Newbees

So the powers that be at the Radioactive Bees have unveiled the Queen Bees schedule for their inaugural WPSL season.

In organisational terms, since we have no rosters to fully compare yet, there are some familiar names and some familiar places.

There are even, already some NDSU players who will be familiar faces to Coach Robbins. (Although I will leave the roster analysis to others)

There are also teams and places that are either unfamiliar or further afield, or both.

The season starts and ends against what the club call Mpls Fire, but who call themselves Twin Cities Fire, Fire 98 SC or Fire SC 98 and who's HQ is seemingly a house in Shakopee with a Gmail account. Their extensive academy system appear to play all over the Twin Cities metro, but a 55.1 journo has spotted that their home games will be at Sea Foam Stadium, 281 Hamline Ave in St. Paul. Thankfully, they also announced a streaming deal for their games.

Next up are the TwinStars, who need no introduction but if you are new to them can be summed up as similar to Fire, a peripatetic academy organisation with games all over the Cities. Fusion's release has them based at Minnetonka High, but it also calls Twin Cities Fire MPSL Fire, twice. Too many SLs and not enough MPLSs, I guess.

Added to this, they also have a WPSL side a few years old and a history with this area that includes games against both FC Fargo in the APL and Fusion in the NPSL.

Note, neither of these organisations is the Cat Ball Clown Show - but the TwinStars aren't exactly sharp communicators either. NPSL and WPSL mean TwinStars and Fusion will meet a fair bit over the Summer. I almost feel a mens/womens rivalry trophy idea coming on. Clustered scheduling is a thing in this league, so the Queen Bees play in Minnetonka on May 25th and in St Paul on the 26th.

The weekend of June 1-3 sees games in Chicagoland against Chicago Red Stars (Reserves, the main team are in the division above - NWSL) and Chicago City.

I thought all levels of the Red Stars play at the home stadium of their parent MLS club, Chicago Fire - Toyota Park in the village of Bridgeview, IL but it is 14 miles closer to the City of Chicago but not within it, at Evergreen Bank Group Field in Oak Brook, IL- which brings us to the other Chicago team.

City identify chiefly as a travelling team, a step up from recreational soccer but below organised leagues, on their site and are headquarted in an office building downtown but the language of their press release announcing WPSL strongly implies a home pitch inside the City of Chicago. Again, the Fusion release suggests this was actually achieved, in the shape of games at the soccer fields of Loyola University Ramblers, 22 miles from Oak Brook and firmly in the actual city (The address is 6336 N Hoyne)

Lastly, the Fusion spend back to back weekends at home and then away at Milwaukee Torrent, almost rivals in the formative thrashings of FC Fargo and a club with aspirations to professionalism on and off the field. Their home pitch is Hart Park in the inner ring city of Wauwatosa.

The balance of the schedule is weird. Fusion fans will not get a chance to pop down to Gotta Stadium (again, incongruously hosting 'Dakota' Fusion) until after 4 away games - on June 9th and finish the regular season with 4 straight home games. That said, when you are tenants in an athletic stadium with a men's team also playing for a chunk of the same schedule, it is somewhat to be expected.

Curious rivalry possibilities:

Fusion will/could/might have a rivalry with the TwinStars which spans WPSL and NPSL. This might also apply to Fusion v St Paul, especially as Twin Cities Fire's Sea Foam Stadium (Concordia University) and VSLT's James Griffin Stadium (Central High) are only half a mile apart along Concordia Avenue.

Torrent was founded by Andreas Davi and retains strong links to Davi's old club of Bayer Leverkusen. Twin Cities Fire on the other hand are a partner of FC Bayern.

Minneapolis and Milwaukee always hate each other. Not sure if that applies to St Paul but MN v WI also doesn't need much of a push into existence.

The two Cities clubs and the two Chicago sides have local pride to fight for - and a suburb v city difference of opinion to fight over. (City and Fire in the city, TwinStars and Red Stars in the suburbs - oh look, those two even kinda match...how cute)

Chicago and Fargo being the extremes of a splattered map does make for a challenging road schedule across the entire division, something of a step up from even the regular I-94 treks of the NPSL North but thankfully something Fusion is better equipped to absorb than, for instance, FC Fargo was.

Anyway, here's the schedule graphic: