Michele DeJuliis, CEO and founder of the Women’s Professional Lacrosse League, wants to make something clear. Despite the recent restructuring and cancellation of the 2020 season due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the WPLL isn’t going away.
Not without a fight.
“I knew it wasn’t going to be an easy task,” said DeJuliis, recalling the early days of forming the WPLL. “I knew it wasn’t going to happen overnight. I knew it would be a longer play.”
Canceling the third season is less than ideal for a league hoping to grow its fanbase and gain notoriety, but DeJuliis said the health and safety of everybody involved with the WPLL (including the fans) comes first.
Ending the season before it started also came down to where the games were scheduled to be played. Long Island has been hit hard by the novel coronavirus, making the league’s first stop at Stony Brook University all but impossible. Other sites in Pennsylvania (Lehigh and West Chester) were also closed.
“In essence, we were just getting bad news after bad news,” she said.
Money has proven to be an obstacle for the league, and DeJuliis said some sponsors were unable to provide anticipated funding for the season to go as planned given the current climate.
Prior to the pandemic, however, DeJuliis said a spike in interest in the league by investors happened as a result of the league’s restructuring. In late February, the WPLL eliminated the Fire and became a four-team league.
“I can be as transparent as I need to be. It’s a struggle with women’s pro sports in general,” DeJuliis said. “We’re constantly fighting an uphill battle and trying to gain more sponsorships. Investment hadn’t been there up until we made some hard decisions to restructure. Deciding to drop that one team saved us a lot of money. You don’t want to have to do it, but we want to restructure and build a solid foundation and then from there, add the teams right back in a year or two.”