Keeping up the tradition of reviewing Racing Louisville FC’s performance at the end of every quarter of the season, here is a review of the last six games and the season as a whole.
The expansion team label is removed as Racing Louisville end their inaugural season. The season was a (qualified) success using the historic baseline of an expansion franchise. Racing won a trophy (albeit a trophy for a “friendly” competition), set the record for most points by an expansion team, and was second in the league in attendance, with the average trending up by the end of the year. There were of course some bumps along the way including firing a coach, a 9 match winless streak in the league, and the uncovering of player safety issues around the league (but not at Racing). On balance it was a good first season with encouraging signs pointing to an even better second one.
Reviewing Questions from Last Quarter
In my 3/4 season review I posed five questions for the last six matches, so let’s review how Racing answered each of those.
Can Racing win another match?
Yes, resoundingly in fact. The 3-1 victory over the Orlando Pride was a truly important match for several reasons. First, it was their best team performance of the season. Racing were without Savannah McCaskill who had played in every league game until that point, their captain and starting goal keeper Michelle Betos, and arguably their best central defender Gemma Bonner. However, after conceding an early goal Ebony Salmon pulled one back with a terrific strike and assisted on the 2 second half goals. Which is actually the second reason because Ebony needed to score for her confidence and ended up having the best offensive performance in a match for a Racing player all season. Third, it broke a nine game winless streak and stopped the post Women’s Cup hangover. Fourth, it was Coach Mario Sanchez’s first and possibly only victory as Racing’s head Coach. He is expected to return full time to his other position as academy head.
The last reason is that Racing came from behind to win, which flows nicely into the next question…
Can Racing come from behind to secure points?
Yes, and again resoundingly so. In fact, they recovered 5 points from losing positions in their last 3 matches of the season. In my mind there is no clearer sign of progress or promise for the future more important than this. No matter how good you are, sometimes you aren’t going to score first in a match. How you play after going behind is the best test of character. Now Racing will believe that they are still in a match after trailing, something I’m not sure they truly believed before.
Can the team settle on an identity in the final few games?
Yes, but qualified. I wrote in my most recent post match analysis entry on my site Fleur-de-lis-fc.com that they had found an identity. Racing definitely can say that they are a hard-nosed team that will never give up. That is probably the most important part of your identity as a club, but there are still a few questions about how they will play next year. Soccer Holdings (the ownership group for Racing and LouCity) has an attacking/high pressing philosophy that they want to apply to both teams, but it doesn’t come overnight. The next coach will be the one to determine if that playing style suits next year’s roster.
Will some fringe players get chances to be evaluated?
Yes. The top two players that definitely got more of a look in the last few matches were Katie McClure and Katie Lund. McClure has seen sporadic playing time all season, but started 2 out of the last 3 matches tallying a goal and and an assist along with 4 chances created. This followed a stretch where she only saw 60 minutes of action in the previous 14 league matches. Prior to that she had seen 324 minutes in the first 6 matches of the season. I would classify that as a uneven season, but it’s always encouraging to see a player who lost minutes fight hard to win them back. Lund started the last 3 matches, winning 1 and drawing 2. She is just as good at stopping shots as Michelle Betos, based on the small sample and my observations at practices. She is probably a little better with long distribution and maybe even looks like a prototypical keeper more than Betos. Her only negative is that she isn’t Betos. I imagine next year’s competition for goal keeper will be an open one with the new head coach being given a tough decision out of the gate, if they are both still on the roster.
Who has shown they merit protection in the expansion draft?
And now for the hard part. Barring a deal with San Diego, Racing is going to lose a player in the expansion draft on December 16th. All Racing fans are probably dealing with an internal struggle. We know the team needs new players to improve, but we don’t want to see any of the current players leave. Last year Racing drafted Jennifer Cudjoe from Gotham (Sky Blue FC at the time), but Gotham reacquied her for $35,000 in allocation money and the 13th pick which turned out to be Kirsten Davis. Davis should be joining Racing next season after returning to Texas Tech for her senior season. Therefore Racing could always make a trade to get a player back that they really didn’t want to lose.
I’m not going to guess what Racing’s full expansion draft strategy might be. They can protect 9 players. There are a few no-brainers like Fox, Nadim, Salmon, and Bonner. The difficult decision will be around protecting either Betos, Lund, both, or neither. I could make a case for all 4 options. In the end, I think that Racing has to protect their captain, even if part of it is avoiding the bad optics of leaving your captain unprotected. If Lund is selected by San Diego, my guess is that Racing will do its best to trade for her to get her back. Maybe Racing will get lucky and have one of their many forwards drafted, which is probably the position group where they need to cut down in numbers the most.
Listen: Episode 18 of Vamos Morados, “Finishing Strong”
Season summary
In my first entry in this series I said that Racing had a chance to set a points record for an expansion franchise. They succeeded in this by amassing 22 points which is 4 better than Houston’s first season and 3 better than Orlando’s first season. Technically Orlando had a higher percentage of possible points than Racing (32% vs 31%), but since almost everyone hates Orlando (because they suck), I’m going to ignore that bit. Just kidding about Orlando. Everyone hates them. Right Nadia?
While my award for least favorite team goes to Orlando, my award for favorite opponent goes to NJ/NY Gotham because a) their content creators are fun and b) they were the only team not to beat Racing this year (4 draws).
The on-the-field highlight of the year is obviously winning the Women’s Cup against Bayern Munich. The on-the-field lowlight was probably losing Nadim for the year in Orlando. The off-the-field lowlights were more than we bargained for, but there were many more off-the-field highlights. My favorite had to be the players’ willingness to sign autographs after each match win, lose or draw.
Ebony Salmon led the team in league goals with 6, but if you include the Challenge Cup, CeCe Kizer had 7 goals. Savannah McCaskill led the team in minutes and yellow cards which caused her to miss her only match. Emily Fox was the highest rated player for the season according to FotMob. All of these players are young and will only continue to improve.
The future is bright and I expect a vastly improved performance in the 2022 season.
Editor’s note: A HUGE thank you to Michael Shaw, AKA Fleur-de-lis FC, for his coverage of Racing Louisville FC during the inaugural season. Be sure to check out fleur-de-lis-fc.com and follow Michael on Twitter.
