I was going to publish a deep dive into the Fusion rosters as I did back in 2021, but since there is no discernible thread of local roots to the men's team, and because it's 1am (probably), I began to look at things more philosophically.
What does "Support local soccer" mean? Support the local side, regardless of the multinational nature of the 11 in front of you? Support those men and women who graduate local high schools, whichever team they end up on? Support the Bison/Dragons regardless of where their recruits come from?
I think I will continue supporting Fusion until they go pop (which seems inevitable in the dog-eat-dog world of US soccer and in a market with ~1 article a season about the club in the local paper.) The high school stories were interesting, but if I'm honest, the current teams represent my own cultural makeup more than, say, Minneapolis City's root and branch local approach.
Fargo is North of Normal, after all. Out on an island.
There is a distinct difference between the makeup of the two squads, with the men recruited from everywhere but a substantial minority of the women coming from Fargo-Moorhead (Hello: Kadyn Sharpe, Jensen Seidel, Emily Larsen, Blayke Hurley, Ellie Feeney, Madeline Etter, Quinn Carter [Mandan], Mikayla Barnick and Olivia Watson )
What are the performance implications of these different approaches? Who knows if there is correlation, but the men are currently fighting for a spot in the NPSL playoffs, and the women are bottom of their division and so far winless. This is/has always been perplexing to me, since there is a D1 women's program at NDSU but no men's program at a level higher than NAIA... and that's out in Jamestown.
Comments
Post a Comment