Q&A With Danny Colaprico: NWSL Momentum, COVID-19 Impact, And More
This article was originally published on Elbow Bump — Hochberg Sports Marketing’s blog — on May 18, 2020.
In this week’s edition of Elbow Bump, we’re excited to share our conversation with Danny Colaprico. Danny is a six-year National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL) professional, earning Rookie of the Year honors in 2015. The 27-year-old has played her entire NWSL career with the Chicago Red Stars and helped lead them to the finals in 2019.
Danny has also had two stints overseas, most recently winning a championship in 2018 with Syndey FC of Australia’s W-League. In addition, she appeared in two matches for the United States Women’s National Team in 2018.
We spoke with Danny to get her perspective on life as an athlete during a suspended season, the challenges facing women’s soccer, and more. You can follow her @dannycolaprico on Instagram and Twitter.
Disclaimer: Danny is a client of Hochberg Sports Marketing. HSM recently assisted in the facilitation of Danny’s partnership with NOW Foods. Click here to view NOW’s ambassador page and follow Danny to stay up-to-date with her content.
On COVID-19 and coping with a suspended season
Matt Hochberg: When did it first hit you that the NWSL season might be in jeopardy and what was your first reaction when you received news that the season was suspended?
Danny Colaprico: When we had gone through our first week of preseason — around March 10 — we didn’t realize how serious this virus was. We went into training thinking we were having our one month preseason and the regular season — and the thought didn’t even cross our minds that the season might be in jeopardy. When we got to the end of the first week of preseason, and we heard places were starting to close down, that the virus was getting worse, and that it was starting to become more serious, even then we were kind of like, ‘oh, we’re just going to have the weekend off and will see each other next week after a couple of days of staying at home. It’s fine.’
And then we received a notice saying that we had to stay at home for a month. Even then, though, a one-month delay would bring us right into the regular season. We were thinking surely, ‘we’ll just have a week of preseason then start the season.’ When we started actually missing games — our first game was supposed to be April 18 — I was thinking, ‘oh, shoot. Are we not going to have a season this year?’ And it went from that to, ‘are we not going to have a league anymore?’
Is the league going to be able to sustain this? As of now, we (the NWSL) don’t have any real revenue coming in, and we’re still in the building phase of our league. It would be very difficult for the owners and clubs to sustain this the entire year.
When we started missing games, I started to really worry about the league and if it would survive. It put me in a little bit of a panic, but hopefully we’ll have some sort of season this year.
MH: How have you and your teammates been able to keep in touch and ensure there is still a sense of team camaraderie?
DC: It’s definitely been tough. A lot of us feel very distant from each other right now because there’s only so much you can do over Zoom. You still can’t really connect the way you want to connect when you’re in person with your teammates — building chemistry both off and on the field. It’s just a lot different.
There’s definitely some sort of disconnect right now where I think, ‘am I even a part of a team right now?’ What’s nice about the league, though, is that they want to give us some sort of preseason that will allow us to build in-game fitness, which will reduce the risk of injury, build the chemistry back on the field, allow us to be with each other, and not just be thrown into the fire. We’ll have that time together before we actually start the season which will be good in terms of quality of play and less risk of injury.
MH: Have you been able to keep up with your training?
DC: It’s a bit easier for me because I have a roommate who’s on my team and it’s easier to train with two than just one. But I wouldn’t say it’s anything near full-team training, which is what makes this so difficult.
Soccer is a team sport and there’s 11 per side. It’s very different now when you only have 1–2 players. I’ve also heard from teammates, if they live by themselves, they’re at a loss right now. There’s only so much you can do, especially in a city like Chicago where the virus is so bad and a lot of places are shut down, and the weather isn’t great. It’s hard for some of my teammates to find places to even train. A lot of the fields are turf, which isn’t great on the body and a lot of the parks are closed due to the stay-at-home order. That’s the tough part. Staying prepared. We can get called into preseason at any moment and we have to be in a position to play our best and be ready for that first day.
I would say, for me, we have some weights that luckily a gym gave us before everything shut down so it’s easier for my roommate and I to keep up with lifting and working out. And as I said, it’s nice to have someone, soccer-wise, to be able to pass a ball to.
How will COVID-19 impact the NWSL’s momentum?
Background
Despite its modest eight-year existence, the NWSL is already the longest-running U.S. professional women’s soccer league of all-time. Neither of its predecessors managed to make it past three years of competition.
However, the league is certainly making strides. In November 2019, the NWSL announced new compensation guidelines. Each club’s salary cap increased to $650,000 — a 19.33% overall increase from the year prior — while the maximum salary for individual players increased to $50,000.
In addition, Anheuser-Busch partnered with the NWSL in July to make Budweiser the league’s first-ever official beer sponsor. In March, CBS and Twitch signed on as NWSL broadcast and streaming partners. Three major companies investing their resources into the league is clearly a good sign for its long-term outlook.
That said, it certainly has work to do to turn itself into a viable league that provides its players with the resources and compensation necessary to allow it to prosper. Danny weighed in on the state of the league and the potential impacts of COVID-19.
MH: What do you think the short-term effects of the shutdown — and long-term effects, for that matter — will be on the NWSL and its players?
DC: It’s hard to say. For now, the owners are still paying us. But they keep us out of the finance discussions. From the players’ perspective, we expect the worst and at any moment we can be told that they’re going to stop paying us. It’s hard for us to tell what will happen for the rest of this year, but I would like to think that somehow — from sponsorship, from government loans — the league will find a way to stick around and they will continue to be able to pay its players.
MH: The year 2020 was set to be just the eighth season in NWSL history. As someone who has competed in the league for the majority of its existence, what do you think some of the pain points are that the league is facing?
DC: There’s a lot that goes into that question. Personally, when I was first coming out of college, we all thought being a professional athlete was going to be this luxurious thing. We thought we were going to have all of these resources and it was going to be so easy.
And now, having gone through six years of it, while it has grown a lot and we have resources that we didn’t have when I first came into the league, it still lacks some of the resources that other female leagues and male leagues have. Those resources enable players to be at the best of their ability every day.
In our league, for example, we don’t get paid what we should be getting paid. And that makes it harder on us to access certain resources that we need to survive on the field. When I first came into the league, I was thinking, ‘I’m fine. I’m young. I’m invincible.’ I wasn’t going through injuries then and I didn’t need much. As my career went on — say, if I wanted to get a $100 massage to help recovery — I’m going to second guess that. Can I afford that? People assume we have unlimited access to resources — we don’t. It’s a constant battle of finding access to these resources that we’re not given, that are necessary that we need to be able to play at a high-level.
MH: You mention the NWSL has grown from when you originally entered the league — do you still see the growth trending in the right direction?
DC: I think it’s heading in the right direction. We had a big bump last year in terms of fan attendance throughout the U.S. and received a little bit of a raise in pay.
Obviously, the coronavirus kind of hit at a poor time because we really were headed in the right direction, the growth was there, and last year was the biggest step we’ve taken. I feel the entire pandemic shot us down. We can only hope that we can sustain this year, find ways to keep fans around, find ways to engage fans — other than just playing on the field — because when we get back at it we are going to need them and we are going to want to pick back up where we left off last year.
