Rodriguez '99 to bring MLS team to Bay Area

For Ann Rodriguez '99, commitment to sports did not end when she hung up her Princeton lacrosse jersey eight years ago. As director of business development for Earthquake Soccer, LLC, she is responsible for the introduction of Major League Soccer to California's Bay Area.

The challenge of the moment for Rodriguez is finding a location for a new stadium within greater San Francisco. The recent struggle to build a new stadium to bring Major League Baseball (MLB) back to Washington, D.C., proves that this is not an easy task. And that's only the beginning of Rodriguez's job.

"I am involved in the stadium plan, creating financial projections for the stadium and team, the production of an exhibition match with the Mexican National Team and Ecuador, and I am working on plans for sales and marketing of the team once we get going," Rodriguez said.

Such a wide-ranging job description requires the type of dedication to sports that Rodriguez demonstrated during her years at Princeton. Originally from Annapolis, Md., Rodriguez was recruited for lacrosse by Penn State, Duke and the University of Virginia. Instead, she ended up on Princeton's lacrosse team as a walk-on.

"I'll always remember Ann as a fun, happy kid who loved to play the game and who always had a good time doing it," women's lacrosse head coach Chris Sailer said. "She brought a playful energy to the field. She liked to kid around with her coaches and teammates, keeping the atmosphere light."

The lacrosse team helped Rodriguez upon graduation, when she received career advice from a former teammate.

"One of my teammates who had graduated ahead of me was working in sports, and she told me to find a big event, volunteer, find out how things worked and just do a really good job," Rodriguez said. "The Women's World Cup was happening in 1999, so I volunteered. The athletes were such great people who really cared about the fans — they got me hooked on soccer."

From there, Rodriguez went on to intern at the Women's Sports Foundation and then the Lifestyle Marketing Group. She also worked for the Washington Freedom of the Women's United Soccer Association before moving to California to attend Stanford Business School.

She earned her M.B.A. from Stanford in 2005 and founded a sports properties consulting firm before joining Earthquake Soccer. Rodriguez returned to Old Nassau this past December for the Princeton Sports Symposium, where she discussed her experiences in the industry.

Rodriguez is working closely with the two men who bought the rights to bring an MLS expansion team back to the Bay Area, Lewis Wolff and John J. Fisher '83. San Jose's previous MLS team, the Earthquakes, played in San Jose University's Spartan Stadium from 1996 until 2005. In that year, when an effort to build a stadium for the team failed, the team relocated and became the Houston Dynamo.

Wolff is a real estate developer and the managing partner of the MLB's Oakland Athletics. Fisher, who graduated from Princeton with a B.A. in politics, is the son of Donald Fisher, the founder of Gap.

"They have an option to bring an MLS team back to the Bay Area, and we can exercise that option once we have a viable stadium plan," Rodriguez said. "It's a great opportunity to get a team in a market that wants one, while working with some of the most efficient people in sports."

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Rodriguez was particularly excited to work with Wolff because of his affiliation with the Athletics.

"I look at the Oakland Athletics as a group that has done it right," Rodriguez said. "It's very professionally run, and it doesn't tolerate losing money."

The efforts to bring pro-soccer back to the Bay Area could result in a multipurpose stadium that would also serve San Jose University Spartan athletics. One proposal is for a building site on university land next to Spartan Stadium that would seat 22,000 people. The stadium would cost $80 million, and it could potentially open as soon as 2009. In weighing such plans, Rodriguez works closely with David Alioto, executive vice president of the Earthquakes.

"Together, we're translating [Wolff's] vision into action," Rodriguez said. "We drive the bus and make sure it happens."

During her time at Princeton, Rodriguez demonstrated that contributions to the team's success are as important — if not more —than personal skills.

"She was one of those players who just loved coming to practice every day," Sailer said. "She was never a starter for us but always made the team better with her attitude, work ethic and spirit. She was a great example of how much a player could contribute even without being a starter or significant reserve."

The Tigers won the Ivy League title in both Rodriguez's freshman and sophomore years. They advanced to the Final Four in her freshman year and went to the NCAA quarterfinals during her junior and senior years. While she was contributing to the team, she was also earning her A.B. in ecology and evolutionary biology and holding a work-study job.

"Being a student-athlete teaches you discipline — it was an enormous challenge to do a lab science and be on a team that plays in national tournaments," Rodriguez said. "The team taught me how to deal with all kinds of people and to set aggressive goals both for the team and for myself and then set out to achieve them."

Soccer fans in the Bay Area may soon reap the benefits of those lessons.