“I never really stopped scouting,” said Gabarra. “I believed that the league was coming back every year.”

The Freedom has been sort of a Mecca for former WUSA players and recent college graduates who have been trying to stay fit and play at a high level while waiting for a professional league to resurface. Players like Lori Lindsey, Christie Welsh, Emily Janss and Casey Zimny have been regulars on the Freedom roster. Gabarra expects that the time they have spent developing talent while the rest of the league was on hiatus will pay off for the Freedom and for the league in general.

“I think it’s a big advantage looking forward because a lot of those players that we put an investment in are still pretty young,” he said. “There’s a little bit of unknown out there because they don’t know if they will play for us for the pro team. That option is certainly out there. If they do well for us this summer, we’re going to look very hard to either draft them or sign them. If we can’t, I’m sure there are going to be a lot of other teams out there that are going to be watching W-League and WPSL games this summer.”

Gabarra has very down to earth expectations as to what the first year will bring for WPS.

“I wouldn’t say that you can expect that it will be the greatest soccer league in the world in the first season, but our goal is to produce a product as good or better than the WUSA produced.“ said Gabarra.

He is suspicious that some of the top international talent may wait and see how WPS manages in its first year before coming over, but feels like the level of competition amongst all the teams will win them over.

“I think what our league will provide that is better than every other league in the world is league parity,” he said. “We’ll have seven, eight, nine, whatever the number winds up being, very good teams competing. Every other league in the world of women’s soccer has maybe one, two, or three decent teams and the rest are way below that competitive level. From a players point of view, I think that will make it more enticing to play here than abroad.”

While Gabarra is responsible for what fans will see on the field, Joe Quinn, former CFO of the WUSA has been charged with managing the business side for the Freedom. Like Gabarra, Quinn is realistic about what to expect in the early years.

“Our plan is to be in the black in the fifth year,” he said.

Having served on the finance side, Quinn has a good understanding of what went wrong last time and one mistake that he’s working hard not to repeat is the WUSA’s failure to forge a relationship with Major League Soccer (MLS).

“Unlike last time, we’ve been encouraged to reach out to MLS and share infrastructure and that’s what I think makes the business plan viable,” said Quinn. “One of my first moves was a conversation with D.C. United to enter into a management agreement where they are going to do the back office. It’s an unsigned agreement at this time. We are still negotiating, but for me it’s reality and we are very close. They will make available to us the sales, marketing, ticket infrastructure, the accounting and payroll, all that back office that would call for duplication if we were to develop it ourselves.”

Quinn also hopes to expand the Freedom’s fan base by tapping into D.C. United’s with double headers.

“We are looking to develop double headers with D.C. United. Negotiations are under way for two or three,” he said. “Cross pollination of the two demographics will help them and I think it will help us develop a new audience.”

Soccer fans who can’t wait until WPS officially launches next April can get a sneak peek by catching the Washington Freedom in W-League action this spring and summer at the Maryland Soccerplex. Check out www.washingtonfreedom.com for the schedule. The Soccerplex will remain home to the Freedom until D.C. United builds a stadium.