Pitch to Pro
Pitch to Pro is the official podcast of Ozark United FC. This will be our platform to tell our story about the club and the special place that we call home, Northwest Arkansas. This is a journey. We want to bring you along for the ride. We'll share what's going on behind the curtain, help educate the community at large about soccer, Our league, and give updates on the progress of the club along the way.
Together, we'll explore and unpack our journey to professional soccer, the magic that is NWA, our community, and talk all things soccer from on the pitch to behind the scenes, telling the story of our club.
Pitch to Pro
Stoppage Time Special: A Girl's Right to Play
Check out this Stoppage Time special from Ep. 41 - Her Game Too: Fighting for Equality in Soccer - Part 2!
Gender equality in soccer remains an uphill battle, especially in communities where women's participation is still considered unusual. "I don't know many women my age who watch soccer... it's me and my dad, that's all I know about soccer fans," shares Jenn Ramczyk, one of the co-founders of Her Game Too USA, highlighting how isolating the experience can be for female enthusiasts in certain regions of the country.
The Her Game Too movement is confronting these challenges head-on with strategic priorities for 2025. Education stands as their foremost mission—creating awareness that soccer truly belongs to everyone, regardless of gender. This need becomes painfully evident when we hear about an eight-year-old girl being told by a boy her same age that "she wasn't allowed to play the game." Such early manifestations of gender exclusion demonstrate why education must target both girls and boys from the youngest ages.
Funding grassroots programs forms the second pillar of their strategy, recognizing that early positive experiences are where children develop their love for soccer before societal barriers intervene. The third initiative focuses on forging partnerships with clubs at every level—from local recreational leagues to professional organizations—without financial barriers to participation. These partnerships manifest through visible symbols like the Her Game Too patch on jerseys and dedicated fixtures that elevate women's matches.
Perhaps most powerful is the conversation around female coaching representation. When young girls see themselves reflected in leadership positions, they're more likely to believe soccer is truly their game too. Unfortunately, female coaches continue facing skepticism about their abilities solely based on gender, with comments like "I don't want my child coached by a girl" still pervasive in youth soccer. Changing this mentality forms a critical component of creating truly inclusive soccer environments where all participants can thrive.
Want to support the movement for gender equality in soccer? Tune in to our full episodes and discover how you can become part of creating positive change in your local soccer community!
Welcome to the Stoppage Time edition of the Pitch to Pro podcast. This is a highlight reel of some of the best moments from the show so far, and every other week we will be bringing you a special five to seven minute segment featuring the best stories, tales and moments of the podcast.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I don't know many women my age who watch soccer. I think of a rarity in my area, my hometown, which is a little town. It's me and my dad, that's all I know about soccer fans. So it is trying to get the community or women to feel like, hey, this is for me.
Speaker 3:I can watch this sport and it's different across the country. It's very different what we experience in Arkansas. We're very lucky in our little pocket of Arkansas where we've got quite a lot of soccer opportunities. Now it wasn't always that way for the girls. One of the things I think to talk about with the education side is we had points over the last five years where we couldn't form an age group team for the girls and that makes things really difficult, and that is that's adding to the attrition rate and the dropout rate before they get to junior high, because if they're having to scrape around trying to find girls from other teams combining teams, combining age groups that's hard, that they're going to stop getting despondent and then not want to play. So I feel you know education and just getting more interest in the game is that's as important as the sexist.
Speaker 3:yeah, honestly absolutely falling in love with the game. Yeah, that's that's what we want, and wanting to love it as much as we do. And so, yeah, getting some more, getting more ambassadors across the country and also, um, you know, people willing to help with all these the wheels and cogs in the background. There's a lot and there is, yeah, hoping for visibility and more like-minded people out there to really get this message and hit the grassroots teams, make these girls feel valued yeah.
Speaker 4:So what's? You started talking about it a little bit, but as you look forward, you know there's there's so much to chew off and and and and chew on. I should say to you know, you bite off more than you chew, whatever the saying is, but there's so much to be done. Yeah, and at some level that's a little bit disheartening, but also speaks to the need to the work and, on the positive side, the opportunities of completing that work and bringing the culture and the populace to a better place collectively. But what are you guys looking for? What's next? What's on the immediate horizon for you guys?
Speaker 2:So in 2025, we actually had our meeting with our high-level people and a deal of our ambassadors who happened to get on the call and our goal for 2025 is going to be education, education, education, because we believe that's where it starts.
Speaker 2:We've got to start educating and try to get into the schools and get the young ones it's not just educating the girls, it's educating the boys as well, educating them that this game is for everyone.
Speaker 2:Because a little side note story, but it's relevant is an eight-year-old girl was told by an eight-year-old boy that she wasn't allowed to play the game. Now, that should not happen at that age, and that's where education is going to come in, not, like I said, not just for the girls, for the boys to realize this is for everybody. So that's our, that's our number one focus is education. I think the number two focus is getting that funding. Um, however, we may need to get that, uh, we're gonna, next couple months, we're gonna be having a found funding page right on our website so people can fund to write to us and now we can help the grassroots, because that's where it starts, that's where the kid falls in love with the game, and just for the love of the game and not anything else, so that for me that's what we mainly talked about was those two things grassroots education.
Speaker 3:And then I think, thirdly, on that is more this podcast, for example, getting visibility out there to hoping that some of these clubs will see and they'll want to stand alongside us. So a partnership we have a club partnership packet that we can get out. We can talk to club owners and explain to them what that means for the club to stand by her game too and be aligned with us. It costs no money to be a partner. It costs no money. It's as expensive or cheap as the club wants it to, as you want it to be. So it's manageable for a grassroots club. It's manageable for a rec league. It's manageable for a state association, a USL team, it doesn't matter.
Speaker 3:An academy you can buy stuff to use, you don't have to. But just having a girls team being able to have our badge, the Her Game 2 patch on their jerseys, have dedicated fixtures for their games, when a club aligns with her game too, that it's, it's important, and it starts at those grassroots, yeah, ages and I think, um, and you guys would be able to speak more to this too and there's and you'll probably just say yes, there's so much to do, and that's one of them is more female coaches and opportunities for female coaches.
Speaker 2:When there are coaches, they're not questioned about their coaching ability because of their sex. Because even in our video if you've watched our video one of them is I don't want my child coached by a girl. That is one of the comments.
Speaker 4:So you're right, that is another because I think too and I think that this, just this, is a in general statement around coaching education in the youth game today that there's so much opportunity there, um, and it's. It's not necessarily because, yeah, people don't know what they're doing per se and they want to just jump out there and help and like that's great, um, so bringing some level of consistency as to what are the main tenets of the game that we're trying to get across and and do. But I think the other piece of it is when kids have a good experience with their coach and that coach. It's much more for me, especially at the grassroots level, less about teaching the game the right way, but more around providing an environment where kids can fall in love with the game.
Speaker 4:And they're much more likely to do that when they have a role model coach. That is, oh, I see myself in that. Yeah right, representation matters so much, um, and so that is something just in general. But then, even more important, uh, on the girl's side, within the attrition and the, the participation rates and all of those things that I think, uh, you guys can be a big advocate for and I know you are already but, um, one of the things that uh, again, as a father of daughters, I, I, you know I jumped in to help uh, coach my daughter's team because there were, there wasn't a yeah she was not enough coaches.
Speaker 4:Um, and I was actually hoping that, not because I I don't want to coach my daughter, but I actually I was the opposite. I would have preferred for her to have an amazing female coach and have that for her and be that her experience.
Speaker 1:Thank you for joining us for this stoppage time special of the Pitch to Pro podcast. If you've enjoyed the conversation, you can click watch the full episode here. Be sure to tune in next Thursday for a new episode of the Pitch to Pro podcast, the official podcast of Ozark United FC, Available on YouTube, Instagram and everywhere you get your.