FOOTBALL4GOOD MAGAZINE - DECEMBER 2019

Girls at the 2011 Soccer Without Borders TEAM Camp in Nicaragua. University, where she was also a postgraduate, as well as Assistant Coach of the Women’s Soccer Team. “The University game had probably the most resources of any women’s league in the world at the time, but it was increasingly starting to feel like my experience as a professional player, where team and personal growth is secondary to winning.” As she was completing her Master’s Degree at Lehigh University in Sociology and her time as a player was teetering on the brink of expiry, Mary was looking for a new way of working with the sport that had shaped so much of her life. “For me, soccer had always been about team and community, but the field of ‘football for good’ was not something I had ever heard of,” she remembers. By chance, Mary received an email newsletter from a nascent Soccer Without Borders. “I knew Ben as the guy who wanted to drive a motorcy- cle down to Argentina with his best friends and play soccer along the way,” Mary says smiling as she recalls her early impression of him. It was a view that soon lost its currency when she learned about Soccer Without Borders. “Ben’s vision of the soccer field and the soccer team as an alter- native classroom really connected dots with me in ways that I hadn’t thought about before.” Together with her and Ben’s mutual friend, Molly Luft, Mary contacted the Soccer Without Borders Founder to see how they could help. Ben asked if they would be interest- ed in supporting their fledgling programme in Nicaragua, which was shifting to focus more on girls. Mary didn’t need time to reflect. “It felt like a perfect chance to pay forward some of the opportunity that I had enjoyed as a female athlete in the U.S.” A short while later Mary was boarding a flight to Nicaragua. It was the first of many trips to the country. Mary recalls one specific evening in Nicaragua when the pow- er of soccer to shape communities really clicked for her. Walking one evening with Soccer Without Borders Coach Jose Largaespada and her friend Ann Cook, also a former play- er from the WUSA, they stumbled upon a 3 versus 3 street football game by light of a streetlamp. “I remember the men playing paused briefly to let us pass, but instead we asked if we could play against the winning team. They laughed at us, definitely expecting that we’d lose the next game and be off the field,” Mary laughs. Instead, the trio won 7 games in a row. “I watched these men go from laughing, to mocking one another, to angry, to finally just playing. I watched their beliefs about what women are capable of get shattered, and underneath it was a respect that I’m not sure we could have earned any other way.” For Mary, that evening solidified the importance of female athlete role models. At the time, in a city of 120,000 people there were no girls’ leagues and just a single women’s team. Season by season, Soccer Without Borders worked to change this, recruiting women from the one team to help create pathways for girls to play, to learn, and to build their own leadership and coaching. One of those women was Veronica Balladares, a defender and captain of the women’s team who Soccer Without Borders recruited as a coach. Veronica was in college at the time, studying to be a psychologist. Football for good was not viewed as a real career, and despite Soccer Without Borders’ efforts, Veronica couldn’t envision fully giving up her formal work pathway for a dream. Soccer Without Borders Nicaragua. Under her leadership, 85% of the staff are now female and more than half are alumni. Mary didn’t know any of that fu- ture at the time, and was herself a volunteer in the early years of Soccer Without Borders. But it was her time in Nicaragua that made her deter- mined to find a way to devote herself to the organisation full-time. “I have been involved in the game of football in almost every way you can think of, from player, to coach, to fan, to referee, to even helping my Dad mow and line our local field. When I start- ed volunteering with Soccer Without Borders, I felt like I had finally found my true place in the game,” Mary enthuses, “It didn’t take much for it to become my dream; I just didn’t know how to also make it a career.” By the autumn of 2010, Soccer Without Borders had grown to the point that full-time oversight was es- sential. “Our biggest challenge,” Ben says, “was growing too quickly before we were ready to do so.” She had a family relying on her and was already breaking many norms to play women’s soccer and pursue a full-time career. Year after year, Mary knocked on her door with an offer of an expanded role. Veronica shared her ideas for what it would take for the pro- gramme to really be viewed by the community as a respected educa- tional outlet. She helped design and launch the secondary school scholar- ship programme, and finally, in 2014, accepted a position as Co-Director of 74 75 FOOTBALL4GOODMAGAZINE | DECEMBER 2019