Demand for women’s sports soared this year and is showing no signs of slowing down.

The Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA), for instance, this year reported its most-watched season in more than two decades. Media analytics firm Nielsen this summer said that interest in women’s sports is growing at a “meteoric pace.” It’s no small wonder, then, that leaders at Minnesota Aurora FC are launching another women’s soccer team.

On Oct. 11, Aurora announced plans to form a new team called Aurora 2.

“We’ve been met with nothing but positivity for the new team,” Minnesota Aurora president and chief operating officer Jessica Poole said in an interview.

Founded in 2022 by thousands of community investors, Aurora is a pre-professional women’s soccer team that competes in the United Soccer League (USL-W). Aurora 2, meanwhile, will compete in the United Premier Soccer Women’s League, which bills itself as the “largest and most competitive pro-development league in North America.” Both teams’ home will remain in Eagan.

Poole said that the hunt for the new team’s coach starts this month, with a target of naming the new hire before tryouts begin in December. She sees Aurora 2 as a stepping stone for talented players aspiring to join the original team. Despite playing in different leagues, both teams will have the opportunity to train and cultivate their skills together.

And Aurora leaders still have ambitions to join the National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL), a professional women’s league. Minnesota still does not have a professional women’s soccer team. In late 2022, team leaders submitted a bid to join the National Women’s Soccer League, though it ended up not working out at the time. But Poole confirmed that NWSL is still her club’s ultimate goal, and she sees Aurora 2 as a fundamental step in this process.

“Our goal has not changed,” she said. “We still want to bring professional women’s soccer to the Twin Cities. But the way to do that is to cultivate the talent on the back end.”

As she sees it, Minnesota Aurora will create pathways for local players to join the professional league by dedicating time to fostering lower level teams first. The goal is to create an ecosystem that caters to players at every level. Under this reasoning, the club hopes to expand its presence with younger players in the near future. According to Poole, establishing youth camps or clinics might be the next step after Aurora 2.

“What this is about is the right next step in terms of pathway and pipeline,” she said. “Our club is really built on creating pathways and pipelines for young women and girls in soccer.”

Aurora 2 is also dedicated to preserving the club’s community model. The new team will focus almost exclusively on recruiting local and regional talent, unlike the original team with players from across the country. The majority of its matches will also be played within driving distance of the Twin Cities in an effort to cultivate a base of local support for the team’s amateur players, with the hope that many of them will one day reach the club’s original team or the professional league.