The report in the Athletic just said it scaled up in the last two years and that she's currently on ~$275k. I suppose it could be really dramatic like 350k/350k/1.75m/1.75m.

Spirit only have one player under contract for 2028, per @tayvincent6.bsky.social @ Spotrac.

Theoretically, with 24 minimum salary players, they'd have about $3m in cap space for Rodman plus McKeown.

This is when I re-realized that due to the joys of single entity, all contracts are with the league (not the teams), which is why Berman / the BoG has so much say, even compared to other collectively bargained US leagues.

Given the nonsense in the W negotiations I could even see a 12-2 "yes, we'd like to shoot off our own feet" tally.

i guess I'm not their ideal customer since it was "once every 7-10 years", but... sigh. It was nice to not have to think beyond "enter specs, click buy".

Also condolences to @lionspitch.bsky.social for hitting the curse of "sending the newslettter and then getting big news 30 minutes later".

This makes sense as the clear wording of the thing in the CBA.

I'm still confused why they need to use one of these before the 2026 season has even started (and why Miyabi would settle for this?).

On the one hand, adding Ivory's 10 NWSL starts to my local team would *triple* the number of NWSL goalkeeping starts on the roster.

On the other hand, that's not even the worst non-expansion situation in the league.

I'm a bit curious the longer it goes, but until there's a full denial or NC actually hires someone Mak Lind should be on the coaches list.

Yep, I have excellent timing.

I'm curious if they see her as the veteran depth at just midfield, just fullback, or both (because they could use both).

Already out of date, of course. Despite where Weatherholt played the overwhelming majority of her minutes last year, still listed as a midfielder here.

The 'midfielder' in the announcement may explain some of it.

Interesting. On corners they gave up 8% more shots per corner faced and 30% more xG per shot than the rest of the league.

Small sample size, but not pretty.

I'd be curious if the poor set piece defense is correlated with poor box defense.

Also even with finishing variance the goalkeeping wasn't good by any numbers (and is a large question mark for 2026).