What is the “origin story” of Albany Rush?
The origin is that we (Northeast Rush) wanted to create a pathway from U8s to the pro-am level and to do that, we needed to add women's and men's semi-pro teams. In Albany, Albany Rush is a new, but large club, and it is a city where we have a lot of connections to quality adult aged players that would fit the bill to create 2 teams - UWS and UWS2. We also added a USL2 men's team this past summer.

What League do you play in?
Our Albany Rush team plays in the UWS League and our Albany Rush II plays in the UWS2 League. UWS stands for United Women's Soccer.

Does your club operate or work with a youth organization?
In New York, Northeast Rush operates Albany Rush, Syracuse Rush, Rochester Rush, Buffalo Rush and NY Rush Select (which is for the best players in the state). We have had 8-10 of our youth players graduate into the UWS teams in the last 2 summers, all of whom are playing college soccer this fall.

In addition to developing players, where does your club draw its players from?
We host summer and winter training camps, in addition to tryouts, which allows us to build the rosters. Additionally, we have a well connected staff who are able to identify college players that may be staying in the area and offer them the opportunity to play. On our staff, we have several college coaches who encourage their players to play for us in order to prepare for their college preseason.

Do you have a rival or a favorite city for an away day?
We don't have a rival per se, but we do enjoy competing against CT Rush (sister club) in UWS play and my favorite away venue to play at is when we travel to New England Mutiny, who won our league this year.

How did you finish this season - regardless of league position, did you meet your goals?
We finished the season at 5-4-1 (improvement from 4-5-1 last year). I thought we met many of my goals; we were more competitive than last year (winning record), quality level of competition that we went toe to toe with (biggest loss was by 2 goals), our players had a great experience and we know what we need to do to continue providing a great experience. Our goals for next year is to have the bulk of the roster return and keep promoting women's soccer in the area.

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