How Supporters Are Bridging The Gap In The Bay Area

They Came To Play

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Photo Courtesy of Bridge Brigade

The idea of “place” decides a lot when it comes to American supporter culture. It drives identity, can dictate matchday experience, and make up key parts of club and supporter DNA.

When that place is the Bay Area, it poses a unique set of challenges. 

A hub of innovation, culture, sports, tech, higher education, art and music, that stretches across nine counties, and includes the cities of San Francisco, San Jose, Oakland and Berkeley, the Bay Area can mean everything to everyone all at once.

Scale like that can either be overwhelming or inspiring, and on the eve of a new era of women’s soccer in the Bay Area, Bay FC supporters group, the Bridge Brigade, is ready to rise to the occasion and provide an authentic supporters group experience to every corner of the Bay.

“We want it to be fun, lively, inclusive, and show that regardless of gender, women’s soccer is fun and can be exciting,” said Alishia Natiello, co-founder and co-president of the Bridge Brigade.

Professional women’s soccer has had a stop-start history in the Bay Area, with the San Jose CyberRays playing in the WUSA from 2001-2003 and FC Gold Pride competing in the WPS in 2009 and 2010. 

In April of 2023 when the NWSL formally awarded an expansion team to the area, it was a dream come true for Bridge Brigade co-founder and co-president Jen Purvis. 

“It really just started with knowing that we were going to get a team and being like, ‘Oh my God, I’ve played soccer my whole life, I’ve wanted an NWSL team forever. I want to do a supporters group,” she said. 

Purvis recruited Natiello to help build out the group, and they connected with Crystal Cuadra of AO San Jose and the San Jose Earthquakes SG, The Faultline. Cuadra and Heather Borjon, president of Angel City supporter group, Angel City Valkyries, armed Purvis and Natiello with a multipage guide on how to get an SG up and running. 

“They basically wrote out pages of notes saying ‘This is how you get started, this is all the stuff you’re going to need to do,’” said Purvis. “I was like, ‘Wow, I didn’t realize how much goes into this. Crystal has just been a wealth of knowledge since she’s done this for so long and been here before.”

Then they connected with current social media and communications lead Anna Daccache, who brought a deep knowledge of European supporter culture, and a vision for what supporter culture in the Bay Area could look like. 

“I love what European clubs have to offer, and what their supporters culture looks like, but acknowledge that this is the U.S., it’s fundamentally different,” Daccache said. “We have different things we want to do. We don’t need to replicate what they’re doing. We can be inspired by what they’re doing, but we can also take things from all the other American sports history that there is, and just try to create an atmosphere and environment that feels honest.”

Photo Courtesy of Bridge Brigade

To come up with a name to match their mission, they polled the members of their social media channels, and Bridge Brigade was the clear winner. 

“We were like, ‘You know what?’ It kind of of matches what we’re trying to do, it goes with the Bay,” said Purvis. “We’re trying to bridge the gap between the community and the team and the fans.”

That’s a steep challenge when you’re dealing with such a large and varied population. But Bridge Brigade leadership is putting extreme thought and care into how to cater to such a vast area, while still making it feel authentic. 

“The South Bay is so fundamentally different from the East Bay, from San Francisco, from the Peninsula, from Marin County, just in terms of age, demographics,” said Daccache. “You’re going to have more families in some areas, younger people in some areas, socioeconomic differences, and then obviously just gender and racial differences across the areas. Culturally, people are going to want different things, and you want to appeal to everyone, but you also can’t.”

That challenge extends to the matchday experience as well. Bay FC will play its home games at PayPal Park in San Jose, which can be a lengthy journey for some. 

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“The geographical differences of the Bay Are also ties into how people from different areas are going to experience their game day,” said Purvis. “Because if you’re coming from San Francisco, your planning has to be different than somebody who’s coming from down the street here, or somebody coming from Oakland. So, we’re trying to help our members figure those types of things out, to maybe carpool with each other so that the parking isn’t that bad.”

One Bridge Brigade member, who runs a soccer league in San Francisco, has already coordinated a bus from there for the first game. 

“We want everybody to feel like, ‘Hey you guys matter, just because you guys are coming from really far, we want you to have the best game day possible,’” said Purvis.  

Even though to insiders, it feels like supporter culture has been entrenched in America for years, education is still a major piece of the modern supporter groups’ basic work, as Bridge Brigade navigates drumming up excitement for the club, while tempering expectations.

“I think from a communication standpoint, education has been really big,” said Daccache.  “We’ve tried really hard to be clear about what the supporters group is, what the expectation is. If you’re not in a supporters group, that’s not a bad thing. You want people engaged in every part of the stadium. Ideally, a supporters group will set that standard and kind of help set the tone for a game and for a season.”

Bay FC’s first official match is this Sunday, on the road at Angel City, with its home opener still a few weeks away, so Bridge Brigade has time to continue to build. 

“We’ve looked at Angel City and San Diego as examples, knowing that it takes time to build that presence,” said Natiello. “I think we’re managing those expectations well, to say, ‘Let’s start with a base, what are our mission, vision and values. We’ve laid all that out, so now we have to just roll the dice and see what happens.”