When Gotham FC general manager Yael Averbuch West was an active player, with a career that spanned nine years, she had no use for analytics.
“I definitely, as a player, never had access to analytics that I felt were helpful,” she said.
“I think it’s something that we’ve struggled with on the women’s side, codifying the use of data and analytics to drive decision making. And that’s for a multitude of reasons,” said Orlando Pride general manager Haley Carter, also a former player.
Carter, too, has experienced a dearth of data in her career until now, alongside teams lacking both the expertise to gain insight from those numbers and then the ability to present it to coaches who usually aren’t data experts themselves.
Now, NWSL general managers like Carter and Averbuch West find themselves in a bold new world where analytics aren’t just becoming more common for NWSL teams, but are increasingly considered a necessity. Not every team lists an analytics position yet, but multiple teams in the league — like Gotham, Pride, Washington Spirit, Bay FC and Angel City — consider analytics to be an important part of gaining a competitive advantage in several areas.
In speaking to various data analysts and general managers, it’s clear that any club with serious…
