SAN JOSE — For the first time, everything new is old hat for Bay FC.
A year ago, the NWSL’s latest expansion side had nothing but new experiences on the docket. Playing in its first season meant Bay FC would have its first training session, first media day, first preseason game and first regular-season game to check off.
Those milestones and many more have come and gone. Now, as Bay FC begins its second season, the goals have shifted. After a late-season run to reach the playoffs in its inaugural campaign, Bay FC’s new focus is maintaining and building upon its first-year excellence.
“Last year, we knew it was a new franchise,” defender Caprice Dydasco said. “We knew what we were getting ourselves into, but we had a rough start in the beginning. We’re all talented individuals, but meshing all at once within a month in the preseason is not enough time. So you could see that it took us three months to get used to each other, make those relationships.”
Once Bay FC did connect, though, the results were strong. The club rallied to make the playoffs as the No. 7 seed, taking second-seeded Washington, the eventual NWSL runner-up, to the brink in a 2-1 overtime loss in D.C.
Though Bay FC has now been through this once before, the 2025 preseason is again a time of change. Gone are promising young defensive winger Savy King – traded on Monday to Angel City FC – as well as defender Jen Beattie, who retired in January.
Forward Deyna Castellanos was bought out of her contract in January and joined Portland as a free agent. Midfielder Alex Loera was traded to Utah in December.
Three new players have joined Bay FC in their stead. Veteran defensive stalwart and two-time NWSL champion Kelli Hubly signed as a free agent from Portland, and college free agents Karlie Lema and Taylor Huff joined up from Cal and Florida State, respectively.
Hubly, in particular, joins a defensive group that will be crowded on the backline. Returning veteran Emily Menges, a former teammate of Hubly’s in Portland, will factor in, as will star center back Abby Dahlkemper, a Menlo Park native who joined Bay FC via trade in the middle of the 2024 season.
Dydasco, Dahlkemper’s college teammate at UCLA, will factor in at the back as well.
“On any team, you’re going to have competition, and it’s what pushes you to be better every single day,” Hubly said. “If you don’t have competition, you get complacent, and you don’t really grow anymore. It’s a good task for me to push myself every single day and continue to grow.”
Bay FC is looking to move up in the NWSL regular-season standings after taking seventh in 2024. The club’s stated goal is to host a home playoff game, which would require taking a top-four spot in the league table.
“The most important part is that we are ascending as a team,” forward Asisat Oshoala said. “We’re going up. You don’t want to descend. We started off the season a little bit rough, and then we started getting our chemistry together, we started playing more together. We started playing beautiful football towards the end of the season. From there, it’s just going to keep getting better. I feel like this is going to be amazing for us.”
The man in charge of putting the roster together, sporting director Matt Potter, noted that Bay FC’s squad is continuously a work in progress. But he likes how far the club has come with just over a year to build its ideal group.
“We’re not the finished article. We recognize that,” Potter said. “But we feel we’re in a good position to grow from the place that we found ourselves at the end of the season, and that’s our responsibility. How can we grow and develop from where we find ourselves now?”
Lema and Huff, who were both ACC first-teamers in 2024, had the opportunity to decide where they wanted to play thanks to a provision in the NWSL’s newest collective bargaining agreement. Because college free agents weren’t subject to a draft for the first time, they were the ones in the driver’s seat when entering their professional careers.
So what attracted them to Bay FC? For Lema, a Morgan Hill native and Live Oak High School graduate, the opportunity to remain close to home was hard to pass up.
“I wanted to come to Bay FC,” Lema said. “I’m from the Bay, so I was like, ‘Oh, this is an opportunity to maybe get to play for my home town again.’ So I was happy that there was no draft. I know it hurt a lot of people too. Going through the process was hard. It was hard picking a team, but I’m glad I ended up here.”
Huff is a native of Ohio and was playing collegiately all the way on the East Coast. Convincing her to come to San Jose required a different pitch.
“It honestly was not at the forefront of my mind,” Huff said. “When I was considering (teams), my agent told me Bay FC was interested. I’m like, ‘OK, yeah, it’s far away.’ He’s like, ‘Just give it a shot.’ So I came out here, and from the time I stepped off the plane to anything in between, it was just the people. That’s a huge piece. The people make the place, and you’re surrounded by such amazing people.”
Dahlkemper, who has become Bay FC’s unofficial ambassador as its hometown hero and scorer of the goal that put the club on the precipice of the playoffs, said she wants to make Bay FC a destination for the best soccer players in the Bay Area to strive for, just as Lema did.
“I’m extremely excited for this year with Bay FC,” Dahlkemper said. “To be home is incredible, where I grew up watching the Gold Pride and aspired to dream big and play professional soccer. So it’s really a full-circle moment. I take playing at home with immense pride, and it’s something I don’t take lightly, to be able to be a role model to young kids.”
