Inside the Challenge Cup “bubble” of 2020, something bigger than soccer was happening off the pitch in the National Women’s Soccer League. Between practices and games, Black players were having conversations with their teammates, trying to find the right words to explain why they were kneeling during the national anthem, why they were using their social media platforms to call for change, and the difficult realities of being Black in the NWSL — all on their own.
“In 2020 when we were protesting for Black Lives Matter, it was hard with some of the players, especially for those in the Black Women’s Player Collective who were the only Black players on their teams, to feel like they had a voice or were being listened to by their club and teammates,” Mandy Freeman told The Equalizer.
These hard but necessary conversations spurred important change in the NWSL, but what became clear is that the players faced a significant burden in trying to educate their teams.
“The first time we had conversations [around diversity, equity, and inclusion] we had to do it on our own as players during the 2020 Challenge Cup — like when it came to standing and kneeling for the national anthem — and the state of the world, which sports mirrors,” Michelle Betos said. “I remember as players having those hard, difficult conversations and it was facilitated by players.”
Since then, the league as a whole has adopted several DEI initiatives, including unconscious bias training at the Rookie Symposium for both players and technical staff, a DEI summit during NWSL Championship weekend, and partnerships with multiple organizations including Pro Sports Assembly and the USC Race and Equity Center. The league has also instituted a DEI task force composed of league staff, club coaches, general managers, player representatives, and experts in the field.
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This year, NJ/NY Gotham FC set out to go above and beyond, to help further lift the burden from the players, delving deeper into issues, and ensuring the team is a place where everyone feels supported and heard.
Through a partnership with Equity Commons, Gotham general manager Yael Averbuch West is determined to provide her players with the right tools to facilitate the necessary conversations, bettering the environment and strengthening her team in the process.
“Internally, we’re not set up to educate ourselves,” Averbuch West told The Equalizer. “We’re not experts in this field, and I’ve always felt it was important for us to employ experts who do this as their life’s work to educate and help facilitate conversation, not just spill information – but to listen, facilitate, correct and guide.”
Equality Commons’ cutting-edge approach
At the start of the year, Averbuch West faced the arduous task of creating the 2024 budget for the defending NWSL Champions. As she waded through the necessary costs associated with running any professional sports team, she had one important change to make: adding a line in the club’s budget for DEI training through Equity Commons.
“I often feel like diversity and inclusion isn’t often discussed, or if it is, there’s not much action behind it,” Freeman said. “It was nice to have the club put its money where its mouth is and invest in having a group come and [facilitate] these discussions. Talking about race and discrimination makes people uncomfortable and people tend to avoid having these conversations which need to be had.”
Gotham is the first professional sports team to work with Equity Commons, and Averbuch West was blown away by the impact this training had on her, her staff, and the players. Instead of a standard presentation on DEI topics, this hands-on experience gave players the tools to provide feedback to the organization on how they could help facilitate an environment that was more supportive and trusting, thereby allowing the players to flourish.
“We received a lot of feedback from the players, and I think this helped them to identify and articulate some things that were important to them that they felt we could do better as a club,” Averbuch West said. “We’re not shy or embarrassed by the fact that we need to get better. We’re always working to get better as a club. I’m not afraid of the players sharing the areas that they feel we need to improve at as a club.”
Averbuch West, a former NWSL player and executive director of the NWSLPA, is keenly aware of how important it is to make strides in creating a respectful, supportive environment for players to thrive.
“I was part of a lot of conversations as a player where we were doing our best, but the onus should not be on the players to broach these subjects and try to educate their teammates,” Averbuch West said. “As a player, you want to show up, work hard, and play soccer, so I think there’s a need for an intentional moment and time carved out with professional guidance that I hadn’t experienced until more recently.”
Equity Commons’ unique approach took both players and staff – in separate, private sessions – through an interactive, immersive scenario allowing participants to see through the eyes of a woman of color experiencing implicit bias. The realistic virtual reality aspect allowed the team to gain insight into someone else’s experience in a meaningful way.
“It’s important to make ourselves better in creative ways and what Equity Commons is doing is cutting edge,” Averbuch West said. “It is very hard to have these conversations and to be educated on what things we’re not aware of that may be harmful or hurtful — you don’t know what you don’t know — but working with Equity Commons provides an avenue for us to have experts lead us in talking about difficult things, people feel very vulnerable, and are leaning a lot about themselves in these conversations, and I think it’s very important to have experts leading that.”
For the players, this creative and groundbreaking approach from Equity Commons immediately impacted the team’s ability to speak among themselves as well as to team staff and leadership.
“We’re a diverse group – we represent many different races, ethnicities, sexual orientations – so it was such a cool thing to have us be led in and to facilitate conversations through his technology,” Betos said. “We were able to experience being a Black woman in a hospital and not being listened to, which was eye-opening for a lot of us but also spilled into this environment and the NWSL as a whole.”
For Freeman, who has played for Gotham (formerly Sky Blue FC) her entire professional career, she has often had the opportunity to play with a diverse group of teammates – an experience she knows is not universal across the NWSL. She hopes to see more teams adopt DEI training that go above and beyond to help facilitate these important conversations and create a more equitable, and as a result a better, league.
“It’s hard to encapsulate the Black players’ experience in just one session, but I feel like it definitely got the conversation started,” Freeman said.
Dividing into groups, the players were led in conversation, facilitated by Equity Commons staff, on topics surrounding implicit bias, the experiences of players of color in the NWSL and at Gotham, and how they as teammates can look to better understand one another.
“We were able to talk about how [the VR scenario] made us feel and if we’ve ever had instances like that, and personally, I have,” Freeman said. “It was a good time to share, listen, and try to understand as best we could another person’s perspective.”
According to Whitney A. White, the CEO and co-founder of Equity Commons, this hands-on and immersive experience allowed players and staff to gain a new understanding and greater empathy for individuals from different backgrounds.
“We represent New York and New Jersey, we represent every kind of person, and you can’t represent or honor people until you understand them and their perspective,” Betos said. “It will take more than one training to do that, but it was a really cool first step.”
On and beyond the pitch
The training with Equity Commons, which happened in April, coincided with a pivotal point in Gotham’s season. The defending champions had a bit of a rocky start to the 2024 campaign, and for Averbuch West, this DEI training allowed the players and staff to sit down together in open and honest conversation, ready to receive feedback in a constructive way.
“We’re asking the players to get better every day on the field, so it is also important for me and the club to show the players that we’re committed to supporting them to get better off the field and for us as a staff to get better as leaders, coaches, and whatever we’re doing,” Averbuch West said. “Hopefully this was a useful experience for players and a great way for them to feel supported and know that we are committed to this.”
The training allowed the players to really connect with one another on a human level, helping to build the connections that they take with them onto the field every week during the season.
“Being able to have these conversations with your teammates allows you to have other types of conversations, deeper ones, either as a team or one-on-one,” Freeman said. “It gives us another, deeper level to understand each other as humans and people rather than just athletes.”
For Betos, this experience further emphasized the beauty of sport in bringing people together and building camaraderie among a diverse group outside the hours spent together on the pitch.
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“I get to play on a team with 27 women I may not have connected with otherwise, but all of a sudden you’re a family,” Betos said. “Any time you can get players at this level, with our fast-paced, demanding lives, in a room and having them understand more about each other, it automatically makes you a better team. That meeting was one of the most unifying things we did.”
As Betos has experienced over her long career, it’s impossible to take the interpersonal relationships out of a team sport. Understanding, caring for, and listening to one another helps create belonging, which in turn contributes to confidence and success both on and off the pitch.
“I don’t think there’s any pinnacle that you can ever reach, there’s never any real solution, so you just have to keep growing and learning from each experience you encounter,” Freeman said. “That will allow the players that come behind us in the future to create and have an environment that they feel comfortable being themselves in.”
