COLUMBUS — Columbus’s National Women’s Soccer League expansion team still has no nickname, but it now has the person who will build it: the club announced Oct. 16 that Lucy Rushton will serve as the first general manager in franchise history.
Rushton, 41, brings about 20 years in professional soccer in England and the United States. The team, awarded to Columbus in April, is owned by Haslam Sports Group, Nationwide and Drs. Christine and Pete Edwards, and is set to begin play in 2028.
Expansion work is Rushton’s specialty. She helped build Atlanta United in Major League Soccer as its head of technical recruitment and analysis, contributing to a club that reached the playoffs in its first season and won MLS Cup in its second, in 2018. She later did the same kind of roster building for Bay FC, an NWSL expansion club.
Her path into the game started in Reading, England, where she grew up a Reading FC supporter and ticket sales employee. She worked in performance analysis for Watford and then Reading from 2008 to 2016, helping Reading win promotion to the Premier League in 2012, at a time when few women worked inside professional clubs.
Rushton went on to become general manager of D.C. United in 2021-22, only the second woman to hold a GM role in MLS, before taking the Bay FC job in 2023-24. The roster she assembled there reached the playoffs in the club’s first season, even though she resigned 14 games into that campaign. More recently she has advised Portland Thorns and Gotham FC.
Ownership pointed to that track record in announcing the hire. Haslam Sports Group managing partner Whitney Haslam Johnson said Rushton understands how to build an expansion roster, a new organization and a culture supporters can be proud of, and Tim Bezbatchenko, HSG’s president of global soccer, will work alongside her on the build.
Rushton said her ambition is for Columbus to be successful right away, including pushing for the playoffs in year one — something only two NWSL expansion teams have ever done — while respecting how strong the league already is. Unlike Bay FC, where she had roughly six months, she will have a much longer runway: about 16 months of roster and staff planning before the 2028 season, with home matches at ScottsMiracle-Gro Field.