Who is “Augi” Williams

Augustine “Augi” Williams started his soccer journey at Nomads SC in San Diego in 2015 then made his way onto the Portland Timbers 2, then in the USL Championship, the following year. From 2016 to 2018 Augi made 65 appearances and scored 11 goals in Portland before heading down south to play for MLS’ LA Galaxy II - he made 55 appearances for them, scoring 20 goals. While he was called up to the first team 7 times, he never scored for LA Galaxy in an MLS game.

In 2021, Williams was loaned out to the San Diego Loyal, scoring 6 goals in 12 games before heading out east, to play for the Charleston Battery, and scored 29 goals in 63 appearances for them. In one season for Indy Eleven, Augi scored 10 goals from 31 games. Last year, Williams laced up his boots for USL Championship Champions, Pittsburgh Riverhounds and contributed 9 goals to the effort. On top of all of that, Augustine Williams has been called up 6 times to his national team side of Sierra Leone.

Who is Amber Wisner

Amber Wisner, formerly Brooks, was born in Indiana, raised in Pennsylvania, and attended college a the University of North Carolina, as a Tar Heel - winning two NCAA Nattys. After graduating, Amber laced up her boots for the Vancouver Whitecaps in the W League just five times and two years later, she was playing in Germany for Bayern Munich. During her first stint, she made 19 appearances, scoring 9 goals before signing for the Portland Thorns in 2014. After playing 21 games for the Thorns, Wisner was loaned back to Bayern to finish the 2014-15 campaign.

When she came back to the US, Amber joined the Thorns’ rivals, the Seattle Reign. where she made 12 appearances and scored a goal. From 2016 to 2019 she was on contract with the Dash in Houston, making 91 appearances and spent time on loan in Australia, with Adelaide United. It must have been a great loan spell because she made the move permanent in 2019-2020. At the conclusion of that season, Amber headed back to the US to play for the Seattle NWSL team again, this time renamed, OL Reign. The following season, 2022-2023, Amber played for the Washington Spirit then joined the Dallas Trinity for their inaugural season in the USL Super League, making 40 appearances and scoring four times, so far.

Who is Eric Wynalda

The legendary Eric Wynalda started his soccer life as a youth player in Westalake Village, where he was coached by his dad. After graduating from Westlake HS, Wynalda played for San Diego State while also lacing up for the local professional club, San Diego Nomads SC (they’ve since gone fully amateur, but once upon a time they were two-time WSA winners and fielded some of the country’s biggest players) For a couple of those years, he was loaned to the San Francisco Blackhawks where he helped win the APSL title in 1991. Because he was on contract with the USSF, they were the ones to see more value in loaning him to Bundesliga teams then developing in the wild wild west of US Soccer’s league system.

Wynalda split his five years in Germany between two teams; 1. FC Saarbrucken and VfL Bochum, making 86 appearances in the Bundesliga and scoring 25 goals. It was also during that time that Eric played with the US National team as the United States were the hosts of the 1994 World Cup - the starting point of the modern soccer timeline for so many soccer fans in the country.

Then he came back to California; back to sign up for the inaugural season of Major League Soccer and was allocated by USSF to play for the San Jose Clash, where he laced up 57 times and scored 21 goals - in 1999 he was briefly loaned to Club Leon in Mexico, where he played just 5 times. Just 11 games into the 1999 season, where Wynalda made no appearances, he was traded to the Miami Fusion. He played just 12 times for Miami and he was traded to the New England Revolution, where he scored his first goal for the team in a playoff quarterfinal victory over Chicago Fire.

In February 2001, the Revolution traded him to that very Chicago Fire, where he scored 10 times in 21 games. In 2002, negotiations broke down with the LA Galaxy, where he had hoped to play out a final season and retire and instead he signed for the Charleston Battery but tore an ACL and decided to retire. Years later, Eric Wynalda would appear for the Bakersfield Brigade. Wynalda made a run at being a coach, too, and for a decade he took on interesting but fairly niche roles with teams like the San Diego Flash, Cal FC, Atlanta Silverbacks, LA Wolves, and New Amsterdam FC. His longest stint was with the Las Vegas Lights, and perhaps his greatest moment was the 1-0 Open Cup defeat of MLS side Portland Timbers.

- by Josh Duder