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Vermont Green FC’s women’s soccer team ended its first-ever match last weekend in what was, probably, the most dramatic way possible.
After leading their opponent — FC Laval of Quebec — 1-0 for much of the second half, Vermont Green conceded a goal just minutes before the final whistle. That sent the game to a tie-breaking set of penalty kicks, which the Green went on to win, 5-4.
“We’ve kind of not stopped talking about it,” said Patrick Infurna, one of the club’s founders, in an interview Tuesday, as co-founder Matt Wolff sat nearby nodding his head. “I think it just ignited something really important in the entire organization.”
The June 22 game was a friendly competition — it didn’t count for league standings or for tournament seeds. But to Infurna, the result was, in some ways, beside the point. He said the game was really meant to showcase the state’s appetite for organized women’s soccer, as Vermont Green builds up a permanent women’s team in the coming years.
(The Burlington-based club is in its third year fielding a men’s team, which competes in a summertime semi-professional league mainly against other teams from the Northeast.)
The appetite was certainly there. Close to 3,000 people attended Saturday’s game at the University of Vermont’s Virtue Field, according to the club’s website — a sellout crowd, and then some. Hundreds more were watching a livestream online. In fact, club leaders said, the game was the most-watched, men’s or women’s, in team history.
The match also got a boost from a big name: Sam Mewis, who won the 2019 World Cup with the U.S. women’s national soccer team and whom Vermont Green recruited to coach, and help train, its women’s team. Mewis, who is 31, moved to Vermont earlier this year after retiring from her professional soccer career in the U.S. and the U.K.
Infurna said he expects Mewis to stay involved with the club going forward, though he isn’t sure yet exactly in what capacity.
“I cared about that game literally more than I have cared about anything in so long,” Mewis said in a statement provided by the club after Saturday’s game. “That was so awesome. I am so proud of the team.”
In some ways, fans might have come to expect a win from Vermont Green’s women’s team — and not just because of its A-list coach. The men’s side has found breakout success over the past three years, consistently finishing near the top of its division and, earlier this year, even making a foray into a major national soccer tournament.
Currently, there are no active professional or semi-professional women’s soccer teams in the state, according to Infurna. Vermont Fusion, a soccer club in Manchester, has fielded a team in the national Women’s Premier Soccer League in the past but is not doing so this year.
Like the men’s team, most of the women Vermont Green fielded last weekend play for college soccer teams during the academic year.
“It was surreal, I have never played in front (of) a crowd that size and with that much electricity,” said Olivia White, a UVM women’s soccer player who also captained the Vermont Green side last week, in a club statement. “It was very exciting, all of the girls were really excited and it’s a feeling that I will never forget.”
Infurna said that Vermont Green does not have the capacity, right now, to field a permanent women’s team alongside its men’s team. The club is still a small, grassroots organization, he said, with few staff and limited financial resources.
But he noted that having both teams — in addition to a dedicated program for kids — was always part of his and Wolff’s vision, going back to when they and others first started planning to launch the organization in 2020. He said the club is moving as quickly as it can.
“We want people to hold us accountable. We want them to say, ‘Let’s get that women’s team.’ We want that positive pressure from fans,” Infurna said.
Vermont Green aims to have at least one exhibition game with a women’s team next summer, Infurna said — and ideally two or three.
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VTDigger's state government and economy reporter. More by Shaun Robinson
