Laura Harvey parts ways with Seattle, talk of future with USWNT

Laura Harvey will be missed in Seattle, but there are reasons to be excited about a possible future with the USWNT.

If you ask any player in the National Women’s Soccer League what their ultimate goal is, their almost certainly going to say playing (or continuing to play) for their respective national team. The NWSL in its five years has become one of the biggest platforms for players to earn interest from national teams. On Tuesday, just a few days before several NWSL players will lace up for the USA friendlies against Canada, news broke that it wasn’t a player getting the call-up this time, but rather a coach.

Laura Harvey, Seattle Reign FC’s head coach for the past five years, announced on Tuesday she will be stepping away from the club. FC Kansas City’s former head coach Vlatko Andonovski will take over Harvey’s position with a two-year contract. The news immediately prompted the question, “Where will Harvey go?” Richard Farley of FourFourTwo reported that an expanded role with U.S. Soccer could be on the table.

If Harvey does get an expanded role within U.S. Soccer — she’s already served as the head coach of the U.S. WNT U-23’s, it could mean a very interesting next cycle with the national team. Jill Ellis may not be getting the boot just yet, but it’s fun to speculate just how much can happen over the next two years before the 2019 World Cup, especially if a well-respected and experienced coach like Harvey was thrown into the mix.

Harvey has made a lasting impact in the NWSL from her miraculous 2014 turn-around season, to holding the honor as the winningest coach in the league’s existence. Harvey’s career was highlighted with a 51-33-26 record in regular season play and she also led Reign FC to two NWSL finals and back-to-back NWSL Shields in 2014 and 2015. Seattle will part ways with a coach who has also earned two Coach of the Year awards.

Tuesday’s news led to an outpouring of tributes to Harvey, her coaching style and the impact she’s had in Seattle. Just as it was an amazing move to see North Carolina Courage forward Lynn Williams do her thing in the NWSL and then release the training wheels for the big-league senior team, the hope is that something similar will be in the works with Harvey.

Granted, there are no goals to be had, nor cleats to be worn by Harvey, but if the sources hold true, it’s an incredibly positive sign from U.S. Soccer that they’re paying attention to the NWSL and want to bring on someone who has experience both at the U-23 national team level and with the biggest names in U.S. Soccer to date.

There isn’t any formal role set yet for Harvey, and still a lot to be ironed out, as reported by Farley, but it’s fun to speculate how Harvey would fit in and what she could do for the senior team.

Harvey and Rapinoe would be re-united

USWNT and star Megan Rapinoe has been with the Reign since 2013 and wouldn’t know Seattle soccer without Harvey. The way USWNT fans everywhere enjoy watching Rapinoe dominate the flanks, whip in top-notch service and play creatively and freely is exactly what Harvey pushes for as a coach. To see these two back plotting ways to embarrass backlines would be fun to watch.

She has knowledge at all levels of the game

Obviously any coach that would be welcomed in by the USWNT has to have an impressive resume, and Harvey certainly has that. Before her decorated career in Seattle, Harvey served as a coach for Arsenal LFC in 2008 along with other manager and director roles within the club from 2008 to 2012. In 2011 after Arsenal LFC won the league title, FA Cup and Continental Cup, Harvey was named FAWSL coach of the year. On the international stage, Harvey has worked as an assistant coach for England’s U-17, U-19 and U-23 national teams and just this past spring switched gears to serve as the U-23 USWNT coach for a tournament.

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Women coaches

Although Harvey will be leaving the NWSL without any standing women in head coaching positions, I remain hopeful that what’s next will have an even bigger impact and will encourage more women to follow a similar path. Harvey is leaving Seattle better than it was. She displayed time and time again the power of a woman’s voice in the league, standing up for better field conditions, like when her team fell to the Western New York Flash in 2016 on an undersized field.

Finally, the fact Harvey was the lone female coach in the league forced the NWSL to look at the current situation and think of ways to get more women up for these jobs. “We certainly understand and would like to have more female head coaches in our league. We know that that’s an opportunity for us and a priority and so we’ve instituted that policy,” Jeff Plush told Excelle Sports in January.