Tag: National Women’s Soccer League

Women’s History Month Spotlight: NWSLPA President Tori Huster

Not only do they have the union advocating for their best interests, but they are being educated on how to advocate for themselves.

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.

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.

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.

“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.

 

Women’s History Month Spotlight: Former Stanford volleyball standout Cassidy Lichtman

In 2020, Lichtman agreed to come back from retirement and play in the inaugural season of Athletes Unlimited volleyball

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.

Cassidy Lichtman is the Director of Volleyball for Athletes Unlimited where she was previously a professional volleyball player and Chairperson of the Player Executive Committee. Lichtman is a former member of the USA Volleyball Women’s National Team, a two-time All-American, and an Academic All-American at Stanford.

She played professionally in Europe and Asia for five years and was keenly aware of the power imbalances prevalent in sport between the owners and the players. The owners had full control and reign over the lives of the athletes on the court and a huge level of power off the court as well.

“Rule number 1, don’t argue with the owner, because they own you. The decide if you get paid, if you get fired, where you live, how much you play, whether or not you get Christmas off,” Lichtman said in her TEDxBoston presentation entitled The Power in My Voice. She played half of the year in Europe and Asia and half the year on the USA Volleyball Women’s National Team and retired in 2016. However in 2020, when a professional league was founded in the United States, Lichtman agreed to come back from retirement and play in the inaugural season of Athletes Unlimited volleyball. Up until that point, no professional indoor volleyball leagues existed in the United States.

There were no owners, no clubs, and no set teams. This was something entirely different than anything Lichtman had experienced previously in her volleyball career. The balance of power was shifted and players held power with the founders of the league. This was a novel concept that kept the players at the nexus of all decisions made within the league. Lichtman became the Chairperson of the Player Executive Committee (PEC) which is made up of five athletes from the volleyball league. The PEC meets with league staff, co-founders, and other leadership to work together on decision-making that affects the league.

One revolutionary decision the players were allowed to make is what uniforms they wanted to wear. Some players wanted shorts and others wanted long leggings, so each player was able to choose what bottoms they wore. This seemingly small choice, allowed all the players to feel comfortable when they were doing their job, playing volleyball professionally.

Other teams in other professional women’s leagues are starting to allow athletes to make choices about their own bodies. Recently, the Orlando Pride of the National Women’s Soccer League announced, in a press release:

“Orlando Pride has announced an updated look to its Luna Kit, the Club’s secondary jersey. To make players more comfortable and confident when playing during their menstrual cycle, the team will now wear black shorts, replacing the white shorts previously worn throughout the 2022 season and with other secondary kits in prior years.”

Athletes having a voice in their workplace and being able to advocate for themselves is vital to a healthy sports ecosystem. People like Lichtman are making sure athletes are given that opportunity.

Athletes Unlimited volleyball is gearing up for another season. Ahead of their fall season, the league is embarking upon the Athletes Unlimited Volleyball Exhibition Tour. The tour features Athletes Unlimited professional volleyball athletes traveling across the United States playing exhibition matches against top college programs. This tour will promote the sport at a grassroots level and preview what’s to come in season 3 of Athletes Unlimited volleyball.

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Women’s History Month Spotlight: three-time Olympic medalist Kendall Coyne Schofield

President of the PWHPA, Olympic champion Kendall Coyne Schofield won the 2023 PWHPA Humanitarian Award.

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.

There is no doubt Kendall Coyne Schofield, left wing for the United States Women’s Ice Hockey Team, is athletically talented. She has won two silvers and one gold at the Olympics and is a 6-time IIHF Women’s World Champion among numerous other on-ice accolades. In 2019, she became the first woman to compete in the NHL Skills Competition as a Fastest Skater competitor. She recorded a time of 14.346 and while she didn’t win, she didn’t come in last either.

The winner of the competition, Connor McDavid with a time of 13.378, said of Coyne Schofield, “When she took off I was like, ‘Wow!’ I thought she might have won, the way she was moving. She was a really good skater and it’s an amazing thing for the game when they can see her participate like that in an event like this.”

Her off-ice accomplishments stand-out as well. Coyne Schofield attended Northeastern University where she played ice hockey and graduated with her bachelor’s and master’s degrees, both summa cum laude.

In 2020, she parlayed her education and love of sport, and joined the ownership group of the Chicago Red Stars of the National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL). That is not the only elite women’s sports entity in which she is involved. Her background in hockey led her to be the President and a board member of the Professional Women’s Hockey Players Association (PWHPA) where she helps further the PWHPA’s work to create a sustainable and viable professional women’s hockey league. She also competes in the PWHPA’s Dream Gap Tour on Team Adidas.

Recently, she penned a book, As Fast As Her, about her life and accomplishments which came out in 2022.

This month she announced on Instagram that she and her husband, Chicago Bears offensive guard Michael Schofield, are expecting their first child this summer.

And to cap it all off, she won the PWHPA’s Humanitarian Award for her work on and off the ice. Not only is she elite as an athlete, she continues to use her platform to change the game for other women in sport. We salute you Kendall and thank you for your tireless efforts both in and out of sport.