This Women’s History Month, I will be spotlighting women athletes and their achievements in college, after college, and beyond. Athletes are Humans First and while I want to highlight their athletic ability and achievements, I also want to point a spotlight on what they are doing off their field of play.
Tori Huster is a professional athlete in the National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL) and the president of the National Women’s Soccer League Players Association (NWSLPA). Huster was first elected to the position in 2020 and was re-elected by the players in 2022. The NWSLPA is the official collective bargaining organization for the NWSL players.
On Jan. 31st, 2022 at approximately 8.30 pm ET, the National Women’s Soccer League’s Players Association announced they had ratified the first-ever collective bargaining agreement in women’s soccer history. As the president of the association, Huster helped oversee the collective bargaining process.
— NWSLPA (@nwsl_players) February 1, 2022
On April 29th, 2022, the Executive Director Meghann Burke of the NWSLPA and NWSL Commissioner Jessica Berman signed the collective bargaining agreement on the field before Angel City’s regular season home opener.
“It’s a big focus of mine to make sure players know their rights and to make sure clubs are abiding by what is actually in the agreement. While the CBA is a historic moment for the league, there are plenty of areas up for interpretation within the agreement,” Huster said in a press release issued by her club, the Washington Spirit.
Huster started soccer at a young age and went on to play D1 soccer at Florida State University where she was a four-year starter, first-team Scholar All-American by the National Soccer Coaches Association of America in 2011, a third-team All-American, and first-team All-ACC in her final season at FSU.
She also shined in the classroom where she was the recipient of the Golden Torch Award for achieving the highest GPA among soccer student-athletes during the 2009-10 semester, was a four-time FSU Dean’s List honoree, and FSU President’s List – 4.0 GPA in the Spring of 2009. Huster initially thought she might want to be a physician’s assistant and even shadowed a few after college.
The league for professional women’s soccer in the United States folded in 2012 just as Huster was making her way into the league. She played for a few semi-professional leagues and then went overseas to play in Australia for one season. However, her professional soccer career was just taking off and she found she was destined to make history for women athletes around the world.
In 2013, the NWSL emerged and professional soccer was once again an option for players domestically. Huster was drafted by the Spirit with the club’s second pick in the 2013 NWSL Supplemental Draft.
“While Huster played with the Spirit, she took odd jobs to supplement her league pay, which she said was less than $20,000 per season for her first few years. She wrote articles, took photography gigs, trained youth players, coached for club teams, walked dogs, and worked as the executive assistant for a natural turf grass consultant at Maryland Soccerplex, the latter which helped her develop small business and organization skills that would translate to her work with the players association,” according to her interview with Club Eleven Magazine.
Taking odd jobs and working to make a living wage is not new to the world of women’s sports, so Huster had a first-hand understanding of the trials and tribulations players were facing to play the sport they loved.
I once worked at Amazon packing boxes during 10 hour days on my feet. Head to train younger girls in the evening. Train afterwards myself. All of this while raising my son. #TheStruggleIsNotfake https://t.co/iddWNQkLxj
— Jessica McDonald (@J_Mac1422) July 23, 2021
Huster and her teammates worked through harassment and advocated for a change of ownership all while working their additional jobs and playing professional soccer. Something had to give.
A note to Steve from Washington Spirit Players pic.twitter.com/PWsemHR41R
— Tori Huster (@torihuster) October 5, 2021
“In past years, there has not been a place for players to go, or that they feel comfortable going if they have experienced sexual abuse, verbal abuse, any type of harassment,” Huster noted in her interview with Club Eleven Magazine. “The league in the past has said that they had a policy which they were not able to provide us at the beginning of this year, when we demanded that they put it into place right now before the start of the season. We believe that they may have been operating with US Soccer’s anti-harassment policy. But again, they didn’t provide that… If they were using it, players didn’t know, and players didn’t know where to go if they had issues.”
While the league has gone through its ups and downs, the players are always at the forefront of positive changes. That’s what having a union can do for athletes. Not only do they have the union advocating for their best interests, but they are being educated on how to advocate for themselves.
Fast forward to the end of 2021. The NWSLPA entered into a group licensing agreement with OneTeam Partners, entered into its first sponsorship agreements with Ally Bank and MasterCard, hired a business agent to manage business affairs, and entered into a Commercial Rights Agreement.
“I think that if we [the players, the NWSLPA] are able to empower other people to speak up… if we can be very transparent and honest about that process, individually, and as a collective, I think that gives other people the courage to do the same in whatever walk of life that they are living,” Huster told Club Eleven Magazine.
While the league is still relatively young, the players have taken the lead in advocating for their rights and Huster, along with her predecessors has helped pave the way. These players understand they are working for the greater good and might not see all the changes implemented during their playing careers or even their lifetimes.
“We’re going to be able to get things done that we could never have imagined before… because we’re not worried about the league crumbling down because we know that we are the league,” Huster told Club Eleven Magazine.
