San Diego Wave FC head coach Casey Stoney is speaking out on the coaching standards in the NWSL.

“We’re here to facilitate and develop players,” Stoney said during a press conference ahead of San Diego’s Sunday match. “We’re not here to scream, shout, and bawl at them.”

Responding to a question from womenkickballs, Stoney talked about her unique experience as a player and manager in England before assuming a head coaching position in the NWSL.

“We all know the stories that have come out of this league that are completely unacceptable that players should never ever have to face and go through,” said Stoney. “Players have different challenges in England that they still shouldn’t have to go through.”

Last year marked a watershed moment for the NWSL, with a series of coaches fired for alleged abuse. The reckoning was spurred by a report in The Athletic detailing accounts of sexual coercion against North Carolina Courage coach Paul Riley. NWSL Commissioner Lisa Baird, among others, stepped down in the wake of the scandal, while players demanded better protections in the league’s inaugural collective bargaining agreement.

“All I can hope is that we continue to have background checks on all coaches, that clubs do their due diligence on their staff, that they are resourced to the very highest level in terms of training facilities, medical care and also attitudes toward players,” Stoney added. “A player should feel safe in any environment that they go into, and my hope is that we have a safe environment that can be psychologically safe, physically safe, medically safe for the players.”

Stoney’s holistic, player-focused philosophy has paid off on the pitch, with her expansion club taking the NWSL by storm. The Wave currently sits atop the league standings, level in points with the Portland Thorns through 14 matches played.

Alex Morgan appears revitalized under Stoney, with the 33-year-old in the form of her career, leading the league with 11 goals scored on the season. Defender Naomi Girma and midfielder Taylor Konieck have also shone under Stoney, earning call-ups to the USWNT for the Concacaf W Championship.

Boasting an impressive 1.4 goals per match while only conceding 0.8, Stoney has put together a disciplined side that is in the running for the league title in its maiden NWSL season.

“We move into a new stadium on the 17th of September that we can get record crowds every single week. We can bring huge crowds in,” said Stoney. “We continue to grow this game because it can do so much for not only women but for society.”

With the end of July looming, three months of the NWSL regular season are already in the books and only two remain.

As the league dives further into the second half of the year, Just Women’s Sports is handing out midseason awards for the players and coach who have stood out so far. The San Diego Wave earn two nods, and five teams are represented in total across the six awards. Three NWSL newcomers also get a shoutout.

This list excludes our selection for midseason MVP, which we’ll name Friday from a list of frontrunners. Here we go.

Offensive Player of the Year

Mallory Pugh, Chicago Red Stars

After being named an NWSL MVP nominee last season, Mal Pugh’s impact on the Red Stars has only increased. She’s currently third in the Golden Boot race with six goals and has also contributed two assists. Of her 22 shots so far this season, 19 — or 86 percent — have been on target.

But it’s not just her scoring abilities that make her one of the best players in the league. Pugh has a dribble success rate of 76 percent, and defensively, she wins 67 percent of her tackles and has registered eight interceptions.

Defensive Player of the Year

Naomi Girma, San Diego Wave FC

Naomi Girma, 22, makes everything look easy. The rookie’s transition from college to the pros has been seamless. She looked to veteran and fellow center back Abby Dahlkemper for guidance when first joining the Wave in February, but when Dahlkemper was ruled out for a number of games due to COVID-19 and broken ribs, Girma had no trouble leading the backline line on her own. Playing every minute of the season so far, the 2022 No. 1 pick has displayed a level of composure on the ball well beyond her years and is completing her passes with 84 percent accuracy.

Goalkeeper of the Year

Phallon Tullis-Joyce, OL Reign

When she’s not debating with teammate Nikki Stanton about whether mermaids are real, Phallon Tullis-Joyce is between the posts making people’s jaws drop. Her name was hardly known coming into the 2022 season; she played just one minute as the backup goalkeeper her rookie year. Since she took over the starting spot, Tullis-Joyce’s calm demeanor and on-field leadership have quickly made an impact on the sixth-place Reign. In 12 games so far this season, the goalkeeper has recorded an impressive 83.3 save percentage, six clean sheets and 45 saves.

Rookie of the Year

Savannah DeMelo, Racing Louisville FC

The 2022 rookie class is particularly strong. Savannah DeMelo has been one of the many first years turning heads since the very beginning of the season. The midfielder is confident on the dribble and quick to capitalize on opponents’ mistakes. The fourth overall pick has also proven to be the most lethal player in the NWSL when it comes to scoring off free kicks, having buried a league-high two already this year. To add to that, she’s registered another goal and an assist for Racing Louisville.

Most Improved

Taylor Smith, NJ/NY Gotham FC

From the Courage bench to the waiver wire to a valued member of Gotham FC, Taylor Smith has had a rollercoaster of a season. After playing no more than 45 minutes in four of five games with North Carolina, she parted ways with the club in June and signed with Gotham two days later. There, the 28-year-old has made an instant impact.

In three games in New Jersey, Smith has registered four shots on goal in 219 total minutes, compared to the zero she had with North Carolina. She scored the game-winner in a 2-1 win over Racing Louisville in just her second match with the club while also playing as the lone starting forward. Gotham coach Scott Parkinson has repeatedly expressed how happy he is to have her with the team.

Coach of the Year

Casey Stoney, San Diego Wave FC

To get a team to the top of the table is one thing. To keep them there is another. To do all of that with an expansion team is superhuman, and yet that’s exactly what Casey Stoney has achieved through the first 13 games of the season since coming to the NWSL from the FA Women’s Super League.

The coach’s on-field strategy has been executed to plan, her impeccable timing with substitutes has led to goals on multiple occasions, and she treats her players with the care they haven’t always received from coaching staffs elsewhere. Stoney is intentional about never blaming poor results on the effort of her players, creating a nurturing environment that allows for mistakes and generates success.

Jessa Braun is a contributing writer at Just Women’s Sports covering the NWSL and USWNT. Follow her on Twitter @jessabraun.

In the weeks leading up to the 2021 Expansion and College Drafts, no one was thinking about the San Diego Wave sitting atop the NWSL standings in July other than their coaching staff. The team had signed stars Abby Dahlkemper and Alex Morgan early on, but what the rest of the team would look like around them was largely unknown in December.

And yet, seven months later, manager Casey Stoney and her staff have achieved an unprecedented start for a new club in NWSL, as the first-place Wave return from the international break Sunday with a record of 5-2-3.

When creating an expansion side from scratch, coaches have to take into account short- and long-term planning, and often the expectations of steady progress trump a win-now mentality. The Wave have achieved both in 2022, with a mix of veteran and young talent coming together to create one of the most tactically versatile sides in the league.

It’s one thing to talk through the best-laid plans in NWSL expansion history, and another to execute it every week in one of the most competitive leagues in the world. Just Women’s Sports spoke with Stoney back in December, in the days before her team went through both drafts. Since then, her vision has played out in both expected and unexpected ways.

“Our aim is to have players that are really comfortable on the ball and can make decisions,” Stoney said then. “So their IQ in football is good. And if it’s not, that’s our job as coaches to educate and to give them the tools that they need to go out there and perform.”

Stoney was quick to credit her assembled staff, including data analyst Michael Poma, Rich Gunney (former assistant coach of the Portland Thorns) and Victoria Boardman for helping her get up to speed on the college and youth player pool as well as international recruiting.

At the time, Stoney had expressed a need for patience with the midfield, specifically. With their eye on a number of players in the international market, the Wave surprised many when they surpassed Florida State defensive midfielder Jaelin Howell with the No. 1 pick in favor of Stanford defender Naomi Girma.

Howell seemed like the better fit for the Wave’s positional needs, but Girma has quickly rewarded Stoney’s faith in her ability to make decisions with the ball. Through 10 games, the 2020 U.S. Soccer Young Female Player of the Year has quickly risen up the stat sheet in passing accuracy, while consistently putting out fires defensively and distributing the ball from a variety of distances. She’s also kept a cool head despite the prolonged absence of Dahlkemper, who has missed a number of games with an injury to her ribs.

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(Jenny Chuang/ISI Photos/Getty Images)

Amid the chaos and uncertainty of the past offseason, the Wave also infused their attack with young talent. In December, Stoney specifically called out Amirah Ali and Kelsey Turnbow as players she wanted to work into the rotation immediately. They have each appeared in nine games for San Diego, with Ali making one start and Turnbow five.

While players have stepped up across the lineup to get the Wave to where they are at this point in the season, the lingering question of San Diego’s midfield hasn’t exactly been answered.

The January transfer market yielded the signing of Sofia Jakobsson, and a January trade for Emily van Egmond and Taylor Kornieck from the Orlando Pride helped the Wave establish their preferred trio in the middle of the pitch. Stoney acknowledged that the NWSL has to continue to build its reputation for more Champions League-eligible players to view the U.S. league as a prime opportunity. Until then, the greatest dividends will likely come from in-league deals.

Van Egmond has functioned as a more traditional No. 6 for the Wave, allowing Kornieck to drift forward and play the best soccer of her young career. She’s currently fourth in the league in g+ — a metric that generally measures a player’s ability to create actions that lead to goal-scoring opportunities — sitting behind only Sophia Smith, Mallory Pugh and Trinity Rodman. Alongside her on the list is teammate Alex Morgan, perhaps providing a glimpse into the on-field relationship the players formed in Orlando and have brought to San Diego

When asked about the Wave’s style of play in December, Stoney deadpanned, “The plan is we go: goalkeeper, to center back, up to the forwards and we score.” She may have been joking then, but the Wave have scored at least one goal this season using this exact formula: Against OL Reign in June, Kailen Sheridan found Morgan with a beauty of an assist for the score. Sheridan explained afterward that she was able to exploit the Reign’s defense because their front three hadn’t been closing down in front of her and their defensive line hadn’t adjusted to keeping Morgan from running in behind.

That sort of hyper-direct goal production won’t carry San Diego all the way to the playoffs, but it is an extreme example of Stoney’s general principles of squad construction: Bring in players with good decision-making skills, let them problem-solve to exploit the other team’s weaknesses, and shore up any positional deficiencies with a certain amount of maneuverability.

Within that philosophy, locker-room chemistry ended up being the main pillar of the Wave’s foundation. When pursuing Sheridan, in addition to her obvious abilities in net, Stoney spoke extensively with Canada head coach Bev Priestman and Sheridan’s former Sky Blue FC teammate, Leah Galton, about who the 26-year-old is as a person. She received glowing recommendations about the goalkeeper.

“She’s going to be a real leader for us in lots of different [ways], in the dressing room, great character, really positive,” Stoney said in December.

Stoney took the same approach when bringing in Dahlkemper and Morgan, the team’s first two marquee signings.

“Abby’s just a fantastic human being, really positive, wants that leadership role, wants to lead by example,” she said. “And I think you have to lead by example, you have to talk the talk, and walk the walk. … Alex Morgan comes with a reputation, every little girl looks up to her. She’s a role model, she’s a player that’s won everything at the very highest level.”

Morgan’s NWSL resurgence this season isn’t something the public had as much faith in as her manager did, but by all accounts, this is the best season the USWNT striker has ever had in the NWSL. She currently sits atop the Golden Boot race with 11 goals and one assist — including 15 goals in 17 games across all competition — and leads the league in xG, according to American Soccer Analysis. The underlying data indicates not only her finishing success, but also that she’s been actively making runs that put her in position to get a foot on high-opportunity chances.

The Wave play with a full-team defensive press that causes problems for opponents trying to play out of the back. That press starts at the top with Morgan and the attack, and it’s an ethos Stoney has passed on to her entire squad.

“I think they’re just extremely well-coached,” Gotham head coach Scott Parkinson said after his team’s second consecutive loss to the Wave. “I think they’ve recruited knowing exactly how Casey wants to play. They’ve had a fresh slate, and they’ve not brought in anyone that doesn’t fit the style that she’s looking for.”

The Wave will have to rely on that full-team buy-in over the next month, with Sheridan, Morgan, Girma and Jakobsson on international duty and away from the team. Given the basic principles Stoney has instilled in her team, and brought to fruition through the first two months of the season, it’s hard to imagine San Diego not being firmly in the playoff hunt by the end of the regular season.

“They started the season really direct, so every time they got the ball, you just got set up for them to be direct and play the first and second balls,” Parkinson said. “But now they try to play a little bit, so they pull you out to press them, and when they go long, you’re not set up to solve the long ball.”

For Stoney, the club’s results are less surprising. The concept of what the club has become was born over a year ago.

“I think you will see a team that works for every single ball, that works hard for the club, that gives absolutely everything,” Stoney said in December. “But we want to be a team that entertains, a team that can score goals, that can keep clean sheets.”

Mission accomplished so far on the field. But from the very beginning, San Diego’s vision has always been even bigger. As Stoney said, “We’re going to connect with our community. We’re going to connect with our fan bases. We do really genuinely want to be a team that our community can be proud of.”

Claire Watkins is a contributing writer at Just Women’s Sports covering soccer and the NWSL. Follow her on Twitter @ScoutRipley.

The National Women’s Soccer League issued a pair of fines against San Diego Wave head coach Casey Stoney and President Jill Ellis, announcing the move Thursday.

The disciplinary action comes after the NWSL found Stoney and Ellis to be in violation of Section 12.3.5 “Approaching Officials” of the League Operations Manual during the club’s June 8 and 12 matches, respectively.

The fine amount was not disclosed in the NWSL’s statement.

Officiating has been a flashpoint this NWSL season, with Washington Spirit coach Kris Ward receiving a fine from the league in May after complaining about referring to reporters.

According to an ESPN report, The Professional Soccer Referees Association is negotiating a collective bargaining agreement for the NWSL’s referees, which work for the Professional Referee Organization.

Currently, NWSL officials receive less pay and less training than MLS officials. PRO positions the NWSL at the same level as the men’s lower-division United Soccer League, with successful officials given the opportunity to advance to the MLS.

San Diego Wave FC will be without coach Casey Stoney for Wednesday’s match against Racing Louisville FC after she tested positive for COVID-19.

Rich Gunney will step in as interim head coach for the league-leading Wave (3-0).

Stoney is the latest person affiliated with the NWSL to test positive for COVID-19. NJ/NY Gotham FC’s regular-season home opener against the North Carolina Courage on Saturday was postponed due to the large number of players on both teams in the health and safety protocols.

If the game had been played, Gotham would have been without four of its players – Caprice Dydasco, Ashlyn Harris, Ali Krieger and Midge Purce – due to the protocols. On the North Carolina side, Tessa Boade, Katie Bowen, Abby Erceg, Carson Pickett, Briana Pinto, Katelyn Rowland and Havana Solaun were in the protocols.

The NWSL isn’t the only domestic league in the U.S. to struggle with the recent COVID-19 surge. In the WNBA, Natasha Cloud and Breanna Stewart have been vocal about the league’s travel policies. Both have missed games due to health and safety protocols.

This comes as the nation appears to be in the midst of yet another surge in Covid cases. According to the New York Times, cases have increased by 61 percent over the past 14 days, with an average of just over 100,000 cases per day on May 17.

It’s unclear how long Stoney will be out. After Wednesday’s game, the Wave next play on Sunday against the Courage. The team sits atop the NWSL standings after going undefeated through the first three matches of the regular season.

San Diego’s NWSL expansion team has named its first head coach.

On Wednesday, the club announced that San Diego NWSL President Jill Ellis had tapped Casey Stoney for the manager job.

Stoney comes to San Deigo by way of England. The 39-year-old former national team star managed Manchester United in the FA Women’s Super League from 2018 to 2021. In her tenure with the club, Stoney led Manchester United to 55 wins in 77 matches, securing fourth-place finishes in her first two seasons with the team.

“Casey has all of the qualities we want in our manager and she is fully committed to making San Diego NWSL a globally-successful club and brand led by powerful and talented women. We are thrilled to secure her as our manager and look forward to what she will bring to our club and city,” Jill Ellis said on Stoney’s hiring.

Ellis has said from the beginning that she would hire all women to leadership positions. After tapping Molly Downtain to serve as the team’s general manager, Ellis is now 2-for-2 on her promise.

The San Diego expansion team will join the NWSL in 2022 and has yet to announce an official name or permanent venue.

Casey Stoney is leaving Manchester United.

On Wednesday, the club announced that Stoney would be stepping down from her role as head coach at the end of the season. United finished fourth in this year’s WSL standings, narrowly pushing the team out of Champions League eligibility.

In a statement to the media, Stoney said coaching the club was an honor and that her decision to leave wasn’t easy. Stoney has been with United since 2018.

According to reporting done by The Athletic’s Meg Linehan, Stoney could be on the move — to southern California.

Sources indicate Stoney has been linked to the NWSL’s potential San Diego expansion team. The former Manchester United coach is said to be a favorite for Jill Ellis, who is attached to San Diego as the club’s sporting director.

As for Manchester United, John Murtough, the club’s Football Director, said the organization is still committed to the women’s team and building upon Stoney’s legacy.