April 15th

Friday, April 15th

Today was a super exciting day for my project, because I did my first interview! Although I expected to interview Blakely Mattern today, something came up and we moved her interview to Monday. I was disappointed at first, because I didn't think I'd have anyone to interview, but then luckily I got an email from Mary McVeigh, the woman who works at Soccer Without Borders. She said she'd be willing to talk to me today at 1 if that was okay, and I decided to take her up on it. I was pretty nervous before the interview, because I didn't know how it was going to go since it was over the phone. However, it ended up being a great interview.

Mary had some extremely interesting statistics about the percentage of men who play soccer compared to the percentage of women who play soccer in several countries. Additionally, she has tons of experience seeing how the game of soccer empowers girls, and she's a huge advocate for equal opportunity for women in soccer. She believes that in order for women to get more opportunity in soccer, social norms and perceptions have to change, and the governing bodies of soccer need to do a better job promoting and producing revenue for their women's side. Mary had some very good stories to tell about how the girls she coached in Nicaragua couldn't even name one female soccer player. She said she believes that having women's soccer players as role models for girls around the world would be extremely valuable to the development and growth of young girls, but female soccer players just don't get enough exposure in the media. She gave me a lot more interesting information, and we had a great conversation. I'm excited to start editing this interview and see how the rest of the interviews fit into it!