Today, Grassroots Soccer Media Union announced that Protagonist Soccer would be sponsoring the Forward of the Year Award in GSMU’s upcoming end of the year awards. Protagonist Soccer will be added to the name of the award. Protagonist is the first organization to sponsor a GSMU award, though the organization is continuing to look for potential sponsors of the rest of the awards.

For Protagonist Soccer, this is just another step in the ever-expanding goal of covering and growing lower league soccer. It’s the belief of the staff that there’s only one way forward - continue to focus on professional coverage of the lower leagues. Over the course of the last year, Protagonist has expanded coverage to the UPSL, NPSL, and USL2, while building strong relationships with multiple regional leagues. Media partnerships have been formed with many of those regional leagues as well as the NPSL. Just this month, Protagonist began expanding into the women’s game, reaching out to the WPSL and UWS to begin establishing relationships with existing clubs and league representatives.

We believe in what the GSMU is about. We believe in uniting and and growing the coverage of the game, no matter which outlets are doing that work. The leadership of Aarik Long has been a welcome change from the bickering that sometimes emerges from competition between sites. His tireless work to bring journalists together is only doing great things for the sport we love. We support GSMU entirely and think it important. We’d encourage any podcaster, blogger, writer, or play by play voice to contact the Union and get involved. You deserve to be acknowledged and respect for what you do, regardless of getting a paycheck or not.

There are still awards to be sponsored, so if you’re interested, contact the GSMU via twitter or through emailing aariklong@protagonistsoccer.com.

- Dan Vaughn