Player Profile | Jacqui Hannon, USA

We are proud to welcome Jacqui Hannon from Connecticut, USA to the squad – she is an elementary grade teacher hoping to inspire her children to pursue their passions and stand up for causes they believe in. A former top flight athlete she tells us here why she is joining the Mt Kilimanjaor climb

If you would like to help Jacqui be an inspiration to her students, please support her here: https://www.gofundme.com/equalplayingfield Jacqui is also raising funds to cover players in the Equal Playing Field squad who are unable to raise funds to travel.

I grew up in Woodbury, a small town in Connecticut. Before I could even walk, my sister Liz, who is 11 years older than me, held my hands and helped me to kick a soccer ball around the house. When I was younger, I always wanted to do exactly what Liz was doing. Because she played soccer, so did I. Liz is one of the strongest women that I know. So, for me to be good at soccer, was to be as strong as she was. My love for soccer started with my sister but it soon took on its own meaning in my life.

Soccer was one of the first sports that I learned to play and I was a decent player because was naturally very fast. Growing up I was constantly racing the boys. At high school, I would stay after practice and race the members of the boys’ soccer team. It was always so funny to see the looks on their faces when I beat them! I played competitively up through high school but switched to track as a top flight athlete for Boston College. But even though I was dedicating myself to a new sport, soccer has always meant more to me.

It was while I was at Boston College that I began to realize that the playing field was not equal. I witnessed teammates and fellow female athletes struggle to master their sport and battle with the idea of femininity. I, and all of my teammates struggled to excel at our sport while maintaining high self-esteem and a positive body image.

The way that women are portrayed in the media makes it difficult for athletic girls to feel beautiful. The media is so much more likely to focus on a female athlete’s appearance than a male athlete. Soccer taught me how to loose with humility, work as a member of a team, lead my peers, and have confidence in myself.  Sport has also helped me to view myself as strong and be happy with being strong. I am taking on this challenge to prove to others that being strong is feminine and beautiful!

At this time in my life, equality means that no matter what your race, gender, status or background you are able to achieve at the same level as those who are of equal skills as you. Now I am an elementary school teacher with the goal of becoming a youth soccer coach. I involve my students in the journey up Mount Kilimanjaro and hope to open up their minds to the inequalities that exist in our society. I hope that I can show them that they can stand up for a cause they believe in, that they can make a difference and that they will obtain careers based upon their skills and not their backgrounds. I especially hope to empower the young girls I teach and coach to be strong and confident in themselves.

It is my hope that the students that I will teach and coach from here on will learn from my journey and realize that their actions and voices matter. My goal is to empower my students and fellow educators to pursue their passions - and to believe that to be feminine is to be strong.

Help Jacqui get to the top! Support her and her teammates here: https://www.gofundme.com/equalplayingfield

Player Profile | Josefina Martorell, Argentina

Meet Josefina Martorell from Buenos Aires in Argentina. At the age of fifteen she was playing football professionally and since then has played in many different countries, from the US to Congo to Niger to Spain to Afghanistan - wherever she was living at the time. She is part of an organisation called Futbol Militante, where women occupy public spaces usually reserved for men, to play football. They have football programmes in place for boys and girls as young as 3!

I grew up in Buenos Aires, the capital city of Argentina. I had a very happy childhood playing lots of sports, always encouraged by my parents. My father would always ask me how many goals I scored at a tournament or at a game. If I said “four” he’d ask “why not five??”. It became a bit of a joke between us.

But even though girls are encouraged to play sports here when they are young, that falls away when they get older. When I grew a bit older the boys started calling me “marimacho” (tomboy). It made me stop playing with them - but it didn’t stop me playing.

I play football because I wouldn’t be myself if I wasn’t.

Equality is a very big question in an undefined time. Sport helps - in some way - tear down the walls of current social norms. Sport helps strengthen women and girls' self-esteem and helps challenge gender stereotypes that still block women from participating fully in social, professional and public life. Being naive I have the hope that we will soon reach equality in legal, economic, social and cultural terms, but being more realistic I simply hope that in Argentina, the levels of domestic violence decline; a woman is murdered every thirty hours here.

When I was nineteen I went travelling by myself across South America.  It was then that I realised my gender carried specific dangers – dangers to my life and dangers to my body. One particularly bad, dangerous experience happened with a man I met by chance. It was an experience unfortunately shared by many of my female friends so I didn’t make much of it. Years later I lived in the Democratic Republic of Congo where women experience many daily threats and fears; about 48 women are raped in DRC every hour. I realised that despite our cultural differences, as women, we shared specific experiences that made me feel close to them.

Climbing this mountain means a lot to me. Climbing this mountain represents the long struggle of women to realise their goals. Sports help make the fight for women’s empowerment a reality – if they can participate in sport, they can participate in any sphere of life they choose. I want to push myself beyond new boundaries – if I can accomplish this feat, it means I can accomplish many important things with my life.

Football plays a very important role in my life.  Through football I met some of my best friends and I even met my partner. I cannot imagine myself away from football for a long time. If a ball is rolling I am down for another match!

Do you want to sponsor Josefina and help her break a world record? Sponsor her here:

https://www.justgiving.com/crowdfunding/Josefina-Mount-Kili?utm_id=107&utm_term=YQ9bMKBW8

Player Profile | Introducing Esraa Awad, Egypt

Esraa joins the Equal Playing Field squad from Egypt. Esraa has played professionally since the age of 15 and was named Egyptian Footballer of the Year in 2010 with four Premier League titles under her belt. She has represented Egypt at the national level and participated in the African Cup of Nations last year. Here she tells us why she’s still fighting to level the playing field.

Want to help Esraa break a world record? Sponsor her here: https://www.gofundme.com/equal-playing-field-kilimanjaro

I was born and raised in Kuwait and was only 4 years old when I started to play football. When I was 12 I captained the boys football team - which was not easy. The boys on the team did not like a girl captaining the team. They only accepted me when I proved myself to be one of the best. I learned from a very young age that I will face a lot of obstacles being a girl - a girl who not only plays football, but a girl who actually plays better than a lot of boys too. But this just gave me more strength to carry on and made me understand that if I do not believe in myself than no one will.

I often see comments on social media telling me to “'go back to the kitchen". Everyone is starting to wonder when I will get married. Nine times out of ten interviewers will ask me if I’m not married because I play football.

“Football is my passion. When I play, I feel free and that there are no limits. ”

The first time I played for the national team I felt like I was on the top of the world. It was something I dreamed of since I was 8 years old - a dream come true for me. My family was so proud and from that moment on football (for them and for me) went to a whole new level. We have many years of frustration because as a national team we haven't achieved much yet, but the highlight of my career was beating the Ivory Coast and qualifying for the African Cup of Nations for the first time in 18 years. Years of fighting finally paid off.

“Playing football as a Middle Eastern woman is - in and of itself - an act of advocacy”.

The key to making changes possible is for all women to fight for the same goal and not give up. One day, there will be equality. My family has always been very supportive. My father and my older brother were always proud of me and how talented I was and helped me get better. My sisters and my mother were also very supportive and are incredible advocates for women’s rights themselves.  I am climbing to honor the memory of my late sister, Nouran. She passed away just a couple of months ago. She always believed in me, and always encouraged me. My mother brought us up to make the best out of anything that comes our way and after this tragedy, I have made the choice to come out of this  as a stronger woman and a better human being. Climbing this mountain with other exceptional women will be a stepping stone in recovering from my grief.

Want to help Esraa break a world record? Sponsor her here: https://www.gofundme.com/equal-playing-field-kilimanjaro

Welcome to the team!

One of the first players to join our team is Zahra Mahmoodi from Afghanistan. Zahra became the captain for the National team and has played in many national and international games. She was the first female in Afghanistan to become a FIFA-licenced coach and founded the under-14 girls' national team. In her efforts to bring more attention to female sports players, she met with John Kerry and later received Muhammad Ali's humanitarian Award. 

Zahra is a fantastic inspiration to women players everywhere and we're really excited to have her on the team!