The NWSL is the first top American sports league to abolish all drafts. What now?

When NCAA All-American striker Diana Ordóñez debuted in the NWSL in 2022, there was little more that she could ask from her rookie season with the North Carolina Courage. Within her first professional year, Ordonez immediately became a star for the Courage, broke the league’s scoring record for a rookie, and also earned a call-up for Mexico’s national team.

The only problem: She had no say in going to North Carolina.

“I’m incredibly grateful for the experiences that I had there, the coaches that I had, the teammates,” the now-Houston Dash forward told ESPN about her first club. “[But] I didn’t get to choose to go there, they picked me.

“Still, an unbelievable experience, but at the end of the day my desire was to be closer to home. My family is from Dallas, so Houston would be the best place for me and my life.”

Following changes made by last year’s new collective bargaining agreement in the NWSL, Ordoñez’s predicament is now a thing of the past.

Thanks to changes in the CBA, the U.S. women’s top flight is the first major league in the United States to eliminate a college or entry draft, thereby giving college players the freedom to negotiate and choose their first professional team.

“I see it as a great thing for the NWSL,” said Ordoñez. “This way, people can kind of shop around and choose where they want to be.”

Along with other changes that include alterations to free agency and player consent for trades, a new era is now underway in the NWSL. With more freedoms shifting in the favor of players, there’s now a different environment that professionals, clubs and the league will have to adapt to.

The NWSL, in other words, is forging a path no other major American league has before.

When speaking about the end of the draft and changes to free agency, commissioner Jessica Berman was open when discussing the uncharted road ahead during late January’s NWSL Media Day.

“It’s a learning process for the whole ecosystem,” Berman told journalists in attendance.

“On the technical staff side, they’ve never experienced anything like this. There actually is nothing to point to as a case study of how to make this transition, because there is no league that has gone from a world of a draft and having years of service, to being able to earn free agency and just having that melt away overnight.”

So what does this all mean for rookies and for the league? In order to get a better understanding on the overall impact, ESPN chatted with players and general managers about maneuvering through an NWSL world without a draft.

A boost for NWSL players: “I could advocate for myself”

In line with Ordoñez, there was near universal approval from the players ESPN asked about the college draft being abolished.

For Bay FC’s Taylor Huff, who is part of the first generation to have had the opportunity to negotiate her future after playing in the NCAA, there was an appreciation for those who helped make the changes to the CBA.

“I’m very thankful for the people who came before me who were like ‘No, we don’t want a draft’ … I think it definitely benefited me in a lot of ways, because I’m such a comfortable person in knowing that I could go into an environment before I choose the team, [and that] was everything that I think I personally needed,” Huff said.

“I’m very, very grateful that the people in the NWSL spoke up and kind of made that decision easy for me.”

San Diego Wave’s Quincy McMahon, one of the first NCAA players to be signed after the end of the draft, echoed those feelings. Notably, the former UCLA defender also highlighted that the latest changes helped create a “tipping point” for those who were considering going pro in the NWSL.

“The autonomy that we have, that was a huge thing for a lot of us,” McMahon. “Just to be more excited and to kind of be like ‘Oh, maybe I do want to play professionally if I get to kind of have a say in where I go,’ so I think for some of my teammates it was a tipping point.”

“We knew that it meant I had more of a say, but also that I could advocate for myself, and also I could kind of negotiate in a way, and before it was like you got drafted, you got a contract, and that’s what you took.”

That tipping point for rookies has helped keep the number of player signings stable. According to some number-crunching over at The Equalizer, a total of 42 outgoing NCAA players have so far signed NWSL contracts in the 2025 offseason. Looking at research from Spotrac, only seven drafted players signed with an NWSL club by the end of February last year, although that number then goes up to 40 when including those who signed before the start of the season in March of 2024.

The NWSL’s 2025 season kicks off on March 14.

It appears fears of a severe drop-off in signings have been unrealized in the first NWSL season without the draft. When including other competitions such as the new domestic USL Super League and others from abroad, professional contracts for recent college players are currently outpacing what we’ve seen from the previous class.

For rising stars like University of Texas alum Lexi Missimo, who was included in the U.S. national team’s “Futures Camp” in January, the end of the draft helped solidify the notion that she not only had free agency, but also even more opportunities to consider beyond the NWSL.

“I think it just puts into consideration of where people truly want to live, and also knowing which team has an attacking midfielder or where you’re going to get the most minutes. I think that’s what the draft going away really makes an athlete think about,” said Missimo, who signed with the USL’s Dallas Trinity FC near the midpoint of the league’s inaugural season.

“I just really sat in with my family and thought about, where do I truly want to live? Where do I think I’m going to benefit the most for playing wise?”

Four minutes into her February debut, Missimo scored her first professional goal.

“When I was making my decision with my inner circle, it wasn’t about the two leagues, both leagues are great, it was more about where I wanted to play and where I was going to get the most minutes to develop my game.”

The importance of being able to make that decision has been clear. Along with players being able to negotiate as free agents, and also creating their own sporting pathways through the end of the draft, there’s the simple but vital factor of playing where you want to play — which should be constructive for all involved.

“At the end of the day, you want to go somewhere where you want to be,” said Bay FC’s Huff. “They want people to choose where they want to be, and if they’re where they want to be, then they’re going to be at their best and happy.”

The front office perspective and recruitment

If we’re using ESPN’s anonymous NWSL GM survey from last year as a barometer, feelings are undoubtedly mixed about the end of the draft.

Asked before the CBA had been approved, there was a near-even split among general managers who wanted to keep it or do away with it. One worry cited by several was the lack of new roster mechanisms that could help replace the draft, while another brought up was the usefulness of having a tradeable resource and tool to sign players without transfer fees.

Nonetheless, from the two GMs that ESPN spoke with for this article, months after the CBA had been passed, there was a recognition of the league making the right steps.

“Look, we would have benefited from a draft this year from where we placed last season, but I’m still gonna sit here and say that this is the best thing for the league,” said San Diego GM and sporting director Camille Ashton. “You have to do the work as a club to attract players here, and I think that that’s only going to improve us as a club and as an organization overall. … I think it’s a real positive for everybody.”

With the addition of the University of North Carolina’s Trinity Armstrong in January, Wave have so far added three outgoing NCAA players to their roster during the current offseason. According to Ashton, there is an additional “responsibility on the teams” to now cater to players who could help raise the standard of each club.

“Responsibility” was a word that was also used by Yael Averbuch West, GM and head of soccer operations for NJ/NY Gotham FC, when chatting about the new landscape of women’s soccer.

“We have to scout more players and not just look at, ‘We have X number of draft picks’,” said Averbuch West. “[We] look at the whole college game and say, like of these group of players, which players do we think could contribute to our roster in short and in longer term, and so that is a huge responsibility.”

“Now you can really be ambitious and go and try to recruit players to play for your club. So I think, we saw the great opportunity. We’ve put in a lot of work, and we will continue to do so to really understand the college game, understand how it translates to the pro game.”

As part of a restructuring of the team, Gotham have been busy in the offseason with five rookie signings from the NCAA. Whether that continues going forward will be on a case-by-case basis for Averbuch West, who noted that these decisions for clubs could change by roster needs, and that there may be future years in which Gotham may have just one spot open.

Regardless of the exact number, part of the overall thinking for both clubs is the desire to find better fits that also want to be within an organization. As Ashton put it: “Being part of a team should never be like a one way choice, or like a one way decision, it really needs to be mutually beneficial and be the right place for both parties.”

Doing so means preparing pitches, literally and figuratively, to players.

For San Diego’s McMahon, the process felt akin to college recruiting with meetings and Zoom calls with different teams. Clubs would provide selling points, discuss their philosophy, tactical approaches, and also showcase their facilities. As for Huff, the rookie credited the ability to find a good agent that was able to quickly bring information to her that allowed her to adequately communicate back and forth with different teams.

There’s more review and assessments from either side, and from the perspective of a more experienced NWSL figure like Chicago Stars FC’s Sam Staab, she’s seen an increase in trials being utilized in the offseason.

“Teams are holding combines or maybe doing a bit more due diligence,” said Staab to ESPN. “I do think teams are doing that and I think it’s smart, I think it’s cool. I think an opportunity to show yourself in front of the coaches that you want to play for is an opportunity that anyone should and want to have.”

Club’s front offices can’t hold onto players indefinitely as trialists either. Time constraints in the NWSL’s 2025 Competition Manual have given 56 days (consecutive or non-consecutive) maximum for a U21 trialist, or 21 days (consecutive or non-consecutive) maximum for trialists that are over the age of 21.

“There was no rule previously around the amount of days that trialists could be in,” said Ashton. “These time constraints, it really [does] not force the teams to make decisions, but if that time period expires, then the player can make that decision to move on, to take another opportunity elsewhere.”

“The next chapter” of the NWSL

Unknowns do still remain.

Despite the fact that McMahon was able to seamlessly find her way into the NWSL, the defender noted that some of her college teammates haven’t had the most straightforward journeys.

“I know for many of my friends, even at UCLA, this process has been long and drawn out, and even right now, they’re not sure where they’re going to end up, or if they’re going to end up anywhere,” said McMahon. “To be fair, it’s the first year.”

When speaking to Racing Louisville’s Savannah DeMelo, who viewed the end of the draft as a positive for the league, she also hinted at worries that some college players could be overlooked: “The downside to it is that there’s so many people that now maybe won’t get a shot,” while also noting that the USL could help pick up the slack for those who are looking for chances outside of the NWSL.

And while players do have the freedom to choose teams, that freedom is still immediately and rapidly placed on their shoulders right after leaving the NCAA.

“We can’t speak to any professional clubs before we end our college season, and we can’t have an agent represent us before we end our college season,” said McMahon. “Which I understand the implications of as to why, but I do think that that made the process very hard and fast.”

As highlighted earlier, the good news in the early days of the new NWSL era is that things are looking mostly promising when looking at the number of signings of outgoing college players. When coupled with those who are playing in the USL and abroad, the argument could be made that it’s an exciting moment for those who want to become professionals in the world’s game.

However, at the NWSL level, adjustments and a necessary evolution will have to continue to follow for the league that has to find more avenues into the competition that has no centralized academy structure or a secondary league.

“I think time will tell the resources that our clubs need to be able to make their scouting processes more sophisticated,” said Berman during NWSL’s Media Day. “It’s created a really important dialogue at our board level about investing in the path-to-pro, which I think is going to be the next chapter of this league’s growth.”

For Ashton and Averbuch West, that future means finding ways to include more under the NWSL umbrella.

“Certainly, there needs to be an extended amount of players who are involved in each professional club’s environment. What that exactly looks like, I think, is a little bit TBD. How quickly it happens is TBD,” said Averbuch West.

“Like for us at Gotham, how many players feel that they have a tie to the Gotham environment right now? We can only have 26 on contract with our first team…what is the extension of that look like?”

Ashton brought up the need for a secondary league.

“With a lot of younger players entering the league, if players aren’t getting playing time pretty consistently, it’s hard to develop,” said San Diego’s GM. “Having some version of a second team, or a B team, where your first team and pro players can play in those games, I think is going to be a really important step.”

No matter the case on how the league develops, those next steps will have to continue to cater to the needs of players along the way, especially with the rise of new women’s leagues, such as the USL. With free agency increasing and opportunities beyond the NWSL, players are recognizing the significance of choosing what works best for their careers.

“People have a voice, and they want to play where they want and they want to be happy where they are working. Obviously, I mean, this is a job at the end of the day,” said Dallas’ Missimo.

Whether they’re looking for minutes, a fresh start, or simply want to be closer to home, there’s an invaluable power to be able to help dictate one’s own future. The end of the draft is a noteworthy win for those seeking that, and it’s another step towards emphasizing that each player isn’t just a name and a number on a jersey.

“We’re so much more than an athlete. We’re so much more than the person you see on the field,” said Huff.

“I feel like even in the media and the NWSL, we can do a better job at portraying who we are as humans. We have so many different avenues and routes and things we like to do, so I feel like at times, it can be hard to be categorized only as a soccer player, only this.”

“Maybe it doesn’t relate as much to this story, but I think it’s super important to realize too.”