Fleur-de-lis-fc.com Player of the Year

Courtesy Anne Evans

If you follow Racing Louisville FC on Twitter you know that the club uses #RunWithUs as their hashtag. Ironically when I chose my player of the year, I went with the player least likely to run.

“When I found out that the goalkeeper didn’t have to run, I threw my name in the hat and never really looked back.” That is Michelle Betos commenting on her desire to avoid running from an early age. She started playing soccer on a boys team with some of her school friends around age five. When Michelle injured her hand last month, which caused her to miss the final 3 matches of the season, Coach Sanchez jokingly asked her what other position she wanted to play. She told him, "honestly, they all look terrible.”

Luckily for Racing, Michelle Betos is most comfortable in the 18 yard box. She started all 4 matches in the preseason Challenge Cup and 20 league matches, which was the most number of matches and highest number of minutes she has played in her 13 year professional career. She led the NWSL in saves and saves per match. While this is not necessarily a statistic in which you want your goalkeeper to lead the league, it shows her value to this very young team.

Also a tremendous value to this young team was having Michelle as captain. A captain's responsibilities often go beyond the field and her leadership was definitely needed this season. Racing went through the growing pains that all expansion teams do, but Racing had to endure the unique hardship of starting their existence during a pandemic. They also lost their head coach who was fired for cause and stood up for their own safety as reports of abuse by coaches and others around the NWSL started to surface. Michelle told me that is was an honor to be the captain during such a difficult season.

Michelle's on the field leadership was just as evident during the season. Most teams prefer to have their captains to be outfield players to make it easier for the captain to get into the referee's ear if needed, but Michelle was the perfect captain for this team, especially early in the season. Racing were competitive in each of their first 6 matches and won 1, drew 2, and lost a match by a single goal in their first 4 home matches. This may seem like a small thing, but being competitive early helped build the fan base. By all statistical measures Racing should have lost the May 21st match against the Washington Spirit, but were able to hold on scoreless for 75 minutes mainly due to Betos. Ekic and Kizer got the goals but the win belonged to Betos. Of course she will say this was a team win, but in my mind that match is a blow out loss without her. Getting that victory early earned Racing enough good will with fans to survive a rough patch on the road that shortly followed. I'm fact, the only bad home performance the entire year was a late season loss to Houston by 4 goals. Betos took that loss particularly hard and had a long conversation with goalkeeper coach Sergio Gonzalez after the match about 10 feet away from me. I stupidly told her to keep her head up after that conversation, which I'm sure was the last thing she wanted to her, but she smiled and said thanks. That loss eliminated Racing from the playoffs and those are always tough losses to take. Regardless, she stuck around to talk to fans as she always does, setting an example for the younger players.

I also asked Betos how much longer she was planning on playing, and was delighted with her answer which basically was that she was going to play until the game stopped being fun. She said that this was definitely aided by the club’s recently announced fertility preservation services. She also stated that she will almost certainly take advantage of these services during the offseason. After her playing career is over she would like to continue a career in soccer, hopefully as a high level goalkeeper coach.

There's one more thing about not liking to run. It means you're not afraid to stand your ground. In her own words, “I think I was born to take shots off the body and I’ve always been fearless. I have never been scared to throw my body on the ground or in front of a shot. I don’t remember ever being scared of any of that.” I thank her for her fearlessness.