San Diego Wave FC 2022 Player Postmortem: Marleen Schimmer

Nov 21, 2022 - 6:11 PM

Marleen Schimmer earned a spot with San Diego Wave FC in 2022 while overcoming some steep odds.

She was a youth German international and featured briefly in the women’s club system before moving stateside to play NCAA ball, but Grand Canyon University are not yet a powerhouse program and so getting noticed at all was her first hurdle cleared, even with her pedigree.

The attacker was San Diego’s second NWSL College Draft pick, selected No. 9 overall, and she seemed pleasantly surprised by being taken at all. From there, she needed to earn a contract, which can be especially tough for international draftees. But Casey Stoney really put a lot of trust in a truly enormous rookie class, and Schimmer did indeed get the contract to embark on an NWSL career.

Here are Schimmer’s stats for San Diego in 2022:

Ultimately, Schimmer was a “game-changer” for San Diego, primarily coming off the bench. Playing as a winger or attacking midfielder, her specialty appeared to be corner kicks, but she also wasn’t on the field often enough to really lock in and really make a name for herself on corners.

Like, check this out, she came off the bench and set up San Diego’s first-ever goal off a corner kick:

I was hoping that Schimmer would push her way into more playing time and really get a high volume of chances from dead balls to get involved in the attack. San Diego were remarkably versatile in how they scored in 2022, but teams can pretty much always do better than what they do on set piece situations, and the same was true for Wave FC.

But Schimmer didn’t really find regular playing time. It’s a bit puzzling as to why, but to me, Schimmer was one of the few San Diego players who I would have liked to see on the field more, but who ended up on spot duty in her rookie year.

Schimmer is out of contract and San Diego say she will not be returning in 2023, which isn’t a huge surprise considering her sparse playing time and taking up an international slot. But I feel like she has more to show, and her experience playing both in the NWSL and in Germany means she should have some options moving forward. I don’t know if she wants to go back to Europe to continue her career, but there are obviously many clubs that would probably sign her, and if she finds traction there, she could move up the ranks in a top league before long.

So I hope Schimmer does find a productive path moving forward. She seems to have a lot of potential, she’s just 22 now, and brings something that many pro teams, here and abroad, could use. We’ll see what’s next and how her career progresses from here.

What do you think? Leave a comment below.