May 13, 2026
MISSION REMAINS THE SAME FOR WPSL CHAMPS SPORTING CT ENTERING ITS SECOND SEASON
The next level.
That is what Sporting CT was looking to provide its players when it joined the WPSL for the 2025 season.
As Sporting CT began assembling its collection of current and post-collegiate players augmented with some elite youth and former professional players for its inaugural WPSL season, the coaching staff of Tiffany Weimer and Matt Cameron believed they had more than a competitive side going into Northeastern Conference play. Of course they wanted to be competitive, but it wasn’t the priority. Even now, as defending WPSL champions, it still isn’t.
“For the majority of our group, this is a secondary team. They are playing with us to get prepared for whatever they are going into next, whether it’s high school, college, or pro teams,” said Weimer, a former professional player who also led the side in scoring with 12 goals last season. “Our goal is to make sure that they’re safe and prepared for wherever they are going after the season ends.”
Fortunately for Sporting, Middletown, Conn. and its surrounding areas are rich with talent. With more than a dozen college and university teams within a short distance, and a robust youth program from which to draw, Sporting’s roster was deep and talented, making training sessions almost as competitive as actual games.
Sporting’s inaugural WPSL match, at home versus longtime Northeastern Conference powerhouse, RI Rogues FC, would test what the club had done on and off the field. The Rogues were just a season removed from its WPSL Championships semifinal run in 2023, and the top returning club from 2024, after a finishing second in the conference to Clarkstown Soccer Club, which moved to the Metropolitan Conference for the 2025 season.
Sporting’s WPSL debut did not start out as Sporting hoped. Sporting conceded a goal in just the third minute in front of its home faithful at Xavier High School. It took half an hour for Sporting to get a feel for things. Aubrey Kulpa, now entering her senior year at Penn State, leveled things in the 33rd minute. From there Sporting was off and running, tallying five goals—including a brace from Weimer—to start the season with a 5-2 win.
A 6-0 win over fellow expansion side Albany Rush the next week set the tone as the club went on a seven-game win streak outscoring opponents 44 to 4. The streak included a 2-1 home win over Merrimack Valley Hawks FC behind goals by Tori Susa, who played professionally for Forfar Farmington F.C. in Scotland after her collegiate career ended in 2015, and Imani Jenkins. Jenkins, a year removed from a stellar career at the University of Hartford, who would go on to score for Sporting in the WPSL Championships semifinal and final earning her Most Outstanding Offensive Player honors before signing a professional contract with FK Bodø/Glimt Kvinner in Norway’s top-flight.
A week after its close call with Merrimack Valley at home, Sporting’s dreams of a perfect season came crashing to an end when Merrimack Valley dealt Sporting its first loss of the season. Sporting closed out its inaugural conference schedule with a pair of wins: 1-0 at home over New York Shockers behind a Cara Jordan goal, followed by a 4-3 win at RI Rogues FC to close out the season. Jordan finished the season with five goals, contributing to six others, before signing a professional contract with Silgo Rovers in Ireland’s top-flight.
Sporting’s 9-0-1 record earned the club its first Northeastern Conference title, seven points ahead of second-place Merrimack Valley, and secured the club a place in the East Region Playoffs semifinal versus Great Lakes Conference representative, Niagara 1812. Six different players tallied goals to put Sporting into the East Region Playoffs final versus Pennsylvania Classics from the Mid-Atlantic Conference. After conceding a goal in the first half hour of the match, Weimer leveled the score on the brink of halftime, followed with the game winner by UCON standout, Alexandra Taylor, tallying her second goal for the club on the season.
The win put Sporting through to the WPSL Championships in Stillwater, Okla. to face St. Croix Legacy. Things started out disastrously when a lapse in concentration led to an own goal, putting the Central Region champs up 1-0 just past the half-hour mark. Slowly Sporting seized control of the game before Jenkins leveled the score just before halftime. Weimer put Sporting up 2-1 in the 52nd minute, and the gates opened from there with goals from Sousa and Abigail Johnson, a sophomore at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, to put Sporting through to face five-time WPSL champions, California Storm.
One of the league’s founding teams, the California Storm is the winningest club in league history, and winners of two out of the last four WPSL Championships. The West Region winners’ pedigree meant little to Sporting going into the final. In the oppressive Oklahoma heat on just a day’s rest, Sporting tallied goals by Northwestern State University of Louisiana junior, Emily Senatore, Jenkins, Central Connecticut State’s Abbie Burgess, and Jordan in the first 40 minutes, leaving the rest to the goalkeeper Caitlin Dailey, a senior at the University of New Haven, and her defense to close out the game, giving Sporting CT its first WPSL championship in its first WPSL season.
“With the group we had, we knew we would be competitive going into the season,” Weimer said. “The most important thing for us is to make sure that we have the environment that we want, no matter, no matter if we win the championship or not. That we give everything we can to the players.”
Nevertheless, Weimer says? things will not be done a whole lot differently as Sporting prepares for season two in the WPSL.
“We did have to replace a few players to have gone on to play pro, which is the best reason to replace players,” Weimer said. “That's one of our goals is to make sure that this [the WPSL] is a platform for players to go to the next level if they want to.”
With Sporting’s success came new rivalries as three Connecticut-based clubs joined the WPSL in its wake. Sporting kicks off its 2026 season with a Middletown derby versus newly promoted Vale SC from Division II on May 13 then travels to Norwalk to face expansion side Inter Connecticut Football Club on May 19. After games at RI Rogues FC and at home versus Vermont Wild FC, Sporting will have four matches under its belt when it travels across the country for the rematch with California Storm, but with the stakes even higher.
Along with defending its conference, region, and national WPSL titles, Sporting will have the opportunity to cement its legacy at the next level when it faces the California Storm in a rematch of last year’s WPSL championship match in the final of the inaugural Brandi Chastain Cup, U.S. Soccer’s newly established national amateur championship competition, featuring the top elite women’s amateur teams from leagues across the country.
The all-WPSL final is the result of the both club’s dedication to furthering women’s soccer at the next level, with the winner the first to etch its name on what will become the most coveted prize in American women’s amateur soccer.
“The players in our program are very passionate about playing the game, growing the game, and representing it in a way that is both competitive and entertaining,” Weimer said. “We hope this is the beginning of something bigger for women’s soccer in the U.S. and we have the chance to be the first,” Weimer said.
