Leszek (Shek) Borkowski

WPS draft day is only weeks away and everyone is wondering who will be picked first. Will it be Cheney, Heath, Nogueira or O’Hara?
Draft is like Cinco de Mayo: everyone is happy and not thinking about tomorrow. But eventually once pre-season begins, reality will set in. Coaches will immediately see that some players are much better prepared for the pro game while others struggle.
The most pressure, as you’d expect, is with top picks. There will be intense pressure on the coach, GM, and player, for her to produce immediately. Many highly rated players will be drafted with big expectations only to find out it’s much harder than they expected or their teams have different ideas of how to use them.
I remember last year when the Breakers drafted Amy Rodriguez, the league’s first-ever draft. Highly rated based on her college final four performance and national team play, she struggled in Boston and played sporadically.
What happened with Rodriguez is no different than what happens with a lot of top picks in other sports. The coaches, fans and players realize that expectations are unreasonably high for top rookies and in the end, it wasn’t that the player wasn’t “good.” It was that expectations were simply unrealistic.
Playing against 19 year old college defenders is different from facing Rampone. And there is a gulf between playing for the US WNT; surrounded by very good players, playing against outmatched opponents, and facing seasoned WPS pros every weekend.
Rodriguez will probably go on to have long, productive career with another team (or teams) where the expectations of the team and fans will be different and the system might be better-suited to her style.
Usually, if a player can play right now, she’s going to be on the field. If not, it’s the responsibility of the head coach and his staff to develop the player, creating a plan for helping her develop – in her first year and beyond.