Tough Decisions

Courtesy EM Dash Photography

In a press release today, Racing Louisville named the following players that will not be returning next year:

• G-Michelle Betos

• F-Katie McClure

• G-Shelby Money

• F-Jorian Baucom

• D-Brooke Hendrix

• F-Vanessa Kara

• D-Sinclair Miramontez

Four players also had their options exercised for 2022: Milliet, Oloffson, Otto and McCaskill.

I will for sure miss Michelle Betos, as I am positive that almost all other Racing fans will as well. Of the names released today by Racing, hers was the most surprising and probably hardest to understand. According to executive Vice President James O’Connor, “Through offseason processes, we made the very difficult decision not to negotiate a new contract with Michelle. She wants to be a starter in the league. With that in mind, we felt it important to be open with Michelle and let her seek a new opportunity promising more minutes.” Restating this, the key things that went into the decision were:

• Betos would have had to sign an new contract or exercised an existing option on a current contract by Tuesday, December 7 if she wanted to stay.

• Racing were upfront with Michelle, telling her that Katie Lund was going to be Racing’s starting keeper next season.

• Michelle obviously expressed a desire to fight for a starting keeper role on another team, so she and Racing mutally agreed to not continue forward with a contract for next year.

This was a 100% footballing decision. That doesn’t make it hurt any less, but as a fan you have to decide if you follow the club or follow the player. There are plenty of fans who just follow players and I don’t expect their responses to be rational. If this decision is the right decision for all involved, which if I’m being completely honest I think it is, then there should be no hard feelings between the club and most of its fans. It still stings, but I believe Lund will do just fine in goal. I expect thoughtful and measured responses on Twitter. (We need to collectively decide to come up with a designated font for sarcasm. I vote for bold italics.)

Now Racing must do a couple of things very quickly. One is to decide on a new club captain. My advice would be to sort this out straight away and name Savannah McCaskill as captain. She is currently vice-captain, so this one should be a no-brainer. However, I think it’s important to do it sooner vs. later. This could be complicated by the fact that the players tend to vote on this, so mid-January is another possible date for this announcement. The second item is that Racing now certainly has to protect Lund in the expansion draft. Here is my updated projected protection list:

1. Fox

2. Nadim

3. Bonner

4. Salmon

5. Kizer

6. McCaskill

7. Lund

8. Nagasato

9. Otto

This moves Merrick off the list, but I hope Racing manage to hold onto her. As for the other names, some fans’ favorite players will be on the list, but none of them are super surprising. Of that list the slight surprise is Katie McClure, who I thought played well late in the season. However, Racing had way too many forwards on the roster and have F Kirsten Davis and Attacking Midfielder Parker Goins coming in as very highly regarded.

The other note of interest is that every other team, bar Angel City and SD, will be releasing lists today too. Expect a wild day on WOSO Twitter. I think teams will be able to sign other team’s released players, but I don’t think there will be a great number of these. I will be interested to see if any other big names end up on the lists.