NEW HYDE PARK, N.Y. (May 14, 2008) – A case could be made that few have waited more patiently for the return of women's professional soccer than Jim Gabarra. It might be more accurate to say few have better perfected the art of waiting impatiently.
Gabarra had just coached the Washington Freedom to a WUSA championship when the league suspended operations in September of 2003. Instead of planning how to build a title defense with a team that squeaked into the postseason and came together at the right time en route to claiming the championship with a 2-1 win against Atlanta, Gabarra found himself a man without a league, if not necessarily a man without a team.
(Washington Freedom)
Jim Gabarra joined the Washington Freedom in 2001 and coached the team to the 2003 WUSA championship and the 2007 W-League title.
Blindsided by the suddenness of the shutdown, as were so many players and coaches, he didn't have a golden parachute waiting to carry him safely to some other soccer landing. But it wasn't just a lack of other openings or the presence of family connections – Carin Gabarra, his wife, has been the women's soccer coach at Navy since the program attained varsity status in 1993 – that kept him from bailing on women's soccer in Washington. Convinced that a professional league would return and include the area, he remained a part of a downsized Freedom organization seeking to regroup at the amateur level.
"We were passionate and committed to the game and the women's side of it," said Gabarra, who has coached the Freedom since 2001. "We think it's an important thing for our sports market – for girls and women and fans of women's soccer. So I don't think there was ever a time we thought it wouldn't be back. We were just more anxious than anyone else to get it to come back because of all the work we did in developing our club."
After a couple of years of essentially wandering through the soccer wilderness, developing young talent and playing exhibition games against W-League franchises and other teams, the Freedom assumed to a full-time place in the W-League last season. And in their first full season in an organized league since the demise of the WUSA, they again took home a championship at the expense of Atlanta.
The opponent was perhaps the only similarity between the two titles.
"You have to balance a lot of other things into it," Gabarra said of the W-League environment. "You've got college players; you've got players who are working. We're constantly juggling our schedule so that we can try and involve as many people as want to be involved with our team. You cannot make everybody happy and you can't mesh everyone's schedules together."
Gabarra found a few moments to talk on the phone about all of this while traveling from the team offices to attend a practice for the U.S. Women’s National Team while it was in the area for an exhibition against Canada. He would later have to turn around and run his own practice, waiting late into the evening to convene a quorum of players once they were free from other responsibilities. It's a far cry from the well-oiled and well-funded machine that a former charge like Abby Wambach enjoys as part of the National Team.
"The last couple of weeks we've been training 8:30-10 at night," Gabarra explained. "That's really a grind on most parties involved. That's the biggest thing -- you're not paying them, so you really can't ask them to show up at a specific time for practice just to make it easy for yourself. And you also throw in that we've got to find low-cost or free places to practice, to keep the costs down and make it fit into our budget. So there are a lot of different challenges, whereas at the pro level, we're paying them; that's their job. They have to show up whenever you ask them to show up and you've got the funding for training sites and a lot of other things that we've got to kind of pick and choose and try and juggle all the different things and piecemeal some stuff together."
Gabarra didn't have to wait long for the first goal or the first win of the season.
Veteran striker Christie Welsh got the Freedom on the scoreboard in the sixth minute of Saturday's W-League game against the Long Island Rough Riders. The goal was typical dominance from Welsh, collecting the ball on the edge of the 18-yard box, spinning around a smaller defender while deploying a strategically placed forearm and finishing into the corner of the net. For veterans like Welsh and Lori Lindsey, just as for highly-touted recent college products like defender Becky Sauerbrunn, this season is a summer-long audition for the man who will guide the WPS Freedom next season.
"The ultimate carrot really is these players want to play professionally when the league comes back," Gabarra said. "What better place to be in than a place that you know is going to have a pro team?"
But that's "next year," a phrase which finally means something after years of being a source of both hope and frustration. Gabarra said there are bound to be WPS-related distractions that arise as the summer progresses, but the staff that's already in place for the transition will help alleviate some of that noise. For now, he is focused on winning games and developing talent, just as he has for the last five years.
The next stop is Colorado, where the defending champs will play the Fort Collins Force as part of a "Women's Soccer Celebration" in conjunction with a game involving the MLS Rapids on May 15.
After the game against Long Island, Gabarra slung a backpack over his shoulder, and with the Virginia men's team waiting to claim the bench area for the next game, pointed his players toward the grass in the corner of the stadium for a post-game debriefing. Then he grabbed the large bag of soccer balls underneath the bench and made his way off the field. There is little ceremony to stand on when there's no room for it in the budget.
"That's why you do it, is to have this opportunity to coach these players," Gabarra said. "I think it’s been just as rewarding coaching at the W-League level as it was in the WUSA. You're dealing with a little bit different level of player, but it's still -- you're coaching a team."
Graham Hays is an ESPN columnist and a contributor to womensprosoccer.com. He can be reached at moonlighthays@gmail.com . The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author's, and not necessarily those of Women’s Professional Soccer or womensprosoccer.com.