The Women’s Coaches Advocacy Group distributes a quarterly newsletter to keep its members up to date on news, deadlines and other association happenings. The newsletter also serves to let members know what the group is working on, highlighting group members and information on how you can get involved. This quarter’s newsletter features an article by Marley Jarvis, a Q&A with Claire Knock, and a #UnitedCV21 recap. To read the full newsletter, click here.

Letter from the Chair, Haley Carter

Footballing Friends and Family,

As I’m drafting this letter, women players and coaches everywhere are preparing their International Women’s Day programming and events. I’ve seen that Brandi Chastain will be speaking with coaches and players from Antigua and Barbuda, Kelly Lindsay is traveling around Morocco for various events aimed at getting more young girls and women in the game, and Girls Play Global is organizing their second annual tournament in Tamilnadu, India, inviting 100 young girls to gather and play. These are only a few examples of the work happening around the world to raise awareness about women’s equality, lobby for accelerated gender parity, and celebrate the achievements of women and girls.

If you missed it, this year’s campaign theme for International Women’s Day is #ChoosetoChallenge. The premise behind the theme is that all of us can and should choose to challenge and call out gender bias and inequality when we see it, whether implicit or explicit. We cannot be afraid to challenge inequality, call out bias, and question stereotypes. When we choose to challenge, we drive change and we help forge a more inclusive world. And this takes all of us, men and women, alike. So as we move past International Women’s Day and continue through Women’s History Month, I’d like to encourage our male allies as well to make the commitment to #ChoosetoChallenge. Share it on your social media accounts, with your teams, your management, your friends, and your family!

As we move into our third month of 2021, I’d also like to recognize the women coaches who have recently stepped into leadership roles within the Women’s Group. We introduce two of them in this Newsletter so that you can get to know them. In the past three months, we’ve added Yolanda Thomas, Amanda Evans, Marley Jarvis, and Claire Knock to help lead several Group initiatives. We’re in the process of onboarding more women leaders as we evaluate the needs and interests of the Membership. As always, if you have an idea for an initiative let us know and we can help facilitate your leadership of those efforts. Amanda Evans, for instance, identified the need for a Mom’s Initiative and now she and Yolanda are together spearheading that programming. Identifying initiatives is an excellent way to give back to the Association and we’re open to your thoughts. You can shoot your ideas to womencoachesadvocacygroup@gmail.com and we’ll be in touch!

Lastly, as you may have seen, our social media accounts are back up and running. It’s our commitment to you, the Members of United Soccer Coaches, to celebrate the achievements of all women coaches and coaches of the women’s game. As part of this effort, we’ve initiated a Coach of the Week feature and we’d love for you to nominate someone in your community who you believe has achieved excellence in the recent week and is deserving of recognition. You can send your nominations to us via direct message and each Tuesday, we’ll announce one Coach of the Week. Our social media handles are listed below and I’d encourage you to give us a follow! Lots of women are working behind the scenes to provide you with content so if there’s something missing that you’d like to see, please don’t hesitate to let us know!

Women Coaches Advocacy Group Pages: Twitter | Facebook | Instagram

Hope everyone is having an excellent Spring Season. I won’t take up any more of your time as we have incredible women coaches for you to read about below! As always, thank you for your support and your continued commitment to our Association. Happy reading!

Yours in Soccer,

Haley Carter