Saturday, January 14, 2023

A look at the extremely successful Los Angles club soccer team Alyssa Thompson played for

LAT:

That wasn’t a role Marroquin envisioned for himself when a visitor to his small Newhall soccer shop asked if he would be willing to help manage a fledging team called the Rooks. At the time Marroquin had little interest in women’s soccer, but he could recognize a disaster when he saw one.

“What I saw was no support,” Marroquin said. “I said we have to do something for these girls.”

A year later, in 2010, Marroquin was approached with another offer. This time he was asked to take over the struggling Ventura Fusion, a women’s team that played in the second-division USL W-League. His reaction was pretty much the same: If he wanted the sport to grow, he had to do something to help. So he accepted the offer, moved the team to Santa Clarita, rechristened it the Blue Heat

...

It all started with the Blue Heat, which plays a 10-game regular-season schedule in late spring/early summer. The team used venues all over the Santa Clarita Valley before settling at College of the Canyons, where it has begun drawing robust — for the UWS — crowds.

“Before we’d have 50 people in the stadium. Now we have over 500 per game,” he said. “You have 500 people in Santa Clarita at a game, it’s crazy.”

(I'd like to see a breakdown of the typical drive that club's parents make just to take their kids to practice.)