West Seattle Rhodies

In October 2024, a group of women in West Seattle announced a professional soccer club before it had played a single match, built around the idea that a women-led ownership group should own a controlling stake. The ownership includes two women of colour, and the club describes itself as majority-owned and founded by women.

The Rhodies took the field for the first time in spring 2025, entering the USL W League. The name comes from the rhododendron, the state flower of Washington, and the club plays in pink and white. The link to West Seattle Junction FC, the men's team that had joined USL League Two the same year under the same ownership group, meant the women's side started with structure already in place rather than building from nothing.

Four players on that first roster came out of West Seattle's own schools: Olivia Shih, known as OS, from Raisbeck Aviation High School; Allison Bennett from West Seattle High School; Audrey Cromett from Seattle Prep; and Vivian Gaither from Chief Sealth International High School, the same campus where the club's home ground, the Nino Cantu Southwest Athletic Complex, sits. Marissa Villegas, a coach at Western WA Surf Soccer Club, holds a stake in the ownership and serves as the club's Chief Marketing Officer, tying the Rhodies into the same academy pipeline that already develops girls' talent in the area.

The inaugural season closed with a third-place finish in the USL W League's Northwest Division. FC Olympia took the division, and that gap is what the Rhodies now measure themselves against.