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Wisconsin United FC Premier sends three teams to USYS Midwest Regional

VaselineJune 20, 2024

0 5 minutes read

Wisconsin United FC Premier sends three teams to USYS Midwest Regional

The Green Bay metro area did not have a girls soccer team qualify for the WIAA state tournament this year for the first time since 2014.

That doesn’t mean some of the region’s best players are done competing.

The Wisconsin United FC Premier is sending its U14, U16 and U19 girls to the United States Youth Soccer Midwest Regional Championship beginning Friday in Kansas City.

It is the first time in program history that three teams are represented.

The Midwest Regional Championship features 16 teams competing in each category, including 13 state champions from the Midwest region, the USYS Elite 64 Midwest champion, the USYS Elite 64 Great Lakes champion and one wild card team.

The winners will advance to the National Championship in Florida next month.

“It’s very exciting,” said Eric Gebhard, executive director of Wisconsin United FC Premier. “I don’t think this is the first time for our program (sending three teams), I think it’s the first time three teams from Northeast Wisconsin have gone from any club at the same time.

“I think the club is the result of many people giving up something for the sake of the children and the game, and many people making sacrifices from small communities to put something good together, so that now we can face this bigger cities can compete. such as Chicago and Minneapolis. We used to be separate clubs – Howard, De Pere, Menasha and Appleton – and we didn’t have the population for it.”

U16 team makes regionals. … again

It should come as no surprise that the U16 team is back at regionals for the fourth time.

The team won the Wisconsin State Soccer Championship in 2023, the third time in four seasons the group has won a title. It also captured the 2023-24 USYS Elite 64RL Midwest League Championship and qualified for the USYS National League playoffs in Arizona in December.

A look at the roster is a who’s who of area soccer, highlighted by Kimberly’s Emily Urban, Appleton East duo Addison Wreath and Marley Wreath, Appleton North’s Claire Zulewski, Bay Port’s Macie Brosteau, Green Bay Preble’s Olivia Wiernasz and Olivia Wiernasz of Green Bay Notre Dame. Charlee King and Amelia Castleberg of Steven Point.

All of these players earned all-conference honors this season in the Fox Valley Association, Fox River Classic Conference or the Wisconsin Valley Conference.

Just like a WIAA state tournament in the spring, it always helps to have experience playing on the big stage of the Midwest Regional Championship.

But maybe not in the traditional way you might expect. For Gebhard, it has nothing to do with being used to playing with more pressure or in a bigger environment.

Instead, it’s about everything that happens before the match.

“Having a travel protocol is huge,” Gebhard said. “Making sure your families understand that if you have a match at 3am on a Friday, you can’t book a flight that lands at 12pm and expect a good match. Get there, get hydrated, acclimatize, jog and stretch, be with your teammates, have some free time, have a pretty set itinerary so you don’t get to Disneyland until midnight and expect to have a game at 8 a.m.

“These are all issues that we encountered when we had growing pains the first time, sitting down with the players and saying, ‘You want to play college, there are college coaches here. But this isn’t a holiday, it’s more of a business trip.’ I think our 08’s are more business-oriented, and I think our 10’s will be more business-oriented too. Honestly, I hope our U19s enjoy themselves and have a little more holiday time.”

A bright future and present

It is impossible to predict how the U19 team will do. It might not win a game, or it might win the championship.

That’s mainly because so many members of the team can’t make it when life moves in so many directions, including some who are already preparing for college football or playing another club sport like basketball.

The team had 16 girls willing to go, but Gebhard said nine girls had to withdraw. Having a larger pool of players to choose from has lightened the burden, and he believes the squad they have put together can be effective if they live by the motto ‘next girl up’.

Wisconsin United has five U19 teams. It also has a partnership with an Iowa club and has signed two of its top players for the tournament.

Notable stars going include a pair of University of Wisconsin-Green Bay commits in Pulaski’s Veronica Decker and Bay Port’s Abby Wood, along with the University of Illinois-Springfield duo of Bay Port’s Mallory Herber and Appleton North’s Kalli Drexler .

The U19 team won the 2023-24 USYS Elite 64RL Midwest League Championship and placed second in last year’s Wisconsin State Championship.

“A lot of these kids have been playing since they were eight years old,” Gebhard said. “So they say, ‘Well, this is going to be a fun senior trip.’ That’s how they treat it, but they’re still very good footballers. They can do some damage there.”

The U14 team features the region’s next wave of standout football players, half of whom will enter high school in the fall and the other half will enter eighth grade.

It includes prospective players for Bay Port (4), De Pere (3), Green Bay Notre Dame (3), Kimberly (2), West De Pere (1), Green Bay Southwest (1), Oshkosh North (1) and Freedom (1).

The team’s list of achievements is already long. It includes winning both the 2023-24 USYS Elite 64RL Midwest League Championship and the USYS Youth National League Midwest Conference Championship and finishing second in this year’s Wisconsin State Championship after losing in overtime.

The team played in two National Leagues in the E64RL and the YNL MWC in 2023-2024 and achieved initial qualification for the USYS Midwest Regional Championship.

“The 2010s are kind of on the rise,” Gebhard said. “I’m just starting to get a whiff of it.”

Business at Wisconsin United is booming

Despite competition with other sports and club teams, Wisconsin United has experienced significant growth.

Tryouts are up 21% from last year, going from 15 players promoted after the club’s first year to 42 this past year. There will be two players signing to attend professional academies for the first time and several others who have earned the opportunity to play Division I, II or III in college.

“I think it’s a matter of matching the top, but also the middle and the bottom,” Gebhard said. “So these kids can come up when they’re ready.”

Gebhard was asked if players these days need to play travel ball to have a legitimate shot at a college scholarship.

He knows there’s a story there somewhere that people love to talk about, but Gebhard has a point of view that might be surprising given his role.

“I actually think if you go, you go,” he said. “I’m against that. A lot of people would say you should travel around the country and do all those great tournaments. I really think you have to build a relationship with the coach. We help them a little with that. Many of our coaches in the club have gone to university.

“We tell our kids to go on campus visits. Go to the camp that the university actually runs and start building a relationship. We always tell them that it doesn’t necessarily matter when you start looking, which school you talk to, because these coaches travel around a lot. It is more about teaching these children how to be social, develop relationships and build rapport. I think that’s a better policy than chasing all those exorbitant hotels and plane tickets. There is a very simple way to get this done that a lot of people don’t talk about.”

VaselineJune 20, 2024

0 5 minutes read

U16 team makes regionals. … again

A bright future and present

Business at Wisconsin United is booming

Vaseline

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