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I know, I know, twenty points off for tardiness. Chalk it up to a few technical glitches. 

To round off our 2012 WPS Draft coverage, here’s a collection of quotes in both audio and visual form from the four WPS coaches in attendance at Friday’s draft.

 

Sky Blue FC head coach Jim Gabarra

On drafting goalkeeper Jillian Mastroianni:

I had her as a draftable player since her freshman season at BU. She’s physically got the build and stature for this and she’s played in a very good conference. When we got down to the point when we had to pick in the draft we could afford to wait because we knew Philly were going to pick a goalkeeper. We’d be happy with Henninger or Mastroianni. I don’t think we could go wrong with either one. I kind of had them even, time will tell, with our evaluation.

 

On securing Ingrid Wells’ rights for the 2012 WPS season:

We’ll have her rights for a year and fit she’s unhappy there then you can always get yourself out of a contract if you’re unhappy but I think we have the best chance of getting her to sign in WPS being a kid from Jersey.

I talked to her before she signed in Sweden and I talked with her coach. She had just made that decision to go there mostly with a lot of kids coming out of college, they don’t see a lot of opportunities and they see a chance to go abroad to experience that and increase your own stock and know you’re going to get considerably more time playing. You can’t argue with that. We have her rights, so if things don’t work out over there and she gets homesick then she’ll end up signing with Philly or Boston or somebody.

 

On signing more USWNT players and continued squad building:

I don’t know that we’ll be able to afford two [USWNT players], but certainly one, we’re close to one. There are two other players we have under contract that we just can’t announce yet. You look at our roster and it’s a little deceiving because there are some other midfielders and a forward that don’t show up but should in the coming weeks.

 

On WPS’s continuous challenge:

Our problem has always been awareness. In Washington you had the best players in the world and you could have someone walk to the Maryland SoccerPlex and not know there was a women’s soccer team. You had [former Washington Freedom players] Abby, Sawa, Sonia Bompastor all score in a [World Cup] semifinal game and two of three are up for Player of the Year. You had a kid around the corner who probably played and didn’t know there was a women’s league.

 

Philadelphia Independence head coach Paul Riley

On Sarah Hagen’s temporary absence:

It’s disappointing she’s not here, but in all honesty, we’re deep enough the squad we’ve got to do without her. But I think she’s going to be a fantastic player in the year after. I had breakfast with her agent this morning and I told him I think she’s going to be the future on the national team.

 

On WPS’s competitive advantage and disadvantage:

[You] will never see the quality we have in this league anywhere around the world. If you go to Sweden and watch the two top teams you’ll see five players on one team, five players on the other team. You come to our league, you’ll see 19 players, you come to a warm-up and you’ll get a better game than in some other countries. People will say some of the best foreigners aren’t here, well, there’s reasons they aren’t here. I think [Caroline] Seger would be here in this wasn’t an Olympic year. I do think we need to lengthen the season a little bit to get the foreigners more interested. I think that’s what scares them away. There they’ll play for nine months; here they’ll play for only six. When you’re a footballer, you want to play.

 

On imminent player signings (like Lauren Cheney!):

We should some great announcements in the next weeks with Vero and Cheney and all these players finishing these contracts off and hopefully we’ll be okay.

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• Women's Professional Soccer Draft

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• 2012 WPS Draft

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