The dangers of blogging and catchy titles.

I have been guilty of the worst of errors,  lazy thinking.  My last post about the "men's league" ignored the reality that there are many leagues in the Portland area whose primary players are male, as well as the fact that the league I've mostly played in,  GPSD,  is not a "men's league" by any formal designation.  There have been instances when we've played against opponents who had women in their side.  The properly corrective missive below arrived from Jevan at the Oregon Adult Soccer Association.   It's worth a read.  

"David,

I love your latest blog post “Local Men's League Championships- yesterday and today.” Well all except the headline and the opening sentence.

It’s true that at one point GPSD was the only affiliated “men’s” league in the Portland area, but I don’t think (even just including the history from the merging of Rose City and Portland leagues in GPSD) that it’s ever been THE men’s soccer league in the Portland area. Back in the old days GPSD even affiliated separately as Rose City and Portland leagues until (I think) the late 80’s or early 90’s, so the “District” was in fact, two leagues, neither of which could lay claim to be THE league.

Old-timers often refer to GPSD as “the men’s league” and NUWS as “the Women’s league”, I cringe each and every time I hear either of those things – we have more or less eradicated those terms at least at the OASA Board level.

From OASA’s perspective, we don’t even have Men’s leagues, women’s leagues, etc. We affiliate a soccer league and they are free to offer whatever soccer they wish. OPSL affiliated as a break off from GPSD, so initially they offered Men’s premier division, but they have added women’s, over 30, 6-a-side, and are talking about other things. I could cite other examples.

I’d even argue that GPSD is not a men’s league (the league has no gender restriction), but rather an open soccer league populated primarily by men.

NUWS has some claim to being A women’s league since they do have a gender rule (In Oregon we have not yet had the gender identity issues that California soccer has had, but that’s another story), but they certainly are not THE Women’s league, not even the affiliated Portland area women’s league.

Without counting the many Portland area unaffiliated leagues that have men’s play (I know of four large ones), I stuck this on letterhead so I had a list to refer to, the Portland area affiliated leagues that offer men’s play are Eastside United, George Beck, GPSD, Legacy, OPSL & OSCL.

GPSD THE Men’s league? Not now, probably not ever.

Jevan"