From the moment that their last place finish in the 2014 NWSL season became official, the Houston Dash knew they were going to select Morgan Brian with the first pick in the College Draft.

Not surprisingly, the Dash received a number of trade offers all the way up to the night before the draft; including offers for multiple draft picks. Despite the interest, the Dash never entertained any offers for her.

“She’s just too good of a talent,” explained Dash head coach Randy Waldrum after the draft. “Even though we could have gotten a couple of players for her; I just think she’s that special of a talent. I think I’d be regretting it for years to come. Every time she came to Houston she would tear you up and I’d be regretting that too often.”

With their pick in the 2nd round, the Dash went into the draft with the intention of filling a clear need on the roster: center back. While the likes of Abby Dahlkemper and Kristin Grubka were unlikely to be on the board, the Dash had several players they were looking at with that pick to add to a possible center back corp that currently consists of only Niki Cross, Lauren Sesselmann and Marissa Diggs.

However, the opportunity to acquire Jessica McDonald from the Portland Thorns was presented to the Dash on Thursday night. Portland coach Paul Riley had his eyes on Jodie Taylor while the Washington Spirit were quietly looking to move up in the draft. The Thorns had no picks to trade, however, dictating a need for a third team to participate in the deal.

After discussions the evening before the draft, the teams slept on it and decided to go ahead and move forward with a deal the morning of the draft. Washington had their eye on a couple of players in particular, though, and it was not until a couple of picks before the Dash’s 4th pick in the 2nd round came up that it became clear that the deal would work out.

While it was announced as two separate trades, in truth it was a three team trade. The delay in announcing McDonald as the player traded by Portland was due to her being in Germany on loan with Herforder SV.

Trading the 2nd round pick had the potential to exacerbate the center back issue, however Waldrum and the Dash executives agreed that grabbing a player who has shown the ability to score is too valuable to pass up. “I think the whole staff agreed that if you’ve got somebody that’s scoring 10-12 goals and they are most of the time coming off the bench, that is harder to find that it is to find a good back. We can convert somebody if we have to.”

As the draft progressed, some quality center backs remained undrafted. “I was surprised that Carleigh Williams lasted until the 4th round, I thought she was going to go earlier and I was surprised Whitney Church lasted. Those two we had really high on our list. We knew Dahlkemper would go and we would not have a shot at her. We knew Grubka would go. I didn’t think Church or Williams would be there for us that late,” said Waldrum.

Not expecting that players like Church and Williams would slip to the 4th round, Waldrum and Dash Managing Director Brian Ching both had conversations in between the 2nd and 3rd round to see if they could move up into the 3rd round to take one of the center backs they were targeting.

There were no takers, but luckily both players ultimately fell into the 4th round. With Church going to Washington with the 30th pick in the draft, the Dash took Williams at 31 and got a player they view as a steal at that spot. The University of Central Florida player now has the opportunity to link up with former teammate Marissa Diggs in the Dash backline.

After the draft, Waldrum summed up the day, “We definitely got better today, no question about it with Morgan Brian. We clearly got better upfront – and the good thing is we will have McDonald all season – so I definitely think we made ourselves better adding her. Then we added a really good back; Carleigh was the conference player of the year for Central Florida and I was pleasantly surprised that she was still there.”

The Dash still have a couple of areas in the team where they will continue to look to improve; in particular they still need help at the back and they continue to look at international options for a proven goal scorer up top.

The reality of the World Cup this summer and players being away dictated many of the moves in this draft and made the immediate aftermath of the draft perhaps a bit different from the past two years. The teams spared no time in pounding the phones to try to get some of the undrafted players into camp, particularly as potential amateur players they can call up during the Cup.

As of yesterday afternoon after the draft, Waldrum had been working the phone and gotten several players to come in for a look in the preseason including a couple from Texas A&M. “I think there’s some good players who did not get drafted today who could possibly help us out, especially on that front end.”

With the draft out of the way, the next step towards the start of the season is open tryouts on February 21st. In the meantime, the Dash have come a long way since the end of the 2014 season and transformed themselves into a team that fans can expect to compete for a spot in the playoffs and perhaps even a Championship.