MN Aurora FC Comes to Pre-Professional Soccer in Minnesota

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“The USL W League strives to use women’s soccer as a force for societal good by creating a national platform to increase opportunity, gender equity, and career development.” Launching in May of 2022, the USL W League will give all its profits to the Women in Soccer Pitch Contest with the USL. Forty-four teams from twenty states will participate in the USL W League’s inaugural season, including the MN Aurora FC. The MN Aurora FC, Minnesota’s first pre-professional women’s soccer club, will play its first game in the USL W League this month. 

The MN Aurora FC’s first match of the inaugural season will take place on May 26, 2022. Home games for the team will be played at the Vikings’ practice facility, the TCO Stadium. Community owners decided to name the team Aurora FC after voting between it and two other names, the Aurora Minnesota and Minnesota Foxfire FC. In general, fans feel unheard of in having a say in decisions about their favorite sports teams; however, because this team is entirely community-owned, it represents the fans’ ideas. Aurora FC is a name that depicts the northern skies of Minnesota. Additionally, the team jerseys are designed to represent the color of the northern lights. Northern Lights are usually formed by the oxygen in the air and that is why there is a greenish and yellowish color. 

Andréa Carroll Frank, a board member and co-founder of the team, explained the lack of options between college and the professional leagues, “There is high-quality women’s soccer here, but there aren’t that many choices.” She said, “You should be able to have choices as a player.” The MN Aurora has 3,080 investors and, like the Mn United FC, is a community team.  

“The Twin Cities has a robust, soccer-loving community,” Andréa Carroll-Frank said. “We are shockingly surprised and honored to have all the interest and support. It’s been really cool.” The sport has grown in Minnesota because of the MN United FC, the men’s pre-professional soccer club that debuted in 2017. MN United FC currently stands at the fifth seed in the western conference in the MLS league this year with four wins, two ties, and two losses. Adrian Heath was hired in 2016 to become the head coach of MN United FC. Because of this, part of the excitement towards the MN Aurora stems from the excitement for MN United FC too. Adrian Heath spoke about the team’s success during the difficult year of 2020, “I think we’ve proved an awful lot of people wrong this year with the amount of adversity that we’ve had to go through.” The success of MN United FC these past few years may be more than the average Minnesotan previously thought. 

When we were in the sixth and eighth grades, our family had season tickets to the MN United FC games. We enjoyed cheering on the soccer team and liked the exciting environment because of the community feel. We both hope the Minnesota soccer teams to do well this season.