July 19, 2012
CANCELLED
Flight problems strand Red Stars in Chicago

The Chicago Red Stars road game against the New England Mutiny scheduled for Thursday, July 19 has been cancelled.

The Red Stars flights out of the Midwest were cancelled on Wednesday due to the horrendous weather that passed through the area, and all options for them to fly in for either Thursday's match or a re-scheduled game on Friday were unavailable.

New England plays F.C. Indiana at Northampton H.S. on Saturday in their season finale while Chicago has their final regular season match vs. New York on Sunday. Combined with the impending WPSL Elite playoffs hosted by the Western New York Flash that are slated to start on Wednesday, July 25 and both teams decided to cancel the game.

"The airline informed Chicago at 4:30 AM that their flight was cancelled," said New England Mutiny owner Joe Ferrara. "I received a call from Red Stars owner Arnim Whisler at 7:30 AM stating the issue and that he spent all morning looking at flights out of the Chicago & Milwaukee region into the Hartford, Boston and New York areas but could not find availability. We collaborated on a remedy for the next two hours to no avail. It's an unfortunate situation, to say the least."

The Mutiny said the match will most likely be considered a forfeit by the league office. In that case, a 1-0 victory will be credited to the Mutiny, moving their record to 5-5-3 while Chicago would fall to a 9-4-0 mark on the season.

The Red Stars are schedule to play in the U.S. Women's Amateur Cup, which takes place at Toyota Park on Friday and Sunday.

The Red Stars open in the semifinals on Friday, July 20th, at 10:30am vs Turbo D’Feeters, the team from North Texas that won Region III. The game will take place on the Toyota Park practice field.

The other semifinalists, New York Athletic Club (NY, Region I) and Salt Lake United (Utah, Region IV), will be meeting at the same time on the Argo High School turf field, which is located just north of Toyota Park.

The victors of these matches will meet for the National Cup of the Women’s Division on the main field at Toyota Park on Sunday, July 22nd, at Noon.

Despite the Red Stars having two WPSL Elite matches scheduled within the time frame of National Cup, the team had intended to play both WPSL Elite games, and the team's game against the New York Fury of Sunday is still scheduled to take place.

The Red Stars are planning on using a split squad in order to compete in all the games, with half the team's roster travelling for the road games and the other half, mostly current college players staying behind for the National Cup finals. The roster for the National Cup was finalized on July 1, so according to the team, there is no advantage to keeping players behind.