With a second quiet summer approaching for veterans of the WUSA, the Washington Freedom Soccer Club announced yesterday that its Freedom Reserve Team will hold another series of exhibition matches, beginning with an April 21 trip to Madrid to face the Spanish national team.
About half of the reserve team's tentative roster played on the Freedom's 2003 WUSA championship team, including Jacqui Little, Lori Lindsey and Meredith Beard. Those players will be supplemented with area college players and other WUSA veterans, including San Jose's Betsy Barr, Atlanta's Kylie Bivens and New York's Emily Janss, a coach with the University of Maryland.
After this month's exhibition, the Freedom reserve team will play a 12- to 14-game schedule over a six-week span starting July 1. Coach Jim Gabarra, who has contacted the national teams of China, Canada and Trinidad and Tobago about possible exhibitions, said the schedule will be filled out with games against minor league and international clubs.
The team's home games will be played at the Maryland SoccerPlex in Germantown; tickets will cost $10.
The club also announced yesterday it had signed three-year cooperative agreements with three area youth clubs, in which the organization and its players will provide coaching and developmental training and the youth groups will receive Freedom club membership and entry to the exhibition matches and summer camps.
The club, which continues to be financially supported by Discovery Communications chairman and WUSA founder John Hendricks, is attempting to develop a European-style all-inclusive organization whose members will form a base of support for a premier soccer team, Gabarra said.
"We'll hopefully win some national titles, develop some players and generate some members," Gabarra said.
-- Dan Steinberg
