It was the last clear blue day before Canadian wildfire smoke blanketed New York City. At Hinton Park in Corona, Queens, girls dribbled and defended across the turf while mothers caught up on the sidelines. It was the first practice of the season for youth development nonprofit Iconic Sports Lab’s girls soccer league.
Melissa Otero was keeping an eye on both her youngest and eldest daughters on opposite sides of the pitch. Her 7-year-old was trying organized soccer for the first time. Her 15-year-old, Naiyah, had been playing for years, inspired by watching Gotham FC with a cousin.
“I saw girls who looked like me and I was like, ‘You know, that could be me one day,’” Naiyah said. Her father had always warned her that prejudice would make life harder for brown-skinned girls like her, an observation she said stayed with her. “So seeing them on the field,” she said of Gotham FC’s nonwhite players, “that’s really big.”
That sense of representation is a core part of why Iconic Sports Lab launched a girls league. Executive director Yokasta Espaillat said that while coed leagues have their place, she saw girls’ confidence grow when they had a space of their own.
“They’re not as afraid of taking risks or making a mistake or feeling intimidated that someone might call them out,” she said. “It really creates the freedom to be themselves.”
A leg up for Latinas in soccer
Women’s soccer has grown rapidly in recent years. The 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup became one of the most-watched women’s sporting events in history. And next year’s FIFA Women’s World Cup, which will take place in Brazil, is set to meet that mark or more.
While soccer for girls and women is thriving, there’s been less progress in involving members of minority groups. Experts say organizations such as Iconic Sports Lab can help close that gap by creating affordable, welcoming places for girls to play in neighborhoods with fewer opportunities than many suburban communities.
The nonprofit launched the girls league last year after co-founder Steve Espaillat noticed the organization’s coed teams often competed against opponents with few girls. The inaugural season drew about 100 players, many of them Latina.
Some of the roughly 150 girls at last week’s practice had already come through the organization’s coed Just Ball League, a U.S. Soccer Foundation and Adidas partnership that removes financial barriers through free registration and transportation.
The Iconic Girls league now spans three divisions, from kindergarten through high school, and aims to prepare players for academies and college soccer.
The invisible barriers to access
Experts say a lack of access to supportive environments where girls can play at different levels is a major structural issue. For caregivers, obstacles include cost, transportation and the kind of scheduling conflicts that are particularly acute for many working-class immigrant parents.
“Economic barriers are huge,” said Melody Alanis, an assistant professor of recreation, sport and tourism management at the University of Idaho. She added that uniforms, registration fees and transportation can quickly become unaffordable.
Family support is also key for Latina athletes, said Alanis, who found that having relatives show up to games helps some Latinas stay in the sport. At the same time, coaches shouldn’t assume Latina athletes’ families don’t value sports when they miss games, often because of work obligations, according to Vera Lopez, a women’s and gender studies professor at Arizona State University.
She found that some coaches she interviewed compared Latina parents’ involvement in sports with the participation rates of middle-class families, without taking into account the additional difficulties immigrant and lower-income families might face. “In other words, let’s blame girls, let’s blame families and let’s blame culture,” Lopez said. “I think that’s too simplistic.”
Bilingual coaches who understand families’ lived experiences can help overcome such barriers. In her research on Mexican American teens in the Southwest, Lopez found that coaches who spoke Spanish were more likely to be trusted by parents to drop off or pick up their daughters. Coaches also built trust through cultural understanding, such as recognizing milestones like quinceañeras and planning around them, rather than treating all missed practices as a lack of commitment.
Living the dream through the next generation
Iconic Sports Lab’s staff members are all bilingual and bicultural. Like many of their program participants, co-founders Steve and Yokasta Espaillat both grew up in Queens — Steve in Corona and Yokasta in Sunnyside — and attended Newtown High School in Elmhurst. Yokasta also grew up attending softball games with family in Corona.
Their experiences also shape how they approach creating opportunities for girls. When Yokasta, who is also a physical therapist, was growing up, she didn’t see athletics as a pathway for her. Sports weren’t necessarily something encouraged in her Dominican family, and she didn’t view herself as someone who belonged in that field. Looking back now, she sees her competitive nature and wonders what might have been if she’d had the chance to play team sports.
“There were teams and whatnot, but if you grow up with a sense of, ‘That’s not necessarily the space for me,’ you don’t see yourself that way,” she said. “You have to see it to believe that you can do it.”
Her story now drives Yokasta’s efforts to help girls see themselves as athletes. It’s a vision that extends beyond her own daughters and her niece, who were helping at the registration table during that afternoon’s practice and have all played team sports.
Other mothers at Hinton Park also saw the league as an opportunity to give their daughters something they never had. Otero, who is Puerto Rican, exchanged a knowing smile with her daughter as she spoke about wishing she had played sports growing up, before responsibilities made it more difficult. She and Naiyah’s father encouraged their daughter to try activities Otero had no access to, starting with karate (which Naiyah’s father practiced) at age 4.
Olga Valarezo, who alternated between cheering and coaching her 10-year-old daughter from beneath a parasol on the sidelines, said that if she had had the opportunity to start playing soccer at her daughter’s age, she might have earned a college scholarship. That could have opened a pathway for her to attend a college farther from home than Baruch College, where she studied.
As far as Valarezo recalls, there was no girls’ soccer program in Forest Hills until she reached high school. She started playing soccer there as a way to cross-train for volleyball, which she had taken up in junior high because her friends played.
For many of the teen Latina athletes interviewed by Lopez, the Arizona State University researcher, questions of belonging often stem from messages they receive from coaches, peers, school policies and popular media. Those messages can leave girls feeling self-conscious about their bodies, believing they are either too big or too small to look like athletes.
Valarezo said her own experience was different: Encouraged by friends, she tried volleyball, basketball and soccer, eventually finding soccer a better fit for her smaller frame. Now, she wants her daughter to start young to stay healthy.
According to Alanis, the University of Idaho researcher, starting early also offers a more lasting benefit: “You’re able to find your sense of belonging and hopefully increase your confidence,” she said. “Playing sports is beautiful because hopefully you’re trying to communicate within the team. You’re learning to talk to different people from different cultures.”
