By Alexis Monteith

Reigning Jamaican Women’s Premier League champions Frazsiers Whip are “gung ho” about facing their rivals in the inaugural CONCACAF Women’s Champions Cup after being drawn alongside the respective champions of USA, Mexico and Costa Rica in Group A of the tournament. 

The upbeat mood of the St Catherine–based team was conveyed to Our Today by club chairman Wayne Gadishaw.

“These girls, we tell them what they’re up against, and I have not seen an ounce of fear,” Gadishaw related. “I see people who want to train. I see people clamouring for training. So I know it’s exuberance.”

Frazsiers Whip faces a formidable test in Group A where they will encounter the USA’s National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL) champions Gotham FC, boasting World Cup stars like the USA’s Crystal Dunn, Spain’s Esther González and Brazil’s Bruninha, among others. The group also features the 2024 Clausura Mexican champions, Monterrey Femenil with South African World Cup forward Jermaine Seoposenwe.  

Adding to the competition are the 2023 Apertura Mexican champions Tigres Femenil, who feature Spanish World Cup star Jenni Hermoso, South African World Cup talent Thembi Kgatlana, and Konya Plummer who was part of Jamaica’s 2023 World Cup squad. Finally, Costa Rican champions LD Alajuelense Femenil with their Panamanian World Cup midfielder Natalia Mills round out the group.

The biggest challenge for the Jamaican club is being a semi-professional team competing against CONCACAF’s professional elite. A few Frazsiers Whip players such as Davia Richards, Shaneil Buckley and Destiny Powell have represented Jamaica at the senior level, albeit not at the World Cup, and the club itself has never participated in an international tournament.

So how will the team from St Catherine prepare for the tournament which begins in August 2024?

“We know that we are pretty much, I would say, about two or three levels below these professional teams,” Gadishaw pointed out. “But that doesn’t stop us from preparing and being competitive.”

“We have to seek opposition now to get the girls on a different level,” he continued. “So we are seeking some male teams, maybe some under-17 teams, some under-20 male teams to play against, because the competition in the [Jamaica Women’s Premier League] right now is where it is. It’s in the development phase, so it is where it is.”

The objective is for the women to familiarise themselves with a faster pace of football by playing against the men. 

“Because not that [the Women’s Champions Cup teams] are more skillful than us,” Gadishaw said. “But their level of intensity, their playing level, is far different. I think once we can improve our fitness level we can compete. Because technically we understand the game but we are playing far slower than those teams in CONCACAF. So we have to increase our speed and pace.”

The Fraziers Whip chairman revealed that the players are also currently doing “background work” focused on strength training as part of the preparation for this higher level of intensity.

At the moment, Frazsiers Whip is leading the Jamaican Women’s Premier League and on the way to  the semifinals, aiming to become champions for a second consecutive year. They are also set to play the semifinal of the league’s knockout competition, a tournament they also won last season accomplishing a double (winning two competitions in one season).

Their ambition this year is to repeat that feat.

But the playing philosophy that has served them well at the local level will have to be revised for the more dangerous teams they will face in the upcoming CONCACAF competition.

According to Gadishaw, Frazsiers Whip is highly focused on attacking football in the Jamaican league but will take a more guarded approach against overseas opposition.

“Because we cannot open ourselves like that,” he insisted. “We have to be very cautious. And I don’t want to spill the beans right now, but the game plan is going to change completely.”

The football executive revealed, however, that there is one challenge that has not yet been solved. The club’s players who attend college overseas may not be available for the tournament.

“One of the things with Frazsiers Whip is that every year we ensure, as best we can, that our girls go to college,” Gadishaw said. “So we ensure that they do their subjects and we get them into the college pool. Right now we have about 13 players out in the college arena and we’re not sure we’re going to get them all back when we need them in August because their league starts in August and their coaches may or may not release them.”

“We’re in discussion with those coaches to see who we can get back so we’ll know what’s going to work,” he added.

The young college players, while unavailable locally for parts of each season, are normally brought back into the club when they are on vacation. They include highly rated players such as Davia Richards and Natoya Atkinson.

Part of the preparation for the tournament will also require familiarising the team with what it is like to travel to foreign destinations and compete.

“We’re going to go to the islands,” the Frazsiers Whip chairman disclosed. “We want to go to maybe two Caribbean islands to play the national teams down there just to get that intense competition under our belt. We would love to go to the States, but I think it might cost a little bit more cash to go to the States right now. But we have to travel. We have to get them accustomed to travelling and playing at the same time.”

Of course, getting ready for the competition necessitates additional human and financial resources, and the club’s coffers are stretched. 

“For the next two months we’re running about at least JMD$8 million, JMD$9 million,” Gadishaw informed. “The preparation now requires us to bring on additional coaches, like a fitness coach, goalkeeper coaches, physical trainers, medical staff, things like that, and getting the nutrition level to also step up. We have to bring in analysts to analyse the players as they go along. So it is kind of hectic.”

The chairman explained that the club has been facing this challenge on its own without help from other sources.

“You know corporate Jamaica,” Gadishaw said. “Because the women’s league is not that much in the news, they don’t know the mileage that they can get. They’re kind of not jumping on board as we had hoped.”

“We have been promised by JFF (Jamaica Football Federation) that they will help, but we have not seen it yet,” he added. “At the moment we are still waiting.”

Despite the uphill battles that lie ahead, the club’s enthusiasm is undaunted. The Frazsiers Whip official website uses words like ‘resilient’, ‘unstoppable’, ‘united’, ‘dynamic’ and ‘inspiring’ to describe the club. That is how the players, management and staff see themselves. 

This culture and mentality is guiding the club along its journey to the CONCACAF Women’s Champions Cup. While the final outcome is important, the true value of this experience lies in the growth and development to be gained from meeting the challenge.