Ep. 713: Climbing Kilimanjaro to Play Soccer - Laura Youngson
Adventure Sports Podcast
Curt Linville
4.6 • 580 Ratings
🗓️ 15 March 2021
⏱️ 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
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| 0:00.0 | across the world that it's interesting how similar a lot of the challenges everyone was facing to |
| 0:05.3 | greater or lesser extent and just finding that group of people and I'm realizing you're not alone |
| 0:10.5 | there are other people who are the only female coach in that area and connecting those people |
| 0:16.8 | meant so much and that's been i mean that's been one of the biggest things is creating |
| 0:21.2 | this network upon which you can call to start solving some of the challenges that you're |
| 0:25.7 | facing. |
| 0:46.3 | I'm always so fascinated by people who decide to do something about a problem they see in the world. |
| 0:50.4 | It's inspiring because so many times, I don't know about you, but for me, it's I see something, |
| 0:56.0 | I want to do something, and I don't know where to start. So I quickly forget about it. Or life just continues happening and, you know, you just move on. And it's always this pain like in |
| 1:02.1 | your chest or in the back of your head thinking like, I need to be doing more with my life. |
| 1:07.4 | Well, Laura is not one of those people like me. She decided when she saw, she was watching, |
| 1:13.6 | so let me back up, she was watching sports coverage one day. |
| 1:16.6 | And they were talking about the news through the day about in the sports world. |
| 1:20.6 | And she noticed that horses were getting more attention than women and not horse racing. |
| 1:25.4 | It was horses, like just details about the horses they were talking about them. And there was no coverage of women's sports at all, despite tons of events happening that day. And Laura was frustrated about it, you know. And so she decided to do something about it. And the next step she took was a lot like the same steps we take in the adventure world. And when it comes to doing something, it's, we jump on Google Maps because that's where, that's where a lot of our adventures begin is at Google Maps, at least for me. And so what she, what she saw was on Mount Kilimanjaro, there was room to put her soccer goal at the top, plenty of room, right near the top. And she said, what if we got women from around the world to play an international game of soccer |
| 2:03.6 | at the top of Kilimanjaro? |
| 2:05.6 | And this is not kicking a ball around for half an hour and then calling it a day. |
| 2:10.6 | This is official soccer game with referees carrying, you know, got to get goals up to the top, |
| 2:16.6 | you know, official regulation goals, regulation to the top, you know, official regulation |
| 2:18.2 | goals, regulation size field, jerseys, all that jazz. |
| 2:22.8 | And that's exactly what they did. |
| 2:24.6 | They took a team of people along with all the women from all over the world and played |
... |
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