Crunching some numbers and shaking them until they give up some useless information about the 148 players who played in Women’s Professional Soccer this season:

• Five players - Kristine Lilly (Boston Breakers), Aya Miyama (Los Angeles Sol), Caroline Jonsson (Chicago Red Stars), Becky Sauerbrunn and Homare Sawa (Washington Freedom) all played every minute of every game. Meanwhile, Lauren Sesselmann of Sky Blue FC played one minute of one game.
• Chicago’s Nikki Krzysik led the league with five yellow cards.
• Only four players received red cards and two of them (Karen Carney and Frida Ostberg) were from Chicago. FC Gold Pride’s Carrie Dew and Boston’s Alex Scott were the others.
• Abby Wambach’s 70 shots were far and away the most in the league.
• Chicago’s Ella Masar (11) and Danesha Adams (10) made the most appearances off the bench.
• Boston defender Erika Sutton was the only player to start and play 90 minutes in her only appearance of the season.
• Washington’s Briana Scurry was the only goalkeeper to start at least one match and not record a shutout on the season.
• Of players with at least 15 shots, Boston’s Jennifer Nobis put the highest percentage on net (61.1%). Chicago’s Ella Masar put just 3 of her 19 shots on goal (15.8%).
• With 8 goals on 26 shots, LA’s Camille Abily had the best scoring percentage (30.8%). Her teammate, Aya Miyama, was 0-for-43.
• There were 10 players with a singular name (Cristiane, Daniela, Erika, Fabiana, Formiga, Francielle, Marta, Rosana and Sissi) and only two with the same last name (Elise Weber of Saint Louis and Sue Weber of Boston, who are not, as near as I can tell, sisters).
• The most common first names were Allison, Lisa, Heather and Kelly (three each), though there were also an Ali (Krieger), an Allie (Long) and an Aly (Wagner). There were two Sarahs (Senty and Walsh) and a Sara (Larsson) as well as a Nicci (Wright), a Niki (Cross), a Nikki (Krzysik) and a Nicole (Barnhart).

Tags: soccer, WPS

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