Sh*t Soccer Girls Say: An Interview with SoccerGrlProbs

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Carly Beyar, Alanna Locast and Shannon Fay from Soccergrlprobs are blowing up on Instagram with their hilarious posts and empowering content (I mean, their tagline is “Empowering Ladyballers, Daily”). They are former Division 1 College Soccer teammates, and they know what it takes to succeed in soccer. Those same characteristics that paid off on the field such hard work, passion, and teamwork, are reaping rewards now as they continue to grow and help soccer players on and off the pitch. They were cool enough to answer some questions…

1. First and foremost, Soccergrlprobs puts out a ton of funny content.  What is the role of humor for soccer players to handle set backs or to improve their performance in general?

We actually started from an entirely comedic/humorous standpoint on twitter back when we were playing Division 1 Soccer at Fairfield University. This humor, and being able to laugh through the ridiculous moments we were all experiencing, gave us such a release of stress and pressure. When you're with your teammates during preseason, and you're the only ones on campus and you have 3 sessions a day, you're all covered in bruises and crawling up staircases because you're so sore, you kind of just have to take a moment to laugh at yourself. As female athletes, we experience a lot of things that your average female doesn't experience, and being able to laugh at our "problems" and realizing that we're not alone, brings a sense of community and belonging!

2. Speaking of mental health and performance, you offer a comprehensive Guide to Conquering Anxiety on your website.  In addition to purchasing your book/course, what advice do you give soccer players who love to play but are often crippled by fear of failure? 

We have come to the realization (in hindsight after being collegiate athletes) that SO much time and effort is placed on physical readiness and fitness and so very little time is placed on the mental aspect of the game and the mental resilience of players. We wish that we had taken the time and effort to work on our stresses and anxieties when we were players because they only held us back from playing freely and becoming the best players we could be. A big part of our Guide to Conquering Anxiety is digging to the root of our fears, anxieties and raising our self-awareness so we can catch ourselves when our mindset is projecting negative thoughts so we can begin to create new habits of positive self-talk. A lot of our anxieties and fears of failure are rooted in not wanting to let OTHER people down, or wanting approval and validation from OTHERS. When we learn to shift all of those external factors, to internal factors, we become much more in control of how and what causes us stress/anxiety. Failing is a crucial part of growth and we want to embrace failure...we just have to make sure we don't define ourselves by it.

3. As all of you were college teammates at Fairfield University (Division 1 Women’s Soccer team), I am assuming weight training was part of the college soccer process. How important is strength training for soccer players, especially females? 

Weight training was a significant part of our training as collegiate athletes and back when we played, there wasn't a huge introduction of strength training prior to college. Nowadays strength training is much more widely accepted and utilized by coaches and as personal trainers and strength and conditioning coaches, we are so happy to see that. Strength training is a crucial part of physical health, preparedness and injury prevention for athletes. The forces acted upon our bodies by opponents or even from jumping and landing and changing direction, put a ton of stress on the body and leave athletes susceptible to injuries. Having a strong foundation and baseline of strength can be a game changer in producing healthier mechanics and safer movement patterns.

4. The US Women's National Team and the game in America on the women's side is clearly doing some things right. What do you feel the male players and the men's game in general in this country can learn from the female side of the game?

The US Women's National Team is an incredible example of the success that can happen when you invest in women. Women's Soccer around the world is unfortunately not as widely accepted, recognized or supported as it is in America. We are very grateful for the success of the Women's National Team here because it has given young female athletes an awesome example of success for women in sports and has inspired a lot of young players to want to pursue the sport professionally. With the USWNT and USMNT, we think there is always a lot that can be learned between the two, and the learning goes both ways. These are of course two different teams in terms of playing style and player pool. One thing we feel that has led to a lot of the USWNT success is that the team itself has a TON of depth, all the way through the bench. A lot of the time teams rely on their big star and put a lot of the potential success on the shoulders of the stand out player, but the USWNT in our opinion has a very solid spread of talent. In every game it seems that different players are stepping up and standing out, and the outcome of the game is very rarely a solo effort. In our opinion another huge reason for success of the USWNT is the attitude they have had to develop of always having to fight for what they've got. Because the growth of respect for and investment in women's soccer has historically been slower than men's, the women who play for the National team have been there from the start purely out of passion for the game. It has never been about money, because the money hasn't been there. If you ask most women's professional soccer players in this country, they have OTHER jobs to make ends meet. You have to have a serious love for the game and desire to be there if you're willing to work multiple jobs to sustain being a professional athlete. That kind of hustling and fight-for-it attitude has become a staple and tradition of the USWNT and that relentlessness has been a big determining factor in a lot of crucial games along the way.

5. If a successful coach such as Jose Mourinho or Jurgen Klopp who have predominately worked with men came to coach a woman's team for the first time, what advice would you give them? 

This is an interesting question...We're guessing the assumption here that is being posed is why is coaching males different from coaching females. We would argue coaching from any team to another takes adjustment and adaptability and the potential for success not only lies in the players on that team, but a coach's ability to tailor his or her approach to the individuality of their players. Regardless of male or female, every team has a different atmosphere, a different mix of personalities, etc. A lot of people judge coaches purely by their tactical talent and ability to organize and execute, but a lot more goes into coaching than that. Emotional intelligence and psychology plays a major role, potentially even more so in women's soccer. One of the major reasons for Mourinho's success as a coach IS his approach to individuals. He's talked about a coach needing to be much more than a coach; "a tactician, motivator, leader, methodology, psychologist" etc in order to get the maximum potential out of every player. This type of approach should honestly be applied on every team by every coach, because every team is going to have an array of personalities that we feel aren't necessarily genderized.