US Soccer, Jill Ellis announce coach mentorship program
Jill Ellis never left soccer, she just shifted focus.
The two-time World Cup-winning coach with the U.S. national team has turned her attention to making sure other women can pursue coaching careers in a sport where female coaches are rare. After Ellis stepped down as coach of the national team last year, U.S. soccer announced it would endow an annual scholarship in her name to support female candidates pursuing elite coaching licenses.
On Tuesday, U.S. Soccer also announced the SheChampions Mentorship Program, designed to support women in the two top licensing courses.
Ellis said the idea is to create a community.
“As I look back on my journey, every female coach has gone it alone, so to speak. There’s been very few opportunities to be in a room, or be on a coaching license course, with other women,” Ellis said. “So I think that the idea of this mentoring program is to create a network that naturally exists for guys — because there’s a lot more of them. It’s trying to now provide not just mentorship, but create opportunities.”
Ellis is among those who will mentor the women in the program. Others include longtime North Carolina and former national team coach Anson Dorrance and Laura Harvey, former National Women’s Soccer League coach and current youth national team coach.
The idea is to double the number of professional female coaches at the elite level in the United States.
Currently, there are only about 50 women with “A” and “Pro” level licenses.
The U.S. national team is an outlier internationally when it comes to female coaches, with three highprofile women serving in the role since the team was founded in the mid-1980s: April Heinrichs, Pia Sundhage and Ellis.
At last year’s World Cup in France, just nine of the 24 teams had a female coach. Two women, Ellis and Dutch national team coach Sarina Wiegman, faced off in the final.
FIFA, soccer’s international governing body, also has a mentorship program designed to encourage women in elite coaching careers as part of the organization’s global strategy for women’s football launched in 2018. Ellis, among 17 coaches involved in the program, has been mentoring Monica Vergara, Mexico’s under-20 women’s national team coach.