BURLINGTON, Vt. (WCAX) – Vermont Green FC has added women’s exhibition games to their Summer slate each of the past two seasons, but on Tuesday morning, the club announced that they’d be taking the next step.
“I’ve got two daughters: a 10 year old and a 6 year old, and they deserve to come out and see what their future as athletes could look like,” said VGFC Sporting Director Adam Pfeifer Tuesday afternoon.
Vermont Green is planning to take its women’s side full-time this Summer! The Girls in Green are set to join the USL-W League, a pre-professional competition under the same umbrella as the men’s USL2. VGFC will join the more than 90 teams from across the country that participated in that league in the Summer of 2025.
“A step that we had wanted to make since the beginning,” Pfeifer said of the move. “There were some challenges just around the league and having competition that was in our region. So it’s a necessary step that we wanted to make, and one that I think the community is asking us for.”
The Green are the third club to commit to forming a new Northeast Division in USL-W, alongside USL2 rival A.C. Connecticut and Hartford Athletic, a USL Championship club starting a women’s side for the first time next Summer. In order to officially play a league schedule, those three need two more clubs to join, but Pfeifer says they’re going forward regardless.
“If it doesn’t get to that point, and I think it will…but if it didn’t, you’d be looking at an expansion of our friendlies,” he said.
Playing a full-time schedule is obviously going to mean a lot of changes to how the women’s side operates.
“I expect Sam (Mewis, the former USWNT World Cup Champion who has coached the three exhibition games) to continue to be involved in the club, whether it’s as the manager, as the sporting director, that all remains to be seen. Everyone knows she’s incredibly busy. You’re asking players to come for the whole Summer as opposed to just coming for a week. I think there’ll be some crossover in terms of the players, especially those ones that are kind of in the Northeast.”
It’s going to nearly double the workload for Pfeifer and ownership this offseason to build up the infrastructure and a new roster, but in addition to building on the connection with the community, he sees it as another opportunity to bring extremely high-level soccer to Burlington.
“In the women’s game, there are still a lot of players that play in college and then will go on to play on the national team, play in world cups, and play first division soccer all around the world,” Pfeifer explained. “So we’re excited about that prospect, and the prospect of bringing in some players that hopefully we will see in World Cups, whether it’s 2027 or 2031 (when the tournament returns to the United States).”
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