carolina Courage, Rachel Hill, 28, a forward from San Diego Wave, Rowland, and Sierra Enge, 23, a midfielder from San Diego who won a national championship while playing for Stanford in 2019.

“Today was about finding the best players coming into our system,” Montoya said. “We were very excited with how it all came down.”

Nick Hammond thought she wanted an autograph.

The 23-year-old Englishwoman didn’t look much different than many of the kids who would approach Hammond, a former goalkeeper for Reading who spent some time in the English Premier League.

“There were not a lot of females in that area (of data analysis),” Hammond, then the club’s director of football, said by phone this week. “It’s the truth…I thought it was a young girl asking me for an autograph. And then she introduced herself as Lucy and it put me back a bit. But we started chatting.

“Two hours later, I thought to myself, ‘She’s perfect.’”

Fifteen years later, Rushton still can’t believe her luck that a sport once run entirely by men, most of whom once played at the highest level, gave her a chance to begin a career that eventually led to her hiring at D.C. United in 2021, when she became the second female general manager in major men’s American professional sports.

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Now she spends her days and nights building a roster for Bay FC, an expansion franchise in the National Women’s Soccer League preparing to kick off its inaugural season at PayPal Park in March.

Since her hiring in June, she has been traveling the globe searching for the world’s best players as she hopes to put together a team that can immediately contend in the NWSL.

Tuesday alone she made five trades to acquire players just before the rosters locked ahead of the expansion draft, taking place Friday evening. The two expansion teams, Bay FC and the Utah Royals, will have 12 rounds to select players who are left unprotected by other clubs.

“We just left a meeting together and I actually asked the question, I said, ‘When do you sleep?’” said Albertin Montoya, the longtime club director at Mountain View Los Altos whom Rushton hired as the team’s inaugural head coach. “I thought I didn’t need much sleep and she has me beat. She’s non-stop with phone calls, talking to agents, players, traveling to identify players, working on deals, managing the staff…”

Putting together the Bay FC roster has been a dream job for Rushton, who said it would’ve never been possible if Hammond hadn’t taken a chance on her 15 years ago.

“For him to take that opportunity on a female at that time, when I look back at it now, it’s a massive risk and a massive gamble for him,” Rushton, now 38, said last week. “I’m forever grateful he did it. It was an opportunity for me that, god knows where else I would’ve gotten it.”

As a child, Rushton’s days and nights were consumed by kicking the ball in the garden with her brother, Tom, then taking it in the house until her mom made them put it away, then taking it to the park to challenge other kids to a game of two-on-two.

At school, she’d get changed in the girls’ locker room for gym class and then switch sides to play soccer with the boys.

“I held my own,” she said. “All I knew was football. I wasn’t part of the cool gang or the pretty gang, I was just the girl who played football.”

But Rushton knew she’d never have a career as a player. There were hardly any youth teams for girls at that time.

Instead, she studied the game, earned a master’s degree and found her first job at Watford Football Club. After six months, Hammond called her up for an interview at Reading.

The challenge: convincing “old school” football guys that a young woman could teach them something.

“She looks young, but you’ve got to trust me, she’s got it,” Hammond told his peers.

Rushton was hired as an analyst at 23, making her one of the youngest (and one of the only) women analysts known to be working in English football at the time.

“Suddenly gender is not an issue when you’re providing objective feedback,” she said. “You’re providing data. It’s not about opinions. That’s often the problem when you’re talking about women in football, the perception of opinions.”

At Reading, Rushton “fit in seamlessly,” Hammond said.

“She was brilliant at what she did,” said Brian McDermott, a former Arsenal player who managed Reading for most of Rushton’s time at the club. “Absolutely brilliant at what she did. I’ve always said that to her. She got on with everyone.

“Being a woman, I just don’t know, I can’t even comprehend what that was like for her. All I know is how well she did at the job.”

In her seven years with her hometown club, she helped Reading win the EFL Championship and gain entry into the Premier League.

…

In 2016, Rushton got a call from an industry friend who was starting a Major League Soccer expansion team in Atlanta.

She was offered a job as the head of technical recruitment and analysis with a chance to build a roster from scratch.

“I faced criticism from people in England for choosing to leave,” she said. “But it was the best decision of my life.”

In her first year in Atlanta, the club made the playoffs, becoming just the third expansion team in league history to do so.

The next year, Atlanta won the MLS Cup.

And in 2021, D.C. United hired her as its general manager.

“I’ll be honest, there is never any chance, in my opinion, that a female would be hired in a (similar) role in English football,” Rushton said.

Her stay in the nation’s capital lasted just two years. Her values didn’t align with ownership’s. Her lesson learned: Find peers who you connect with.

At Bay FC, she found that in principal owner Alan Waxman, the CEO of Sixth Street Partners, which invested $125 million to start the club.

Traditionally, expansion teams in the NWSL have struggled in their first season. It takes time to recruit the right players, and for a new coaching staff to implement its philosophy.

In this case, head coach Montoya and Rushton are in agreement: They want a fast-paced, attacking team that is creative and entertaining to watch.

“I will tell you the truth, I was blown away when I met Lucy,” Montoya said. “She is incredibly intelligent. She understands the game. When we talked football, we connected on many levels.”

While two- or three-year plans are necessary for most expansion teams, Rushton doesn’t want to wait; she’s hoping to quickly win the hearts of local soccer fans the way Reading once captured hers.

And to offer a reminder to young girls: A career in the sport they love is within reach.

“I’ve never seen women’s football taken so seriously and have people that passionate about it as they do in the Bay Area,” Rushton said. “Everywhere you look there are young girls playing football. I didn’t know that existed…

“It’s an honor to think we get to build something for them.”