Ericka Cruz Guevarra: I’m Ericka Cruz Guevarra and welcome to the Bay. Local news to keep you rooted. Well, the Bay’s got a new team to cheer for. Bay Football Club, or Bay FC, has kicked off their debut in the National Women’s Soccer League as the region’s only women’s pro sports team, and they’ve got some big ambitions.
Marisa Ingemi: They’re putting their money where their mouth is. They’re not just kind of happy to be here. They actually intend to be good on the field.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: Bay FC’s inaugural home game is next Saturday at PayPal Park in San Jose. Today, I talked with the San Francisco Chronicle’s women’s sports reporter Marisa Ingemi about the Bay area’s newest professional women’s soccer team.
Marisa Ingemi: For a small region. It really is one of the hotbeds for women’s soccer in the country.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: Marisa Ingemi covers women’s sports for the San Francisco Chronicle.
Marisa Ingemi: In the Bay specifically, you can see the growth just from the fact that this is the third pro team attempt and it just feels so different than two decades ago. I think a lot of that is because the U.S. women’s national team has had the profile that it has, especially since 2019. Then I think in general, just like women’s sports is having such a moment between basketball, soccer, volleyball, everything that everything’s building off of each other. It’s just such a different moment in time for women’s sports generally, that women’s soccer is kind of riding the wave of that.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: You mentioned this is the the third attempt at a pro women’s soccer team here in the Bay. Is that right?
Marisa Ingemi: Yeah. FC gold pride in the WPSL. And I believe like 2008 and the San Jose cyber raise in the early early 2000 in like failed startup women’s leagues.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: Oh my gosh cyber raid. Yeah that sounds very 2000.
Marisa Ingemi: Yes exactly.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: Well I mean can you give us a sense of like what role the Bay area has played in the growth of women’s soccer over the years?
Marisa Ingemi: So to look at the women’s national team, where she’s so much Bay area talent on that team between Naomi Girma and went to Stanford, she’s from San Jose. Alex Morgan, who went to Cal UC Santa Clara alum like left and right again.
Marisa Ingemi: Even back to 1999, the big Women’s World Cup there really kind of spark the growth of women’s sports period in North America. Brandi Chastain was on that team. So. She scored a famous goal and now she’s the owner of this team. So you can see kind of like all the parallels of the Bay area really being almost like the breeding ground for the growth of women’s soccer. And you look across. There are so many players who went to Stanford, who went to Cal, to Santa Clara.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: Well, you mentioned this is not the first attempt at a pro women’s soccer team. And there’s actually concurrently, another women’s soccer team that’s sort of growing at the same time, the Oakland Soul. But how big of a deal is BFC?
Marisa Ingemi: Yet. It’s a big deal in the sense of like the Bay area in general is kind of looking for more teams to rally around between the A’s leaving. The Raiders have left, the Warriors are still here, but they left Oakland and the earthquakes aren’t that good. So I think that people are kind of ready to rally around this new thing. And also like I said, women’s sports are kind of having this moment.
Marisa Ingemi: And even though the Bay is such a strong women’s sports market with like Stanford women’s basketball and things like that, they’re missing out a little bit. And now they kind of have this thing to rally around. Opening day on March 30th, I think it’s going to be a sellout. And, people just seem genuinely so excited to have a stake in what’s happening in women’s sports.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: Well, I want to talk moreso about how this team even got started. How did BFC happen? Like what did it take?
Marisa Ingemi: Yeah. So a couple of years ago, the league started expanding a little bit more and they added teams in LA and San Diego and the LA team. Angel city FC did a tremendous job marketing. They had a high valuation of any women’s soccer team in the US. And that now owner is a Bay FC Brandi Chastain, Allie Wagner, Danielle Slayton and Leslie Osborne, who are all former women’s national team players and went to Santa Clara.
Marisa Ingemi: They saw that and were like, well, we should do that here. And they really made a tremendous push to get the capital raised to work with Sixth Street, who’s the investment group, to really establish that there was an audience who was interested in make a campaign to the NWSL of like, hey, when you guys expand, we want to be a part of that.
Marisa Ingemi: BFC invested $53 million in an expansion fee, which is the largest for any NWSL team in women’s sports team before the WNBA expansion fee is a few months after that. They really just established that people were interested in the NWSL side. Yeah, go for it. And they didn’t have that much runway to build a team, but they got it done.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: Yeah, I mean, that’s a lot of money invested in this team, right. And it’s I imagine also going to be used to build facilities and marketing and all that.
Marisa Ingemi: Yeah. So 53 million is just an expansion fee. But they invested over I believe the number was 120 million overall, which is a gigantic investment for women’s soccer. We haven’t seen one like that except for the Kansas City Current. So yeah, I mean they’ve said all along their goal is to have their own stadium and especially their own training facility. Right now, they’re training at San Jose State where they have some of their own facilities.
Marisa Ingemi: They’re playing at PayPal Park, but they definitely are looking to invest in infrastructure over time and believe the deal is PayPal’s for five years. So we’ll see where things are at in the future. But their goal is to have staying power and to throw money at it so that they can.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: Coming up, we’ll talk about the team and what’s going to make them worth cheering for. Stay with us.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: Well, let’s talk about the team and the players. Marisa, this is a brand new team. It’s in its first year. Is the team already good or is it going to take some time for them to kind of get to that point?
Marisa Ingemi: I mean, expansion teams are tough because even if they have a lot of really good names, we don’t know what the chemistry is going to be or what it’s going to look like. Until about mid-January, they still didn’t have a full roster, and I was a little nervous, like, so like, do they have players or like who is going to be on the field? And then they just kind of went on an international spending spree. They brought in as Sara Shola, who scored their first goal and looked absolutely amazing in the game at Angel city, to open their season.
Marisa Ingemi: They signed her from Barcelona. A Nigerian player who’s just a stunning striker. They brought in Jen Beattie, who’s a well known defender from Arsenal.
Marisa Ingemi: Dina Castellanos from Venezuela, who was a tremendous midfielder for Manchester City, and then Rachel Energy from Zambia, who, played for Madrid. They have some very personable, players who have gotten a lot of notoriety internationally, but also can really play soccer really well.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: Well, that said, is there anyone from the Bay playing for Bay FC?
Marisa Ingemi: Yeah, there’s a few connections. Caitlin Roland, who is likely to be the backup keeper for most of the season, is from Walnut Creek. She won an NWSL title a few years ago for the North Carolina Courage. She’s a veteran goalkeeper. She’ll definitely see some time. Alex Loera, who is their captain, at least in their first game they have a named an official captain for good yet, but she was the first player to be signed in BFC history.
Marisa Ingemi: Former Santa Clara player. Definitely a lot of people who are invested in the growth of women’s soccer in the Bay, and a lot of people who are new to the Bay, especially some of these international players who have never been here before, who the ones I’ve talked to so far have really loved getting to see San Francisco and San Jose and establish roots here.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: What about the head coach, Albertine montoya? What’s interesting about him, and why is his hiring as a head coach? Notable. I know he’s got some Bay connections as well, right?
Marisa Ingemi: Yeah, he’s probably the most connected person in Bay area women’s soccer possible. He’s been a youth coach at LA for a long time, and has really made a mark in the Bay area, coaching almost all the the future stars we’ve seen come out of the Bay from the time they were children. He coached both the Cyber Rays and FC Gold Pride, where he coached Brandi Chastain and Leslie Osborne actually decades ago now. And the players love him.
Marisa Ingemi: It’s interesting talking to every player that signed, like he’s a big reason why all of them have showed a sign of the team. He has a very specific style of play he wants to implement with the possessing the ball and being very aggressive, and a lot of the international players that have come to the Bay have wanted to play that style and play for him.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: Bay FC has already played one game, as you mentioned, a winning one oh against Angel city. Did you watch that game?
Marisa Ingemi: Yeah, I was there.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: What was it like to be there at that first game?
Marisa Ingemi: It’s fun because Angel city is a team that BFC has gotten compared to the most. As far as like an expansion club that is really going for it. And, the owners of Bay FC are close with some of the founding members of Angel city, so that was kind of the natural opponent in the fan base.
Marisa Ingemi: They’re kind of close to. So the Bridge Brigade, who’s going to be the supporters group for BFC, was down there and they were like intermingling with some of the Angel city supporters groups. It was so cute. They actually had like friendship bracelets that have like the colors of both of the teams, like welcoming them to the league. Gosh, yeah. Women’s sports fans are like such a close knit group because everyone’s kind of in it together.
Marisa Ingemi: So much of it is like accessible online compared to in the mainstream. So a lot of those bonds are formed. So even like teams that are going to be rivals, the fans are welcoming each other. It was really cool to see that people cared and made the trip. And, it’ll be even more fun to see like a whole stadium cheering them on.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: Well, you mentioned earlier, Marisa, and next Saturday, the 30th is the inaugural home opener for Bay FC. What are you looking forward to seeing?
Marisa Ingemi: Yeah. So they’ve been saying it’s going to be a sellout. So I really want to see like this has been a couple of years in the works. And it’ll be really cool to kind of see the fruits of their labor and see an entire stadium cheering on, a Bay area women’s soccer team, and seeing the fan supporter section for the first time and whatever chance they come up with that will be really fun.
Marisa Ingemi: But also like it might be could it is debut by that point, we don’t know kind of when she’s going to be back if it’ll be this weekend or next, but that will be really fun. What are the reactions from Bay FC fans to see some of their favorites on the field, like who are their favorites? We don’t know. How are they going to react to someone like Oshoala, where let’s say in Peru, it’ll be really cool to kind of establish like what the fan culture is going to be, and that’s going to happen at the home stadium.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: I mean, I think we all know that women’s professional sports teams don’t get the same love as men’s teams. So I wonder more. So what do you think it’s going to take to make sure of this team’s success here in the Bay?
Marisa Ingemi: Women’s sports kind of is making its push into the mainstream kind of through women’s basketball, but women’s soccer as well. So I think now is probably the best time to capitalize on that wave. And I feel like I can’t go anywhere in the Bay without getting off the barge and seeing like a BFC ad or a billboard on the highway. Like, I kind of feel like they’re everywhere.
Marisa Ingemi: I think women’s sports, especially pro sports, that the level of like WNBA are kind of past that wave of are we going to survive? Like, I think they’re here to stay at this point. So now it’s a matter of like how much they can establish themselves in a sports culture in their region. I think fans are very going to be very willing to engage with the new team here, but I think there’s a really high potential for BFC to make a real impact.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: Well, Marisa was so fun to talk with you. Thank you so much for joining us. I really appreciate it.
Marisa Ingemi: Yeah. Thank you so much.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: That was Marisa Ingemi who covers women’s sports for the San Francisco Chronicle. This 25 minute conversation with Marisa was cut down and edited by producer Maria Esquinca. Alan Montecillo is our senior editor. He scored this episode and added all the tape music courtesy of First Come Music, Universal Production Music and The Audio Network.
