By: Yi Qi
The summer is a busy time for Julie Foudy. The five-day camp hosted by Julie Foudy to bring girls from all over the world, ages 12 to 18, together at Peddie School to play and learn sports.
Julie Foudy was a female soccer player that was the captain of the U.S. Women’s National Team and joined ESPN in 2005 as women’s soccer and played in the FIFA World Cup which is like the soccer finals. Sports are about learning things about how to be a good teammate, how to work with a group, and how to deal with hard times – all these things that will help you no matter what you do in life.
Julie founded the Julie Foudy girls camp which first took place in 2006. She just recently hosted a 5-day camp that allowed teenage girls to play and learn life, how to be a leader or just a better person.
“We started the leadership academy for girls because we felt like there needed to be more discussion within sports about how sports shape you as a person, and be more overt about the leadership qualities learned from just playing sports,” Foudy said. “Plus, we really wanted to create a fun, positive, empowering environment where the girls walked away knowing they could be leaders in their community.”
The reason she decided to start this was for the chance to help young athletes improve. Since she attended the FIFA world cup she decided to pass on a chance of more of them becoming pros and play in the USWNT (United States When National Team).
“The main thing I learned here is how do we learn things over here, and take the things to give back to our communities,” said Kalpana Bastola, a soccer player from Nepal. “I’m going to give back to my community whatever I learned here.”
Julie Foudy is teaching teenage girls to help them get a taste in sports. Hopefully her work pays off!!!
Links:
julhttps://www.juliefoudyleadership.com/about-the-academy