Draft Day! Tweet Tweet!

I consider myself pretty tech-savvy. I’ve been using the internet since IRC was cutting edge and it took several minutes to download a grainy photo of Pamela Anderson (not even Pamela Anderson Lee) on my 28.8K modem. But Women’s Professional Soccer wants me to follow the draft via some uber-hip service called Twitter, and thus far, tweets and twirls have proved beyond me. So we’ll see how this goes today. Here are three things I can gather from WPS’ twitterings thus far:

1) “The Chicago Red Stars are building a mystery with the #2 pick in the 2009 WPS Draft”. I’m not quite sure what that means: I’m hoping this is all going to turn into a giant game of Clue, where we’ll find Brandi Chastain in the Living Room with a candlestick.

2) Brandi Chastain? Yes — whilst reclining at home last night after a walk home in Chicago’s arctic weather, I turned on Fox Soccer Channel, and there was WPS Commish Tonya Antonucci not so subtly intimating that we might soon see a near forty year old woman doing this again. Sorry, this is actually pretty exciting news, though I’ve no clue if Chicago are interested or not. I suppose with Kate Markgraf’s pregnancy ruling her out until 2010, the Red Stars could use an experienced defender to fill in for a season, and this would certainly be a marketable move. So we might see something about that announced as well today. As for the pick…well….I’ve no idea.

3) It’s a shame I have no clue about this, as it was only a few weeks ago I had lunch with Peter Wilt, whose Blackberry would not stop ringing. Being a good blogger, I feigned as if I were paying attention to the menu at the Medici in Hyde Park (Obama eats there, y’know), whilst ever so subtly eavesdropping. Unfortunately, I forgot to blog about all I heard, and then the Red Stars go and make their first trade involving a player whose name I heard that very day, Alex Scott. According to WPS: “Chicago sends Alex Scott, its 6th Round Pick (41st overall) and its 10th Round Pick (69th overall) in the 2009 WPS Draft.” So…we (and I am a Red Stars fan) sent Boston three things (and one presumes they may well sign Alex Scott’s erstwhile colleague at Arsenal, the great Kelly Smith) and we got….uh, what?? Tweet, tweet, help me!

Edit: oh, ok, Tweet’s are apparently only so many characters long, and the next one up solves this particular mystery: “to the Boston Breakers for the 2nd Round Pick (14th overall) and the 4th Round Pick (28th overall):”

OK, stick with me for more exciting and vaguely incoherent updates! (ps — I like the official Puma ball a lot).

Live draft blogging!

10.00AM
If only I could see it, but Amy Rodriguez was the first pick by Boston, as expected.

10.01AM
The Red Stars are next! Who will we pick? And will I find out first via WPS’ or Peter Wilt’s Twitter??

10.02AM
Peter revealed it first: “Chicago Red Stars select Megan Rapinoe”

OK, I know nothing about Megan except that I just learned via Google that she has a twin sister, she has a “flamboyant” style of play and she’s from California. Well, cool.

10.07AM
Twitter isn’t working. Literally ANYTHING could be happening right now.

10.11AM
Twitter is still down. This is the danger of technology, folks.

10.12AM
Well, all sorts of insanity occurred while we were out of contact with St Louis.

FC Gold Pride (cough, cough) took Christina DiMartino.
Sky Blue FC selected Yael Averbuch.
Los Angeles Sol took Brittany Bock.

I will now scour google for some fascinating facts about these women!

10.19AM
Mountains of research later…

Yael won the 2006 National Championship with North Carolina. She wishes she had the “ability to fly”. Don’t we all. And her hobbies are “anything that makes me think or laugh”.

Christina is “small, but plays big”, and has a strong New Yawk accent, according to ESPN Soccernet.

Brittany was “rated by womensworldfootball.com in 2005 as world’s top under-19 women’s soccer player” and scored a ridiculous amount of goals for Notre Dama. She’s also from Naperville, near Chicago, a dull suburb mysteriously considered one of the country’s most desirable places to live.

10.20AM
The first round concluded with Saint Louis Athletica picking Kerri Hanks (no relation) and the Washington Freedom taking Allie Long.

I’ll be back later to wrap the rest of the draft up.

10.33AM
Well, I’m back, but Twitter’s down again. Who knew interest in the WPS collegiate draft would overwhelm one of the world’s most popular websites?? According to Wilt on Facebook, the Red Stars are about to make back-to-back picks.

10.38AM
OK, I hear tweets again. Second round:

Washington Freedom select Alex Singer (sadly apparently not the Star Trek actress)
Los Angeles Sol selects Allison Falk (father, Brad, played lacrosse at Tufts. Sorry, no interesting profile finds!)
Sky Blue FC selects Meghan Schnur (studies hard, runs in the rain)
FC Gold Pride (ahem) selects Carrie Dew (likes to eat Goldfish, but not sushi)
Chicago Red Stars select Nikki Krzysik (would like to snorkel)
Chicago Red Stars select Brittany Klein (born in Arcadia, a great place to “relax”)

That concludes round two!

11.47AM
Umm so I missed a whole round. And even trade drama! There was a tense moment in round three when I read that “The League has taken a timeout to review a trade proposal”. It was all soon approved, as “Saint Louis Athletica sends Joanna Lohman and the 23rd pick to the Washington Freedom for the 21st pick.”

I would say the picks are getting increasingly obscure and hard for me comment on, but that’s been true ever since pick #2 of round #1. I am, however, very impressed by the eco-friendly “Green Laces” project Red Stars selection Natalie Spliger founded. Good stuff, be nice to see all the Red Stars — or even all of WPS — sporting them in 2009.

12.57PM
The draft is still on. At this rate, some of the girls on my coed team are going to get picked soon.

12.58PM
Oh, I just spotted a name I recognise! Briana Scurry! Picked by the Washington Freedom, #35 overall.

1.49PM
Umm we are still going. And finally we get to one of the names mentioned in my intro! Brandi Chastain goes to FC Gold Pride with the 45th pick.

2.35PM
The draft is still going on. There must be some tired folks out in SF. Frankly, if anyone here knows who these ninth round picks are and doesn’t have a paid job with WPS, they deserve to be blogging here instead of me (as if, uh, this were somehow a position one has to have knowledge of women’s soccer to occupy). Anyway, the ninth round just ended. Find the names here.

I will say this: when one is reduced to googling for basic information and photos about players, one actually does quickly learn quite a lot about the private lives of players in this age of Flickr and Facebook. I wonder if some players might want to consider what kind of photos they leave out in the public domain now they’re professionals in a sport followed by many young girls. I couldn’t care less myself, as a fan, but I wonder if team management in some places might. I’m not going to name names…just sayin’, be careful with what’s out there.

And don’t go googling me to prove a point in return, either!

If this draft ever ends, I shall return!

3.41PM
Important news: I now have evidence the draft actually existed outside the world of tweets and twits.

Amanda of WPS has posted photos here. And hey, there’s pics of the new jerseys (I presume), too. Neat.

And this is a really cool set of photos by Amanda of Yael Averbuch’s mom as her daughter was drafted.

3.52PM
Afraid to check Twitter and see if yet more players I’d never heard of and would have to google and find compromising photos of had been drafted in the 27th round or something, I finally texted Red Stars GM Peter Wilt directly at the draft to ask it would ever end. He responded that it was already over, and I felt both joy and sadness facing a world empty of WPS draft twitters for the time being.

In fact, I’m not exactly sure how many more WPS drafts are left before the season actually starts — I’m guessing three or four more on the pace they’ve been going the past few months — but we now know roughly the full make-up of each team’s roster.

I’m thinking Boston and Chicago are the best stacked. Anyone care to disagree? And did anyone actually read to the end of this post? If so, be as happy as Jaimel Johnson, the final pick of the final round that you made it in the end.

Category: WPS News

Tags: Draft, WPS News

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