WOMEN IN THE WPSL: A 27-YEAR COMMITMENT TO CHANGING THE GAME FOR THE NEXT GENERATION

WPSL Communications

As the WPSL enters its 27th season, it celebrates the people and events that shaped the league, making it the longest-running women’s soccer league in North America, and the largest women’s soccer league in the world. 

 

From its humble beginnings in 1998 to now, the league has evolved into a juggernaut in women’s sports, on the field and off. This year, the WPSL sees a record number of women-owned, women-led, and women-coached teams.

 

“The league has grown so much from when I started as a player,” says WPSL Commissioner, Kendra Halterman, who has been with the league in one capacity or another almost from its founding in 1998. Named WPSL Commissioner in 2023 after stints in the league as a conference delegate and associate commissioner, Halterman is the third person to hold the vaunted position, and the first woman. 

 

Halterman was fresh out of high school when she made her first appearance as a player in 2000 with the Utah Spiders — one of the first two expansion teams from outside the California state lines, along with the Vancouver (British Columbia) Angels that joined the league that year. There isn’t a hat Halterman hasn’t worn since first joining the league that watershed year: player, coach, manager, and team owner. 

 

“We’ve seen some incredible progress over the years, including a record number of female league staff members, women’s owned teams, coaches, referees, and women leading their clubs at every level,” she says. 

 

Despite the great progress the WPSL and women’s soccer in general has made over the years, it is widely agreed that there is still a long way to go until women have equal footing within their own game. “We are still not there,” says San Francisco Nighthawks General Manager, Jill Lounsbury.

 

Lounsbury was already entrenched in the Nighthawks organization when it joined the WPSL in 1998, and she has seen the league and the women’s game grow exponentially over these last 27 years. The Nighthawks are one of the record-high number of  women-owned teams in the league this year. Lounsbury started with the club as a volunteer, lending a hand in wherever it was needed, and still does today. “I put on whatever hat is needed to help our players,” she says. 

 

Lounsbury says she got to where she is today, running one of two of the founding WPSL clubs, because of her belief in herself and in the organization’s vision. “More than anything, you have to advocate for yourself and your vision. Never take ‘no’ for an answer,” she says. “Don’t wait for someone else to give you an opportunity. Make the opportunity happen for yourself.”

 

Women’s soccer pioneers like Lounsbury paved the way for the next generation of women leaders in the game like Lindsay Eversmeyer and Gretchen Hammel, who each ran teams of their own before ascending to positions in the WPSL league office, proudly, even defiantly, paving the way for the next generation leaders in women’s soccer. 

 

A product of the hallowed St. Louis soccer scene, Eversmeyer was a youth and collegiate standout before earning the distinction of being the first woman to earn a contract to play in the Major Indoor Soccer League. After transitioning to the coaching ranks, she owned and was head coach of the WPSL team, Fire & Ice, winning Heartland Conference championships in 2013, 2017, and 2018; Central Region titles in 2013 and 2017, and the WPSL National Championship in 2017. Eversmeyer also earned three conference Coach of the Year nods before being named WPSL Associate Commissioner, overseeing the Central Region, in 2022. Along with her WPSL duties, Eversmeyer serves as the on-field Match Day Analyst for St. Louis City SC of Major League Soccer, and for the past three years has coached the men’s team at Southwestern Illinois College. 

 

Eversmeyer has broken barriers—particularly those based on gender—throughout her career. She sees it as part of the passing of the baton to the next generation. 

 

“We are breaking barriers so they don’t have to,” she says. “In soccer, we are now coaching men. We are coaching our country’s National Teams. We are President of U.S. Soccer. It’s important that we keep shattering those glass ceilings so the next generation doesn't have to.”

 

Eversmeyer’s advice for those climbing the ladder behind her is to challenge people’s assumptions of them. “I ignored all the haters and decided to focus on what I was passionate about, developing and guiding the next generation,” she says. “It's imperative that these young girls today have strong role models to look up to and aspire to leadership roles, paving the way for a more equitable future.” 

 

Like Eversmeyer, Hammel  came in owning and coaching successful WPSL teams. Her first introduction to the league came as a player, making her WPSL debut for Chattanooga Football Club in 2014. The following year, along with her responsibilities on the field, she began to work behind the scenes. She was general manager of the club when it earned WPSL Franchise of the Year honors in 2018. The following year, Hammel launched Chattanooga Lady Red Wolves SC, where she served as owner and general manger through 2022, winning the Southeast Conference in the club’s debit season. 

 

“There has been real progress made for female GMs, owners, and coaches over the last few years, because we are representing a women’s product,” Hammel says. “It’s incredibly valuable to have women making decisions for women.” 

 

Now an Associate Commissioner for the WPSL, Hammel oversees the South Region, where the many lessons she learned over the years as a player, coach, general manager, and team owner are put into play as she helps coaches and team administrators prepare for the 2025 season. 

 

“I’ve done what they are doing. I understand the challenges they are facing, particularly the women in those positions. Women’s soccer is still a male-dominated field. At every step I had to prove that I was qualified, that I belonged in those positions,” Hammel said. “Seeing the value of women in women’s sports is important for the next generation of the game’s leaders coming up behind us. That they see women in these roles now, so they can take those next steps.”

 

Five-time WPSL Champion, California Storm Executive Director, and former head coach, Jamie Levoy, has relished the shift in women’s sports, and women’s soccer in particular.

 

“The landscape is definitely changing,” she says. Levoy started out as a volunteer with the club that has been home to some of the most iconic names in the women’s game, putting in shifts in the concession stand before she found a place on the technical staff of one of the true pioneers in women’s soccer, Jerry Zanelli. 

 

Tired of the inadequacies and inequalities women’s soccer teams faced, Zanelli founded the WPSL to provide more and better opportunities for women in the game. 

 

“Probably the most important thing I learned from him was not to take ‘no’ for an answer,” Levoy says. “He was always going to find a way to move the women’s game forward.” 

 

By the time Zanelli’s health began to decline, Levoy was his trusted deputy. She took over as head coach, executive director, and advocate of the women’s game. As head coach, she won WPSL titles in 2022 and 2024, making the Storm one of the most respected and emulated programs in the country. 

 

“Even after everything we have done, there are still prejudices. You just have to push through it. You have to keep going after what you deserve, so we can create more opportunities, not just now, but for those who come after you.”

 

Erin Webb is part of the next generation of team owners now making waves in the WPSL. She is part of a five-women group that founded Austin Rise FC three years ago. Since joining the league, the Rise quickly became one of the league’s cornerstone clubs, winning the Lone Star Conference and advancing to the South Region Final in just the club’s second year, falling to 2023 WPSL National Champions and 2024 WPSL national runner-up, Charlotte Eagles.

 

The club is the brainchild of Webb, Amanda Lisberger, Rachelle D’Amico, Bethany Cyrtmus-Davaul, Katie Reed, and Christiane Lessa, all of whom learned valuable lessons from their involvement with prior clubs. 

 

“We came together and said, let’s do this, but make it a much better experience than we’ve had in the past. We learned from others’ mistakes,” Webb says. “We came in with an understanding of how the experience should be. From the start we’ve worked hard to make it as professional as possible. 

 

Webb says the Rise will work tirelessly to continue to set the standard for women’s soccer in the Southwest, and in the country. The club has already signed a letter of interest to play in the WPSL PRO when it launches next year, and the club has entered a team in The Soccer Tournament this summer, a seven-a side tournament, with the winners grabbing a million-dollar first prize along with international acclaim, which Webb notes would be vital as they build towards the future. 

 

“Our goal is to continue to grow women’s soccer,” Webb says. “The sport is growing. To have women in leadership roles is so important: the CEOs, the marketing people, the people writing the books, handling the budget. These types of leaps and risks that we’re taking are for women, by women, so the next generation can come and build on what we’ve done.”