The National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL) announced Wednesday that it will launch a pair of combines later this year to help expand player pathways into the league.
The two combines, one for adults and college-aged players (U18-23), and another for youth players (U13-17), will take place over three days in December before the 2026 preseason to help showcase prospective players to NWSL clubs. This will be the league’s first-ever set of combines, a significant step forward as teams continue to navigate youth and player development and the league positions itself to continue growing.
“A combine is a strategic platform that will allow us to support NWSL clubs in early talent evaluation and provide players with exposure to a professional environment,” Karla Thompson, the league’s director of youth development, said in a statement. “This initiative is about widening the lens of who gets seen and ensuring that talent, wherever it resides, has a continued pathway to our league.”
NWSL teams are navigating a professional landscape that’s constantly evolving and that also differs vastly from football systems elsewhere in the world, namely in Europe.
As part of the league’s collective bargaining agreement with the NWSL Players Association, the league last year nixed the annual college draft and granted unrestricted free agency for all players, falling in line with the existing standard across global football. The league also got rid of its usual expansion draft that would have been used to roster incoming teams, the Boston Legacy and the Denver Summit.
While the NWSL broke ground by becoming the first American professional league to do away with its college draft, most leagues had already held combines to identify players ahead of those drafts. In establishing its own combines, the league is falling back in line with another traditional American sports model.
The league described the adult combine as a new “on-ramp” for players into the NWSL. Programming for this combine will include performance testing, competitive matches and opportunities for direct interaction with NWSL clubs, the league said.
Meanwhile, the youth combine will serve as an “international bridge” in the league’s development ecosystem, featuring training sessions, competitive match play and off-field educational programming designed to help prepare players for a professional environment.
The league has not shared details about how it will identify players for either combine.
Women’s professional soccer continues to evolve in the United States. There are now two Division I leagues in the country, after the USL Super League launched last year. The youth-to-pro pipeline is also changing.
There is a new generation of players who are forgoing college or even club soccer altogether, inspired by the Portland Thorns’ Olivia Moultrie, who turned pro at 13. Her arrival in the NWSL led to the league establishing a U18 entry mechanism, which created a clear pathway for underage players to enter the league.
There are now more teenagers in the NWSL than ever before, and Moultrie holds the record for most goals scored by a teenager in the league, with her 14th career goal for the Thorns scored Sunday, just days before her 20th birthday on Sept 17.
In expanding the player pathway by identifying youth and college-age talent, the league is aligning itself with the direction the women’s game has already taken at the national level.
Earlier this year, U.S. head coach Emma Hayes ran an inaugural Futures Camp that was held concurrently alongside the USWNT senior camp. The goal was to identify up-and-coming players with potential to shine with the national team.
This allowed Hayes to better explore the potential player pool for the senior team, while also filling a critical void for players stuck in a development phase between college and the professional ranks.
(Photo: Matt Cashore / Imagn Images)
This article originally appeared in The Athletic.
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