PlayHer Way: A New Commitment to Girls and Women in the Game
Updated: 22 hours ago
Eastside FC is excited to introduce PlayHer Way, a new initiative focused on creating more opportunities, stronger experiences and clearer pathways for girls and women in soccer.
PlayHer Way brings together work that has often happened separately: supporting female coaches and leaders, improving the everyday experience of girls in the game, introducing more girls to soccer, creating opportunities for mentorship and building stronger connections across teams, ages and communities.
The goal is simple: to help girls and women play, develop, connect and lead through soccer.
This is not a single program, event or marketing campaign. PlayHer Way is intended to be a sustained club-wide commitment, supported by leadership, staff, resources and investment, with room to grow through partnerships beyond Eastside FC.
It Started on the Field
The first glimpse of PlayHer Way came in September, when more than 100 girls gathered at Preston for an afternoon of soccer.
They came from different teams, levels, clubs and backgrounds. Some had played for years. Others were newer to the game. Female coaches led the sessions, while older female players worked alongside younger girls as mentors and role models.
The soccer mattered, but so did the feeling around it. Girls competed, laughed, connected and simply enjoyed being together in an environment built intentionally around them.
The response reinforced our belief that there is room for more of this. The event was not PlayHer Way in its entirety. It was an early example of what the initiative will become.
Why This Matters
For many girls, soccer becomes about much more than the game itself.
It is where they learn how to contribute to a team, respond to setbacks, handle pressure and build confidence. It is where they experience competition, friendship, responsibility and leadership, often for the first time. Those lessons can follow them well beyond their playing years.
The connection between sport and what comes later in life is hard to ignore. In an EY/espnW survey of 400 female executives, 94 percent had participated in sports, 74 percent said a sports background can help accelerate a woman’s leadership and career potential, and 61 percent said their own participation had contributed to their career success. More recent research from the Women’s Sports Foundation shows why access and belonging still matter: by ages 14 to 18, only 66 percent of girls say they feel they belong in sports, compared with 80 percent at ages 8 to 10. In other words, the benefits of sport can extend well beyond the field, but too many girls are losing their connection to it before they have the chance to realize them.
The benefits are significant. The challenge is making sure more girls have the opportunity to experience them.
Girls continue to leave organized sport at higher rates as they get older, while women remain underrepresented in coaching and leadership throughout soccer. Girls also do not always have enough opportunities to see women leading the game, build relationships with older female athletes and coaches, or feel connected to a community that extends beyond their individual team.
That is the opportunity PlayHer Way is designed to address.
Building Something Broader
PlayHer Way will focus initially on four connected areas.
Female Coaching & Leadership will support women through connection, mentorship, development and progression in coaching, while also providing all coaches of girls with relevant education and resources. Eastside FC wants more women entering coaching, more women remaining in the profession and more women seeing a path toward mentorship and leadership.
Player Experience & Wellbeing will focus on the everyday experience of girls in soccer. That includes belonging, enjoyment, development and confidence, as well as better understanding the needs of female athletes on and off the field. The goal is not simply to create memorable events. It is to make the normal experience of being a girl in soccer better.
Access & Participation will look for ways to introduce more girls to the game, reduce barriers to participation and create clearer pathways for continued involvement. Sometimes that may begin with something as simple as inviting a girl who has never played before to come out and try.
Connection & Community will create opportunities for girls and women to build relationships across ages, teams and levels, while also working with schools, clubs, community organizations and specialists who can bring expertise and resources to the effort.
A Club Commitment, Not a Campaign
Eastside FC is approaching PlayHer Way as more than a marketing initiative or event series.
The club has committed dedicated leadership, staff time, programming resources and budget to the work, with the support of club leadership and the Eastside FC Board of Directors. The intention is to give the initiative enough organizational backing to develop over time rather than depend on a single season, event or group of volunteers.
PlayHer Way is also closely connected to Eastside FC’s soccer mission. Player development is about more than technical training and competition; it also depends on the environment in which players learn, develop and decide whether they want to continue in the game.
Starting With Ambition, and Some Humility
Eastside FC is launching PlayHer Way without pretending that every answer has already been found.
The club does not yet know what every future program will look like, which ideas will have the greatest impact or where the initiative may eventually lead. Part of the work will be listening to girls, female players and coaches, parents, specialists and community partners, then learning from what works and adjusting what does not.
The ambition is significant, but the approach will be iterative. What matters now is that the commitment has been made.
An Invitation Beyond Eastside FC
PlayHer Way is being built at Eastside FC, but participation will not always be limited to Eastside FC coaches and players.
The club wants coaches to learn from one another, specialists to share expertise, community organizations to help expand access and opportunity and girls from outside of Eastside FC to take part in appropriate events,
Eastside FC is also interested in hearing from companies, foundations and community leaders that see value in investing in girls, women, sport and leadership.
For organizations that share that interest, PlayHer Way is intended to be an invitation to participate, contribute expertise, build programs together and help expand what is possible.
What Comes Next
For now, the most immediate way to experience PlayHer Way is the simplest one: come play. The next PlayHer Way girls soccer afternoons are scheduled for:
Sunday, October 18
Robinswood Community Park
Sunday, November 8
Robinswood Community Park
Sunday, December 6
Preston Park & Athletic Fields
The events are designed to be welcoming, social and fun, and they are open to girls from both inside and outside Eastside FC. Girls who play for Eastside FC, an EYSA community club, or a WPL club within the EYSA area, as well as girls who are not currently on a soccer team are eligible to participate in our events.
Additional programming, coaching resources, partnerships and opportunities will take shape as PlayHer Way develops.
In the coming days, Eastside FC will also introduce the women who have stepped up to lead the initiative and turn its ambitions into sustained work.
For now, the launch begins with a simple belief: more girls should have the opportunity to discover what sport can give them, more should have reasons to remain in the game, and more should be able to look around and see women coaching, mentoring and leading.
PlayHer Way is Eastside FC’s commitment to helping make that happen.
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