Ep. 1023: Playing Soccer on Kilimanjaro - Revisited - Laura Youngson
Adventure Sports Podcast
Curt Linville
4.6 • 579 Ratings
🗓️ 18 April 2024
⏱️ 41 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Back in 2017 while sitting on the couch and watching sports news coverage, Laura noticed the dismal amount of time dedicated to women’s sports. What struck her the most was “the fact that there are more stories about horses than women in the sports pages”. Being a proficient soccer player herself and experiencing the frustrations of minimal coverage and a general lack of opportunities, she decided to do something about it.
A quick Google Maps search and a few emails later, Laura devised a plan to elevate women’s sports higher than it has ever gone, literally. The idea was to gather a group of women to climb Mt. Kilimanjaro and play an official game of soccer near the summit.
The journey became a gathering of 60 women from around the world with referees, goals, etc. all climbing above 18,000 ft. to play a soccer game. Their efforts stand as a Guinness World Record, a testament to their dedication to raising the coverage and opportunity for women in sports, and was the genesis of Equal Playing Field, a non-profit Laura co-founded.
After the success of climbing Kilimanjaro, Laura continued to chase Guinness World Record soccer matches to raise awareness for women in sports and show the world women can do anything. The lowest elevation soccer game was played at the Dead Sea in 2018, and two world records were achieved in France thereafter for the most nationalities represented in a soccer game.
The long-term action Laura has taken is through her startup, Ida Sports, which is aiming to create a soccer boot specific to women, something that has never been done successfully, but something needed due to fundamental differences in men's and women’s feet.
If you learn anything from Laura, it’s that you shouldn’t be afraid of going down a path no one has ever gone before, especially if a better world is on the other side.
To learn more about Laura and her work:
Equalplayingfield.com @equalplayingfieldinitiative
Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands
Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Hey folks, welcome to the Adventure Sports podcast. |
| 0:09.0 | I'm your host, Mason. |
| 0:11.0 | Today we're talking about, we're throwing it back to 2021 with Laura Youngson, talking about this idea of addressing the lack of media coverage and a lack of specificity and innovation that goes into women's sports a lot of times. |
| 0:26.7 | If you at all follow college basketball or even professional basketball now, you'll know that women's professional and college basketball had a heck of a year, a heck of a moment. |
| 0:39.1 | In fact, the women's national championship had more viewers, higher ratings than the men's, |
| 0:45.2 | first time ever in college basketball history. |
| 0:48.5 | And I watched that game. |
| 0:49.8 | It was really freaking entertaining. |
| 0:52.4 | And it's cool to see that shift because historically it's like, |
| 0:56.7 | well, this isn't viable just because women can't dunk. It's not as athletic or it's not as |
| 1:01.3 | dramatic. They're not as tall, all that stuff. But good basketball is good basketball. Anyway, |
| 1:07.1 | that ties into today's episode because Laura saw that same thing with women's soccer. |
| 1:13.3 | She saw that the gear was just the men's gear, |
| 1:15.9 | just turned pink and a little smaller, |
| 1:19.3 | but she knew that a lot more innovation needed to happen. |
| 1:21.4 | So in order to address this challenge |
| 1:24.1 | and make women's specific soccer cleats, |
| 1:27.2 | she decided to climb Mount Kilimanjaro and play a game of soccer |
| 1:31.2 | with a whole team of international women on top of the mountain, which is just a crazy idea. I love it. |
| 1:37.6 | I think it's so cool to launch this whole idea called Ida Sports, and it's going strong. It's for sale and distributed all over the |
| 1:45.1 | U.S. I've seen it everywhere. And it was pretty cool to be able to talk to Laura a few years ago |
| 1:50.4 | when this was all really getting going and getting started. And what I love about this story is |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Curt Linville, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Curt Linville and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.