I grew up in Stoke-on-Trent in the U.K., kind of the middle of England. My dad was a bank manager. My mom was a stay-at-home mom. I was always the scrappy one who had to fight for all the things that it felt like my brother just got given to him.
I was the one who played sports. Field hockey, swimming, tennis, netball, track and field. Never played soccer. Back in those days, it wasn’t a sport for girls.
A high school sweetheart came back into my life. He’d invested in our hometown team in England, which is Stoke City. … We moved to Austin. Everyone thinks moving to a country where everyone speaks kind of the same language is a breeze. I wouldn’t call it a breeze.
In 2008, Stoke City said to him, ‘We would love to have an affiliate in America.’ That was when we started looking at the landscape of, what does soccer even look like in America right now? … We sat down over breakfast and said, ‘Why don’t we start a team? How hard can it be?’
That was when we found out how hard it actually was.
The United Soccer League said, ‘Well, Orlando announced a team and now the guy’s backed out. He’s come into trouble on Wall Street.’ … We very quickly met with (Orlando) Mayor (Buddy) Dyer, who’s still the city mayor all these years later. And he said, ‘We would love another major league team, we only have the Magic.’ We’d already decided, go big or go home. So we announced that we were a minor league team right now ... but we were going to be major league in five years.
We had a couple of journalists — one in particular who I still remind when I see him — who said, ‘You seem like really good people, but it’s never going to work. Soccer’s been in this state before and has failed.’
It’s still, for the most part, a working person’s sport, so the tickets are still affordable. But you also want to make it so that people can arrive by train, they can walk, they can cycle, they can scooter.
In 2016, we started the women’s team. The NWSL (National Women's Soccer League) came to us in 2015 and said, ‘We’d love for you to have a team.’ We’re like, ‘Absolutely, it’s in the plans.’ And they’re like, ‘we need you to do it next year.’
Like, what? No, we can’t.
Sometimes you look back and you’re like, how? How did we do it? But when you’re in the moment, you’re just swept up in it.
It’s been fantastic to see the way women’s sports in general is going in this country. The sponsors are coming to the table. The media deals are getting better and better and better. Women’s sports is in such a better place. We’re not there yet, right? There’s a lot of years to catch up on. But the pay is getting better, the stadiums are good.
Parramore is the area that we’re in, a traditionally African-American neighborhood that fell on hard times. People were like, ‘you’re putting the stadium in Parramore?’ Yeah, well, we are.
The Wilf family have just been really, really good owners. They’re really good stewards of the club. They’ve come in and just breathed new life into things.
I’m still kind of one of the faces of the club. ‘Ambassador’ has come into my title. I’m the person who does speaking engagements on behalf of the club.
We were the first sporting event that was going to happen after (the Pulse nightclub mass shooting that killed 49) happened. We’d gone to the city of Orlando and said, ‘Should we even have a game? Tell us what we need to do.’ And they said, ‘We want you to go ahead with it. People are looking for opportunities to come together.’
We went to FIFA and asked if, instead of the FIFA anthem, we could come out to All You Need Is Love. So we did. We also asked them if we could stop the game in the — it still makes me choke up — in the 49th minute. And it was so powerful. Because you know soccer, it’s go, go, go. And the referee blew his whistle, and everyone just stopped.
Our fans were incredible. I’ve never seen so many rainbow flags in my life. We were in the Citrus Bowl, and it was 30,000 people with flags. Goosebumps. It was really cool, seeing this community come together. Since then, you will see rainbow flags at our games every game. We’re still a bubble in Florida where people feel seen and safe and included.
When we built the stadium, having those (49 rainbow-colored) seats was huge for that community and a lot of our players. A lot of our Pride players are from the LGBTQ community.
In America, I feel like there’s been some false starts in the past where people were like, ‘This is it, soccer’s here, here we go.’ And then … However, having said that, I do think we’re in a really good space now. From the women’s perspective, that’s where the really big growth is going to happen.
Playing sports is so good for you. The vast majority of women executives of Fortune 500 companies played sports. Because you’ve learned you want to be a winner, you’ve learned how to be on a team, you’ve learned about self-discipline. You will learn so many skills playing a sport that will then propel you forward into your later life.
We have to start especially helping girls, because they drop out of sports in school twice as much as boys do, and body image is a huge piece of that.
I love our game because it’s a gathering place. We have judges standing next to bricklayers. We have people from Latin America, from Asia, from Europe. Because you’re wearing purple, you know you’re all in a tribe together. You are the tribe, and for those two hours, you come together and you’re as one.