Disclosure: Ryan serves as the team manager for the Little Rock Rangers SC’s UPSL teams.

The UPSL-Women’s Division wrapped its first national-reach season with their inaugural National Finals this past weekend at the Kansas City Current’s Training Facility. Holding a first-ever final, while administrating the near-doubling the number of member teams, will always come with its kinks and wrinkles to be smoothed in future events. With the division likely to steadily increase expansion, in large part to now offering this national level competition, I thought I’d share some personal observances from the weekend’s event on what went well, and what needs work, ahead of Spring 2026 (assuming Fall ‘25 plays out as a more regionally localized competition):

Photo: From the UPSL Instagram account - Photographer, Hector Garcia

Went well:

The venue. The Current’s training facility in Riverside, Missouri is the first soccer facility constructed specifically for women's soccer. Having that lore a part of the facility playing host and the backdrop of the competition was a smart play. The lockers and team areas in the academy building that were made available were top notch.
The competition. Of the fourteen matches played over the event, only two saw score spreads greater than 2 goals. This emphasizes the fairly even, and high, level of competition that travel from all parts of the country to compete.
The broadcasting. The UPSL’s faith in Atlantic Soccer Media Group as their broadcasting partner is well founded. Truly a great team of people that perform the ground work in preparing notes for the matches and in connecting with teams and fans to bring teams’ stories in their own words as a feature to the in-match coverage.
The in-event Marketing. The match up previews, tables, score reports and match posters in the immediate days leading up to, and during, the finals events were well executed and lends a level of professionalism to the games.
The league staffing. Everyone from UPSL that showed up onsite to help put in a yeoman effort. They juggled a lot and had to be extremely flexible in response to a lot of changes, situations, and personalities (including me) that popped up as part of hosting a first-time, three-day event. In the end, they all are genuinely passionate about providing a platform for women's soccer, and I personally witnessed that in their words and actions throughout the weekend..

Photo: Courtesy Little Rock Rangers SC - Photographer, Leslie

Needs work:

Early Communication. While the league had announced the national finals, dates and locations before the start of the season, details on postseason structure and on the finals themselves came very late. In our division’s case, we were notified that the regular season division winner would skip the division playoffs for a regional champ matchup, and the remaining teams would compete for the division championship, sans the regular season champ. We found this out a week before the end of the season, rendering some teams unable to compete. After some divisional winners, including the would-be top regular season team in the country, had seemingly closed shop for the season rather than advance to either regionals or finals, the league finally released their intended structure for the tourney on July 7th, less than two weeks out from the event itself.
Finals structure. While it was asserted several times that the women's postseason and finals were “being done just like the men’s”, this is not the case. Men’s’ Conference winners are not skipped over for conference playoffs, and four matches are not played over approx. 51 hours by the finals teams. That four games in two days’ proposition, coupled with cross-country travel time and costs, likely cost the competition the attendance of 2-3 deserving conference/regional winners.

I do assume the finals congestion of 8 teams rather than 4 (as they do in the mens) was a good intention to better assist teams to prepare for the postseason, should they earn a berth. The league is a very cost-effective option in comparison to other national leagues. Balancing that value, adjusting teams to national competition, and trying to avoid clubs incurring greater and greater costs on long distance road games week after week for divisional, regional, and quarterfinal rounds is an admirable cause. The consequence of that good intention is then trying to cram an 8-team group into a 48 hour weekend, while providing an equitable number of games to those teams for making the travel efforts.

I’ll also note that organizers did their best, within the group play structure they’d implemented, to prepare for the match congestion and the elements by shortening the group matches to 40-minute halves and having mandated 5-minute water breaks 1-2x per half.

Fix Idea 1: The first option is to better mirror the men's division structure, starting the season earlier in the spring and playing out a longer postseason for a final four team-finals..The league is very accommodating of roster size, with most teams fielding nearly 40 registered players. Many teams field a mixed roster of players aged 15-20s, and would be able to start the season earlier in the calendar year while leaning on their younger and post-grad players before their collegiate players become available.

Fix Idea 2: IF the 8 team finals weekend is to be carried forward, the group play needs to be done away with. While the event this year was fortunate to be (as far as I am aware) major injury-free, that’s not a sustainable streak going forward.

Do away with the random draw, and seed the team based on their PPM.
This year’s draw grouped what would have been the (1,2,3 & 8) & (4,5,6,7) seeds.
Have a set standard on what conferences will play a regional to reach final and which won’t (ex: two 6-team conference champs play regional, 12-team conference champs advance without regional)
Require commitment from teams to play the postseason so that some conference winners are not left without a regional opponent due to declination.
At finals, have the first four losers re-seed and play one consolation match Saturday, and the resultant losers and winner play matches on Sunday. Three games played over three days, with that level of travel required is better than just one or two games, without the physical stress of four games.
Semifinals on Saturday. 3rd place & Championship game on Sunday.

Scheduling Pivots: Moving the finals match from 4pm to 8:30pm, and notifying at 9pm the previous evening, wreaked havoc on our roster with players having to lead prior to the match to be home in time for exams, etc. While more a victim of circumstance (heat index, organizational and host site allowable weather limits) , preparation for future events, like an indoor alternate option, will be a better response.
(Bonus Quibble/Idea) Venue: When working with host sites similar to the Current’s in the future, features for finalists like tours of the facility, potential opportunity to meet a pro player or two, and meal options on site, whether at the facility or with food trucks onsite, would be a significant experience upgrade.

Overall, I left confident in the organizer’s genuine passion for the women’s game, and their commitment to learn and improve for future finals events going forward. At 85 active teams, the UPSL-Women is already more significant than UWS (25 teams) in terms of league reach. With dozens more in clubs in their fall-only competitions, and a number of new sides announced, it is poised to rapidly catch USLW (93) and WPSL (142) too. Preparing and improving the postseason and nationals format will be a must as the league’s profile grows.

- by Ryan Stallings