When Willow Bay and her husband, Disney CEO Bob Iger, became controlling owners of Angel City last July, they inherited a women’s soccer team that had lost more games than it had won, had fewer playoff appearances than it had suspensions from the league and would end the year by parting ways with its second general manager and second head coach in three seasons.
So on Wednesday, when Bay cut the ribbon on the team’s massive new performance center at California Lutheran University in Thousand Oaks, it was with the hope that would mark the start of Angel City’s turnaround as well.
“This is the vision of this team that we’re helping support and execute,” said Bay, dean of the USC Annenberg School of Communication and Journalism, who joined her husband in investing $50 million in cash for the team to expand its budget and ease its losses. “It was very clear that we needed to invest in football operations here and support the leadership and support the players and making sure they had all the resources they needed to build a winning culture.”
The opening of the performance center comes six days after Angel City announced the hiring of Mark Parsons, one of the most successful coaches in NWSL history, as its sporting director. Parsons said the new training facility will be a big help in recruiting women to come play for his new team.
“If I can get them here and get them to walk around, then it’s going to be very hard for people not wanting to be in this environment,” he said. “When I think of Angel City and why I want to be here, what has started with an ownership group and investors to build a brand that is world-leading, how female athletes should be supported, knowing the ambition now and putting in a performance center that no other women’s sports team has in the world, you’ve kind of touched everything.”
The performance center is part of a 9-acre training base Angel City inherited from the Rams when the NFL team moved to Woodland Hills in August. It is the largest and most modern in the NWSL history, boasting a 5,400-square-foot gym, three locker rooms, a film room, a medical treatment and hydrotherapy area, and a children’s playroom, among other things. There is one full soccer pitch and an adjoining half field.
It’s a big step up from the last three seasons when Angel City worked out of a pair of temporary trailers in a far corner of the CLU campus and used a weight room that wasn’t actually a room, but a huge tent. Angel City would not say exactly how much it spent on refurbishing the facility but said it was a “multimillion-dollar custom rebuild.”
The move into the new facility comes at a time when the league is adjusting to radical new rules that have altered the building of rosters. Last September the NWSL became the first major professional league in the U.S. to ditch the draft, which bound players to the team that selected them. The new collective-bargaining agreement between the league and the players’ association also allows for out-of-contract players to negotiate with every team in the league and gives players the right to block trades to teams they don’t want to play for.
As a result, signing players now means recruiting them first.
“My job has just got much, much more easy with this facility,” Parsons said. “A few more clubs over the last few years have been investing. [But] this is unlike nowhere else. I’m excited to be a part of an organization that cares that much.
“But I’m also excited that my skill set just got a bit easier, because everyone’s going to want to be here.”
Christen Press, a two-time World Cup champion and the first player the team signed, said the facility will help make Angel City a destination.
“For the last three years, when we go as a club and talk to top players in the world, we didn’t have this facility to offer,” she said. “It’s a huge part of our day-to-day experience as an athlete and it matters.”
Whether it will be enough to turn around a team that lost a franchise-record 13 games last season, finishing 12th in the 14-team NWSL, remains to be seen. In the last month Matt Wade, the assistant general manager, and technical director Mark Wilson agreed to a one-year contract extension with Press, added French forward Julie Dufour and Australian defender Alanna Kennedy, and signed Mississippi State midfielder Macey Hodge.
Still, the team will begin preseason training Wednesday without a permanent replacement for coach Becki Tweed and with Parsons just a week into his job replacing general manager Angela Mangano Hucles.
Parsons said the team has signed Sam Laity, who formerly worked in Seattle and Houston, to manage the club on an interim basis as he searches for a permanent coach.
“Getting the right person is the priority,” Parsons said. “If the right person is available sooner rather than later, fine. If we have to wait for that right person and they’re not available until the summer, then we’re open to that as well.”
For the time being, Bay is promising to be patient and supportive. The results, however, must follow eventually.
“Bob and I were very clear about investing the resources in this team and the people who lead and manage it. And most certainly the women who play for it,” she said.
But, she added, “we know how important it is to do our best to bring a championship to this city.”
