She Plays

This episode we get to chat with Michael Willett and Tristan Reaves of WalkOn Nation! 

WalkOn Nation was founded by former UCF Football student-athlete Michael Willett and Tristan Reaves. They saw and still see the huge void in holistic development of athletes across the country. Year after year they saw how unprepared their teammates and fellow student-athletes were entering AND leaving college. WalkOn Nation was created to redefine athletic identity to ultimately empower student-athletes to allow their platform to enhance them, not define them.

This episode we chat with Niamh Tallon, founder of Her Sport - Ireland's only media platform dedicated to women in sport! Founded in 2018, Her Sport aims to inspire women and girls of all ages to participate in sport, encouraging them to try anything from running to ultimate frisbee, football to softball.

Tallon started the platform due to a clear underrepresentation of women’s sport in the media. Currently just 6% of sports media coverage is given to women which has a critical rippling effect. Without airtime and coverage female athletes lose out on sponsorship, fans and opportunities. By the age of 14, girls drop out of sport at twice the rate of boys. This is not for a lack of passion or skill. Women and girls’ sport are under-promoted, robbing young girls and boys of role models they can aspire to be like. Her Sport aims to give young girls and women the platform to celebrate and champion their achievements and share their stories.

Meet Lesley Ryder and Emily Anderson - the dynamic duo behind Gal Pal Sports! From their hilarious Office spoof on Sky Blue FC and an incredible video series introducing new fans to NWHL, Lesley and Emily are making top-notch content that draws in new fans to women's sports (and are just flat out enjoyable for those of us already in the know)!

About Gal Pal Sports: "Worn out by the existing narratives around women’s sports, we were ready to enjoy our leagues the same way we enjoy men’s sports - with a couple of beers and a lot of laughs. We started creating videos en route to France for the World Cup and over a year later we’re still going. We aim to make sports fun, make fun of sports, and do some good along the way."

This episode we are joined by Kayla Lombardo, lead editor for Softball America and web editor for Baseball America! Kayla is a former Division I softball team captain at Fordham University and a three-time Atlantic 10 Conference champion and NCAA Tournament participant. At Fordham, she was a two-time First Team All-Atlantic 10 Conference honoree and a two-time Third Team NFCA All-Region selection. She earned academic honors at Fordham as well, graduating magna cum laude in 2015 and earning Academic All-District and Academic All-Conference honors as a Ram. After college, she wrote for Sports Illustrated and Excelle Sports, and later went on to coach Division I softball at Lehigh University, where she earned a master’s degree in 2019. We loved our chat with Kayla and hope you enjoy and it gets you ready for some NCAA softball viewing this spring!!

In this episode, we are joined by sports reporter Penny Guevara! Penny has a long history of writing and publication in the sports world. She covers the WNBA for Beyond Women's Sports and we talk about the unity that exists within the world of women's sports.

More about Beyond Women's Sports:

"Simply put… we love sports! But we love women’s sports and feel they should be featured in the public eye just like the rest. We will make it our job to do so and bring you all the best content available! We are a new site aiming to bring you the best women’s sports coverage in the world. We will be covering basketball, softball, tennis, soccer, etc. Our motto is, “Empowering and bringing unity within women’s sports”; so if you’re looking for a website fully supporting women’s sports, we got you covered."

This episode we are so excited to be joined by Honiball Humans co-founders, Santi Gallo and Laura Torres! Santi is also Associate General Manager at OL Reign. He and Laura founded the organization in Colombia and have an amazing platform sharing stories of women in sports - we can't wait for you to hear all of the inspiration they have found and share in this episode!

This episode we are so excited to be joined by Haley Rosen, CEO and Founder of Just Women's Sports! 

Haley received a BA and an MA from Stanford University, where she played as a midfielder for the Cardinal soccer team. After a brief professional soccer career in both the US and abroad, Haley returned to the Bay Area, where she first worked in tech before founding Just Women’s Sports.

A little bit about JWS:

"Only 4% of sports coverage is dedicated to women’s sports. We’re here to change that.

We’ve teamed up with some of the best athletes in the world to change how women’s sports are covered. This isn’t a token vertical buried in the back pages. We’re not at the bottom of some pulldown menu. We believe female athletes can fill more than the occasional feature—they can be the entire publication. From highlights to podcasts, newsletters and swag, JWS brings fans everything they need to see and know in the world of women’s sports. We’re just getting started, and we’re pumped to have you with us."

Enjoy this episode and please give Just Women's Sports a follow here:

This episode we are so excited to be joined by Jon Patricof, CEO and Co-Founder of Athletes Unlimited. AU is a new pro sports venture that launched in 2020 with its inaugural softball season and on February 27 their inaugural indoor volleyball season will begin! 

Jon was most recently President of Major League Soccer’s New York City Football Club and still currently serves on their Board of Directors. Prior to NYCFC, he spent 11 years as President and COO of Tribeca Enterprises, the owner and operator of the Tribeca Film Festival and related business ventures. He was the first employee at Tribeca and helped build the company into a multi-dimensional business with a globally recognized brand. Among his accomplishments was the creation of the Tribeca/ESPN Sports Film Festival as well as the company’s landmark branded content partnerships with Dick’s Sporting Goods and American Express. Patricof started his career at Disney where he worked as a member of the strategic planning department helping grow the Disney, ESPN and ABC brands across video, audio and digital platforms. Between these companies he has executed investments and strategic partnerships, launched multiple new businesses and overseen sales, marketing, digital and content, legal, finance and operations. Jon received an M.B.A. with distinction from Harvard Business School and graduated magna cum laude from Harvard College where he was a member of the baseball team.

We got to chat about starting a brand new sports league and what sets Athletes Unlimited apart from any other league in existence. From their unique scoring systems to their weekly team drafts, AU really has revolutionized the way we can experience professional sports. Enjoy!

Follow Athletes Unlimited here:

This episode we are joined by the brilliant Julie Uhrman, Founder and President at Angel City Football Club (Angel City)! This was such an incredible conversation about how Julie and the ACFC team are bringing a new era of sport and entertainment to Los Angeles, the NWSL and the world!

Previously, Julie served as EVP & GM of Over-The-Top Ventures for Lionsgate, building and managing the company’s multiple streaming franchises. In 2013, she founded and was CEO of OUYA, a pioneering Android-based game console for the living room, which raised a record-breaking $8.6 Million through Kickstarter and then went on to secure venture funding from Kleiner Perkins and Alibaba before selling to Razer in 2015. 

She has been named one of the 100 Most Creative People in Business by Fast Company and one of the Creative 50 by Ad Age. We were thrilled to chat with her - enjoy the episode and check below for ways to connect with Angel City FC!

Join our chat with Chauntiel Smith-Jones, CEO and Founder of Capture Sports Agency. Chauntiel is a sports agent for players in the WNBA and FIBA with dreams of one day owning her own sports team! Capture Sports Agency helps shape and form athletes, helping them become positive role models as well as learn to capture their audience.

This episode we are joined by Jenna Weiner and absolutely loved our conversation with her. She is an ultimate player for the Western Ultimate league, as well as a disc golfer, trans woman, scholar, musician, and TEDx speaker. This conversation was so moving and really highlights one of the most beautiful things that sports can be: a safe space. It's not always the case. It's different league by league, team by team. Jenna's story though is inspirational in how one person being authentic and vulnerable led to dramatic change in her sport. 

We got to sit and chat with Maddie Purcell, player and co-owner in the Premier Ultimate League! Maddie and Chloë Rowse formed Portland Rising as part of a 4-team expansion to the PUL for the 2020 season. While COVID and 2020 have delayed the team's debut, they have still been hard at work preparing for next year and are already growing a loyal, engaged fanbase. The Rising is the first women's professional sports team in Maine - the first of many we hope!

Give the team a follow to make sure you'll catch all of the latest news and upcoming info about the team, their documentary and their brand new podcast debuting in early 2021!!

It's no lie that 2020 has been a tough year. One thing that has kept us laughing, entertained and inspired is the Future Million Heirs! This dynamic trio (Hailey, Amanda and Ali) is bringing together pop culture and the world of women's sports in the battle to close the coverage gap that exists in the sports industry. Women's sports only receive 4% of sports media attention despite women being 40% of athletes in the country. As the FMH team says, "We cover women’s sports. Because you can’t close the pay gap without closing the coverage gap.  And because we f*cking love women’s sports." Cheers to that! 

We love the Future Million Heirs - give them a follow and you will not regret it!  

Join our conversation with professional softball player Sam Fischer! She was one of the inaugural players for Athletes Unlimited's 2020 softball season, a former member of Team USA, and led all Division I players with a .492 batting average in her senior season at Loyola Marymount. She also had 23 home runs and 59 RBIs that season #nbd 

In 2019, Fischer was inducted into the Loyola Marymount Athletics Hall of Fame and had her jersey retired. We loved getting to chat with her about her career and how the women's side of sports continues to improve! Enjoy the episode!

We are so excited to bring you our conversation with Stephanie Harvey aka missharvey as she is known in the gaming world. She is the director of esports franchise development & outreach at Counter Logic Gaming (CLG). missharvey is also a former video game developer and most notably a 5x gaming World Champion, best known for playing Counter-Strike and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive!  She is an advocate for women in professional gaming and we loved diving deeper into this with her, as well as hearing about her start in the space and what the world of gaming is like at the World Championship level. Enjoy our chat! 

Connect with missharvey here:

This episode we are joined by Hayley Carter, a professional tennis player with the WTA! Hayley is a former Tar Heel and plays tennis around the world on tour. She competes in doubles with Luisa Stefani and the pair have had quite a successful run the last two years (they won the 2020 Top Seed Open in Lexington, competed in the Final at the Internationaux de Strasbourg and made it to the quarterfinals at both the French Open and the US Open!). We hope you enjoy our chat and support doubles tennis!! Push for content, push for news, push for broadcast opportunities. 

This episode we are joined by Ashli Payne, Eastern Washington University alum and professional basketball player abroad. We chat about her experiences playing in Australia and in France - and what it was like be abroad when COVID started shutting leagues down.

Enjoy our chat with Catherine Breed, marathon swimmer and social activist! We hear all about her experiences of swimming across Lake Tahoe and the North Channel (the sea between Ireland and Scotland!). We talk about an encounter with a great white shark and how she prepares mentally and physically for such epic swims (12 hours! 58 degree water! Jellyfish stings!). She is also passionate about giving back and encouraging people to "get in the water!" She recently swam the Monterey Bay in CA and raised $3,000 for Diversity in Aquatics, an organization that promotes water safety, education and drowning prevention for minority groups. Catherine is such an inspiration - enjoy the episode!

We got the chance to sit down with women's national rugby team player Kristine Sommer to learn all about this incredible sport and the community it creates. Learn about the ways we can support national and local players as they prep for the 2021 World Cup! 

Join us as we chat all things beach volleyball with Kelly Reeves! Kelly played one season of beach volleyball in 2013 while also playing indoor volleyball - and winning a National Championship - throughout her college career at UCLA!! She made her AVP Tour debut in 2016 where she qualified into the Main Draw in her first-ever tournament. She finished fifth and was named 2016 Rookie of the Year! Kelly has also spent time on the FIVB World Tour where she placed second in Cambodia back in February 2020. We can't wait to see what comes next for Kelly and loved our time chatting with her!

We are joined by Chrissi Sanders, CEO of Next Play Sports, as we chat all things on the business side of the sports industry. Chrissi has many years of experience in athlete endorsements and strategic partnerships, as well as in the venture equity world. Hear what Chrissi is doing to create more opportunities for athletes to better understand how they can use their brand in unique ways!

We followed Carla over the summer on her Guinness World Record breaking journey to run the length of Great Britain (South to North) and now we get to chat with her about all things ultra-running! Loved getting to chat with her and know you'll enjoy her tales of running across the globe.

We chat all things soccer photography with Nikita Taparia!  She shares some incredible stories from her time at the 2019 World Cup as well as work she's done in here in the US covering the NWSL. Nikita has a passion for helping younger, aspiring sports photographers find an opportunity to get their foot in the door. Be sure to tune in to hear more about that.

That's right! Earlier this summer, we rolled out a whole new fantasy sports platform dedicated to the female athletes we all know and love! We hosted games for the NWSL Challenge Cup and now are fully rolling through the WNBA season and NPF offseason with pick'em, team/player games and live Bingo!

We are joined again by Will Lewis of Fantasy Sports Insight to discuss the upcoming 2020 WNBA season!

We chat with 17-year-old entrepreneur Simran Kumar about her new business, Equalize the Future! It was really incredible to hear her unique perspective on equality issues in sport. Definitely check it out and give her a follow! Plus... she's given our listeners a 20% discount code to use in her shop! Definitely take advantage of that below.

This episode we chat with Sammy Davis, the #1 overall draft pick from the 2020 NWHL Draft! As a former Boston University student, Sammy will be staying local in the league as she has signed with the Boston Pride! 

At the IIHF U-18 World Championship in 2015, Davis was an assistant captain for the U.S. and had two goals and an assist in five games. Sammy was a Hockey East First Team All-Star and the MVP of the Beanpot Tournament last season. She led the Terriers in goals (17), assists (24) and points (41) while playing all 36 games in 2019.

We are joined by Maggie Murphy, General Manager at Lewes FC in Lewes, England. We chat about football/soccer in Britain and their incredible movement to become the first and only gender equal football club in the world. They are 100% fan-owned and are revolutionizing the way football clubs (and sports teams/clubs in general) can build up their local community.

Check out links below: 

We checked in with former Yale Bulldog Saroya Tinker on her life as a hockey player and being drafted #4 overall in this year's NWHL Draft!! Check out our conversation and get ready to cheer on Saroya and the rest of the Metropolitan Riveters!

Becca Pizzi is amazing y'all! She is the first American female to run the World Marathon Challenge in 2016 - that's 7 marathons on 7 continents in 7 days. Becca went back and made history by running it again and breaking the World Record; 6 Days, 7 Hours and 58 minutes. Her current goal is to complete a marathon in all 50  states. She is most passionate about directing the Becca Pizzi 5k race in Belmont, and the Becca Pizzi Foundation where Becca loves seeing her community come together to support high school athletes. 

Be sure to check out her new book, "Becca's Feat on Feet" and please enjoy our chat with Becca! 

Today we bring you our chat with Emily Crane, outfielder for the Chicago Bandits of the National Pro Fastpitch league (NPF)! We loved chatting with Emily about her sport, her experience in the NPF and how she and her teammates love to interact with their fans. Check out the episode and then check out all of the links below to connect with Emily, the Bandits and the NPF!

We caught up with Sashel Palacios of the Cleveland Comets (NPF) and the Mexican National Softball team! While things have changed since we recorded (Olympics postponed and NPF season delayed), we hope you take a listen to learn more about Sashel. We loved our chat and can't wait to cheer her on once softball gets back in gear!

Check out our interview with Coley Ries from the NPF's Aussie Peppers! We loved getting to chat with her in what we thought was the last few weeks until NPF season started. Things are a bit different now schedule-wise but we still wanted to get this interview out so you can get to know Coley and hear more about the National Pro Fastpitch (NPF) league here in the US!

Hello everyone and hope you're staying safe and practicing great social distancing right now!

This week we are joined by PWBA professional bowler Gazmine "GG" Mason! 

A few shout-outs from her amazing resume: 

- a 3x Olympic Gold Medalist

- the first African American to win Singles and All-Events Gold for USA

- the first African American to compete for the University of Nebraska - Lincoln Women's Bowling Team

- the first African American to become a bowling All-American at the University of Nebraska - Lincoln

She's a superstar and we were so excited to sit down with her and talk all things bowling, the Olympics, her non-profit Black Girls Can Bowl 2 as well as her company Got Game! 

Links:

GG

Instagram: gazminemason

Facebook: gazmine “gg” mason

Twitter: @gmason_10

This episode we chat with Girl Boss Sports CEO Sarah Wolfer about life in the northwest, how she is revolutionizing women in coaching and her upcoming tackle football season with the Oregon Ravens of the WNFC!

Links for Girl Boss Sports:

This week we bring you our conversation with Dr. Lindsey Darvin where we talk about the new 'Name, Image and Likeness legislation' and the impact it might have on women's sports in the US. (There is also a snippet at the end where we talk with VEO CEO, Henrik Teisbæk. VEO is one of the world's most innovative and fast-growing sports tech companies right now whose main product is a football/soccer camera that records matches without a camera man, using artificial intelligence!) Check out links below. 

Dr. Darvin is an Assistant Professor in the Sport Management Department at SUNY Cortland. 

Find out more about her and links to follow her work below: 

SPECIAL RELEASE! 

We are thrilled to announce our partnership with the National Pro Fastpitch League!! We can't wait to bring fantasy sports to the league and its fans!

Links:

Take a listen as the co-founders share their 2019 highlights and the exciting things to come in 2020!

Thanks for an incredible 2019!!! 

Diana Nyad gave this speech in 2013 at TEDWomen after she completed her Cuba to Florida journey earlier that year. Take a listen to her experience in her own words - and remember, find a way!