‘A beautiful game’: Rochester’s new pre-professional women’s soccer team has big goals
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As an attacking center midfielder, Rochester native Jenny Reyna never stops moving on the soccer pitch.
“We usually pass the ball a lot,” she said during a recent practice. “We kind of control the game in the center. So our job is really to assist and to move the ball around throughout the field.”
At 17, Reyna is already really good at the game.
But this summer, she'll likely get even better as a member of the Rochester Loons, the city's new pre-professional women's soccer team.
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She's got her sights set on collegiate soccer - maybe even a professional team. And joining the Loons is great preparation.
“You see a whole new perspective of soccer when you're playing with girls that are older than you and have been playing in all parts of the world,” she said. “So it's really great to get that experience.”
‘A gap in the system’
Players on the Loons inaugural season roster come from near and far. The team is part of Rochester FC, which was founded in 2018 and has a men's pre-professional team as well.
These Loons are not to be confused with the other Loons: the St. Paul-based Minnesota United professional men's team.
The Rochester team’s co-founder and owner Midhat Mujic said there’s a good reason behind the Loon name.
“There's birds on our Rochester flag. I think it's the goose. And for us, we couldn't be called the Geese. You know, that didn't fit right. So we went with the Loons,” he said.
Starting a pre-professional team is expensive. Just ask Andrea Yoch, founder of the Aurora, Minnesota's first pre-professional women's team based in Eagan.
To launch the Aurora, Yoch and her colleagues sold shares to community members - a model that had been successful with a handful of men’s teams.
“But there had never been an independent women's team that had done it. And our initial goal when we started was to raise $500,000. We ended up selling out all of our shares and raising a million dollars,” she said.
Pre-professional players aren't paid, so Yoch said that money has so far gone toward things like renting their practice and playing facilities, ticketing and other team necessities.
With only 12 professional women's teams in the country, Yoch said pre-professional teams give women soccer players more options to advance their careers.
“There was a gap in the system where if you had played in college, and you weren't good enough to go pro, your career was kind of done. And so now, there is a place that women can go that's in the middle,” she said.
The recent addition of the USL W, the league in which the Aurora and the Loons now play, has grown women's pre-professional teams nationally in just a year - from 44 in 2022 to 66 this year, said Yoch.
Cultural connection
For Mujic and Rochester FC co-founder Mo Dedic, soccer is a big part of their personal heritage. Both emigrated from Bosnia, and Dedic said when he moved to Rochester more than two decades ago, he quickly joined a soccer team.
“Soccer is the number one sport in Europe. Everybody plays it. Everybody lives it,” he said.
Now, Dedic is the Rochester Loons women’s team head coach. Starting the team in a growing city where youth soccer is already hugely popular was a no brainer, he said.
But one of the biggest challenges was recruiting players. They reached out to women in their final years of high school or on collegiate teams who will live in Rochester with a host family until their season ends in the middle of the summer.
“I gotta be honest with you, it was a little tough, you know. It takes a while to trust people, to know people, to get to the right people,” said Dedic.
But personal connections to a collegiate soccer coach in Louisiana helped Dedic recruit players, including Chelsea Brown, who plays forward. Her job is to score goals.
Even in her lifetime, Brown said there are more opportunities to turn soccer into a job, not just a hobby.
“Especially on the women's side, I feel like it has grown so much,” she said. “Even coming here, I feel like the soccer community is way bigger than what it is back home. So that's a positive.”
Players are still getting to know each other.
Reyna said she's hoping the bond she and her teammates established during recent weeks of practice will result in moments of indescribable magic on the field when they play their first match this Sunday.
“When you see the game put together and all the passes and when you make beautiful plays, like it's just a very, very, very beautiful game. That's why I'm playing,” said Reyna. “That's why I'm playing the sport because of that right there.”
The Loons play the Milwaukee Bavarians at 4 p.m. this Sunday at Rochester Community and Technical College. You can find out more online at Rochester FC.
Editor’s note (May 19, 2023): This story has been updated to clarify that the Rochester Loons are the city’s newest pre-professional soccer team and not the first one.
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