TAMPA, Fla. – Having become part of the USL’s leadership midway through the 2013 season, current President Jake Edwards has seen, and in many ways presided over the evolution of the league’s Winter Summit.

After this week’s event, which saw almost 500 league and team representatives assemble in downtown Tampa for the biggest Summit in the league’s history, the difference between where the USL was four years ago and where it now stands in the North American soccer landscape is marked.

“When I stand in front of the Board of Governors and we’ve got 80 people in the room, it’s a different room than it was three, four, five years ago,” said Edwards this week. “Different objectives, different capabilities, and it’s very exciting to see some of the initiatives we’re working on and see the enthusiasm and hunger of our teams and ownership to do more. They want to invest, they want to have stadiums, they want to have new commercial programs, they want to do all the right things that we want to do as a league.”

Certainly, 2017 will go down as a landmark season for the league. From surpassing two million total attendance for the first time in the regular season – a first for the Division II level in North America – and the opening of new venues, plus the promise of more to come, the USL’s visibility on the national level has never been higher.

For Edwards, the work that has been done since his arrival both within the league office and by club ownership has provided the platform for everything the USL has become, and what it will be in the future.

“We’ve got a phenomenal staff at the league office, a tremendous group of sports executives that come to work every day to push this league forward and push this sport forward,” said Edwards. “We’ve got a great team at the USL, and across the league a fantastic group of clubs, and they’ve helped to put a business model together that keeps attracting new ownership through investing in new stadiums. We’ve got new commercial and media partners coming into the league now, and we’re growing.”