What’s next for WLW Soccer Club
The last time I updated we were just in the thick of starting the soccer club for womxn and non-binary folx in Los Angeles.
We accomplished a lot in 2023 including:
- Playing in our first competitive league
- Holding weekly open soccer pickup games most Sundays (save for holidays)
- Found our first sponsor
- Launched all our social media profiles
- Secured permits for our practice facility
- Finalized our mission statement
- Registered the soccer club as a non-profit corporation
- Set up insurance for the soccer club
But looking into 2024 and planning from here is a bit unclear at the moment. Arguably the hardest part of launching is over but now going into player recruiting, launching a league, and all the other bits of running a soccer club are becoming more of a reality.
One piece of the puzzle which is hard to put together is how to manage not only conflict amongst members but the board. When this club was initially launched, there was just me running this and as it’s grown I’ve asked friends to help out in different areas. But one of the pieces of starting a soccer club I hadn’t anticipated was how to handle conflict.
A quick search of the Internet, leaves you with many different ways to handle conflict in a business. For our soccer club and all it’s aspirations, a set of bylaws and other parts of an official corporation are going to be set up so there’s no ambiguity around how to handle this type of conflict.
This soccer club was founded as a safe space for folx who don’t generally get to play soccer in that kind of environment. Hopefully what we’re building will last a lot longer than any of our soccer careers (most of us are in our 30’s we’re realistic about it).
So for 2024 some of our club goals will be:
- Install a set of board members (3 in total) to run day-to-day operations
- Add a second day of pickup soccer games each week (this is already accomplished starting in March)
- Secure our kits and equipment from Nike
- Launch our first 7v7 competitive team in the Los Angeles Municipal League
- Launch a team in the USL
We’ve got a lot of work to do and with a more formal business structure we’ll be able to make sure interpersonal conflict is handled better and more effectively going forward.
Cheers to more soccer this year!
