WPL’s Gussie Maguire /// Photo: Colleen McCloskey •
The D.C. Furies have numbers. Although CIPP rosters only tell a part of the story, last season close to 100 players registered for the club that fields concurrent Women’s Premier League (WPL) and DII teams, as well as 7s squads in the summer. The fall crop got together for the first time this week, and second-year WPL head coach Joanna Bader, who has been a Fury since 1995, estimated 50-plus players in attendance. She hasn’t seen numbers like this in six years or so.
So now the assessment begins. With the help of assistant coach Eric Keys, also in his second year, and DII coach Candace Gingrich, the staff will start sorting players into WPL and DII squads. On the WPL side, there is room for rising talent, as important players like Sam Pankey, who is one of several Eagle forwards relocating to San Diego for a 15s pseudo-residency (read more), Kimber Rozier (overseas) and Anna Cohen-Price (Chicago) have relocated. The DII team will benefit from an influx of recent college grads and young players.
Players like Kristen Maxey, who joined during the spring, has already been tabbed as a player to watch. Bader is also eager to gauge how last year’s WPL debutantes – for example, wing Jessica Crockett, who showed good speed and finishing ability – have matured during 2016. They’ll lean on the experience of players like captain Sharifa Love-Schnur in the backs, and Jocelyn Richards, Tiffany Smith and Maggie Olney (who’s captaining the Capital All-Stars Saturday) in the forwards.
However the rosters work out, the WPL team has to come together for some important, achievable goals this year. The Furies finished in eighth place in 2015, so there’s plenty of room for improvement.
“Last season we didn’t have the record that we wanted out of pool play – that’s probably our biggest performance goal, to improve that,” Bader said. “There were games we should have won last year that I hope we can finish this year and come away with more wins in pool play. And I want to win our home games in front of our fans.
“Another big problem last year was just scoring tries,” the coach continued. “We did a pretty good job on defense, but we couldn’t score when we were inside the 22. … Some of it was inexperience. D.C. is a transient city. People come and go and you have to get used to playing with the people next to you. But I think it was a mental block mostly. If you haven’t scored in a bit, it gets hard to score, just mentally. We need to get over that, put points on the board early, and just keep at it.”
Assistant coach Keys became more familiar with the player pool while he served as head coach during the spring, when Bader was on maternity leave. He’s working on a longer-term system that will foster individual and team growth.
“I’m really focusing on developing individual players and institutionalizing a system so they can set their own improvement goals and plans, and I can check in with them,” said Keys, a coach educator and former University of Florida women’s head coach. “These are things I’ve wanted to do for a long time. I want players to begin feeling comfortable helping each other – not in a coaching manner but in a way that builds team cohesion. I want them to recognize that they’re responsible for their rugby, and if they want to get better and improve, then they can do it themselves with some guidance.”
The Furies start their WPL campaign on Sept. 10 at home against New York, who represents the closest thing to a rival. Bader is hoping to take advantage of the good press that rugby received through the Olympics and really build up that home-game excitement again. For one, there’s nothing like a vibrant hometown crowd to spur on some wins.
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