 Hey y'all welcome to this episode of Fort Worth for this episode is going to be all about sports here in Fort Worth and we're here at the game on sports arena that's on the west side of Fort Worth. Trevor Armstrong general manager and owner will be with us as well as Jason Sands with the Fort Worth Sports Commission and Jasmine Henderson y'all you have to see this interview. It was a wonderful speaking with her. She is a former professional soccer player. Now she's a motivational speaker. She also is a soccer coach and she is wonderful. So stick around and watch the rest of us and let's go. Welcome as we kick off this whole episode about sports I'm excited to be here at game on sports complex with Trevor Armstrong who's the owner general manager of game on sports complex and game on sports arena. Welcome Trevor. Thank you. Glad to have you here. This is an exciting venue. As I told you I hadn't been here yet. I've been around it and so excited to be inside of it here but tell everybody a little bit about the complex what you're doing here and how it all got started. Sure. Well the sports complex is actually our second facility. It's our newest and it opened in October of 2016 and we started game on arena sports which is about a mile north of here is an indoor soccer arena and flag football facility and we started with that that opened in 2006 and we began operating it in 2012. So we do a lot at both places. Our footprints clearly grown and our mission really is to bring fantastic facilities to Fort Worth and give every kid the opportunity to excel to their best potential. And learn skills along along the way. Sure. Yeah we our team works incredibly hard and our coaching staff has grown immensely over the years. And we used to primarily just do leagues and we've really expanded into teaching. We start with kids as young as two years old in soccer. Wow. Okay. It's a great sport to start. That's just a massive kids kicking a ball around at that point. It is. I remember my girls doing that at one point. They're like who's doing what. It's fun. My kids have done it as well and but they're learning how to move their bodies and it's a great sport to start to start to put those things together. It's a good foundational sport like we like to call it. But yeah we do we do classes for here basketball, volleyball, there's pickleball lessons. At the other facility we've got like football classes and soccer classes obviously. Right. For adults as well. Okay. All ages. All ages. Let's talk about that a little bit. You hit on the subject of sorts of why athletics is important. Why this interaction that kids have with sports. The skills they develop. Elaborate on that a little bit for our audience. What do kids learn when they go through the program? I think you learn a lot. I think we all as adults look back, well I can speak for myself. Sure. Look back and think of the lessons, a lot of those things. How to lose. How to win. How to work hard when you know if you want to be better. Not everybody gets a ribbon in life right. Everybody gets a gold trophy. There are winners and losers and those sort of lessons. Yes. You know even listening to coaches and learning all those things and it's endless. So yeah and on the health and wellness side too it's getting the kids away from the screens for a bit. It's always important. It's always important. So we want to provide every opportunity for those kids to get out here. I think participation is the number one thing here. Just getting out and participating and learning those skills, learning to act as a team. Maybe in a team sport. Absolutely. Yeah. Great point. Yeah. So yeah lots of values. We love the space that we're in and we're very passionate. Our team is like I said before super passionate about growing participation and finding new ways to keep it fun. We do that through camps and classes and running great competitive leagues and yeah we've got every level. In our leagues we've got, I'll give you one example, in our co-ed soccer leagues we have seven divisions so co-ed over 30. For what sports? What sports? Sorry this is for soccer. Soccer. Okay. Co-ed over 30. So really every level there from folks that played maybe in college to folks that maybe have never played and are interested in learning the game. But I see you've got, we're sitting right here on the basketball courts. I saw the beach volleyball courts you have outside. You talked about pickleball. What other kind of sports do you have leagues for here? Or camps? I mean let's talk about that too. Camps that you have. Sure. We run with our partners so we have a number of, it's not just game on. We are big believers in bringing the whole community together and so we've got basketball select basketball clubs. We've got club volleyball clubs. We're all partners of ours and so they all run their camps in addition to the game on staff running our camps. So all told we've got about 40 camps in the summer that we run. So our summer calendars. Soccer, basketball, are you doing pickleball camps now too since that's so popular? We have a pickleball camp. Okay. We do pickleball tournaments. Pickleball tournaments, okay. We do pick up. A lot of folks bring their friends out and play up here regularly. Yeah you even mention with the pickleball you have the police officers, the fun that's going to be here soon with their tournament as part of it. Yes, correct. Great. I appreciate you supporting them and supporting that as part of it. Absolutely. One of the questions I'd like to ask and this is a small business. I mean you might be the one but and I've created the small business task force as part of the city. Look at permitting and look at all the things that we do that make it harder for small business to open. What advice would you give to someone that's starting a business and I know this is a business been going for a long period of time but I know you probably still have hiccups and other things is what just in general what are challenges that maybe you've overcome as a small business and how would you address them? That's a good question. I think our industry is very unique. We're not a restaurant or anything like that. So for us really we were able to in the beginning start very small. We moonlighted just being honest. Right. Right. So you had another job but you're trying to set this up at the same time as I would you buy the blind light? Correct. We started with the indoor soccer. We had both my business partner and I both moonlighted and worked nights and weekends and did all that. Boots drafted to make it work. Yeah. And you hear it a lot but truly that first two, three years it's batting down the hatches and prepared to survive through those first three years and if you can do that you learn all those invaluable lessons along that way and it makes you better and stronger and sets you up for the future. Having an idea and believing in it and knowing it can succeed is part of it right? Yeah. That's a big part of it. And we've been very fortunate to have great partners. I do want to cook children's. They are a partner of our multi-sport camp and our go-tikes program which is our two-year-olds as I mentioned before to our four-year-olds so having great partners for those things as well as not being afraid to be inclusive with other folks that you might be able to collaborate with I think that's been vital to our success too. That's wonderful. Well, thank you for what you're doing. Where can people find you if they want to find you? You mentioned a couple places but where can they find you? Online. Yeah. What's that website? It's gameonfw.com. Okay. It's gameonfw.com. Okay. Fort Worth. Okay. Great. And then our beach program, you'll appreciate this, is 817 Beach. Okay. And so they can check out all of our beach volleyball programs there too. Great. Well, thanks for what you're doing. I know you're doing a lot of different things. You serve on the Camp Booth District Board. You've done a lot of different things helping this part of Fort Worth continue to thrive and grow. So, I appreciate that. Thank you for what you do. We're very passionate about Fort Worth and excited to be here. Thank you. Well, thank you. Thank you. I appreciate it. And now as we continue this episode all about sports in Fort Worth, I think it's great that I have Jason Sands, who's vice president of Visit Fort Worth and executive director of the Fort Worth Sports Commission. Welcome, Jason. Hey, great to be here. Thanks for having me. I, we've been friends for a long time. I love what you're doing of raising the level of sports, just the awareness of what's happening here in Fort Worth. So tell us a little bit about your roles with the two roles that you have and how they work together. Yeah. I'm with Visit Fort Worth. So I had up the sports team for Visit Fort Worth and over the course of the last couple of years when I started, you know, we understood that we're competing against all these cities that have a 10, 20, 30 year head start on us when it comes to creating the infrastructure needed to support these sporting events and to make them successful. So we're looking at cities like Indianapolis and Louisville and Kansas City and Houston. They're all, you know, way down the road when it comes to sports tourism. So one of the things that we decided to do was create the Fort Worth Sports Commission, which is a 501C3 that's a subsidiary of Visit Fort Worth. We've created a board of directors around that group so that way we can have community and corporate leaders involved with everything that we're doing to help elevate the city through the power of sports. We're working with our community partners to showcase all the things that make Fort Worth great, to bring in these great sporting events and to really make an impact in Fort Worth. Yeah. Let's talk about that impact. You already see this World Cup 2026 and how that's coming to the region and how we're going to support that. How, what are the other impacts of the community that you see it's making? Well, when it comes to sporting events, it's not just as simple as booking it and then saying good luck, you know, it's what we say with the sport commission is our mission is to enhance the image, economy and quality of life of the community. So we're going out there and actively trying to secure these events to bring them here. We're going out there and talking about our great venues that we have, the support system that's in place, the airport that we've got that's one of the best in the world, just all the different folks that we have that live here, the residents because they buy tickets and so on. Once we get these events, that's when the real work begins because they need that support to be successful because we can, we can get volunteers. We can roll out the red carpet. We can get great hotels for them. But if when the competition starts and there's nobody in the stands, then it seems like the city doesn't support them. So we've got to go all the way in with these folks. We've got to create marketing plans, help them sell tickets, get volunteers, create a hospitable environment. So welcome signs. Let them know that we're excited to have them here and then work with them every step of the way to make sure their events successful. And if they are successful and there's people in the stands and the athletes have a good experience and all the fans have a great time in Fort Worth, the stockyards are downtown, they're going to want to come back. And that's what we're trying to do. We're trying to have a great first impression. So they're going to want to come back to Fort Worth. Visit and do other things. Absolutely. A little bit, do you know what is the economic impact that we have right now with sports and sports tourism and forward? So when we talk about the image economy and quality of life, so I'll start with the image piece. When we're hosting these high profile events here, a lot of the times they're on television. So in the last couple of years, we've had events that are on Fox, ABC, CBS, NBC, like the network, along with ESPN and all the other sports stations. So when you're at home in California or New York, you've never heard of Fort Worth before, and you tune into the first and second rounds of the NCAA, and you see live from Fort Worth, this amazing competition, and you see images of Dickies Arena and the stockyards in our downtown. And then the next weekend, you see the Bassmaster Classic on Fox, and it's the same Dickies Arena, and you start to say, what is Fort Worth? You never heard of it. So that's one of the things that we've dealt with with Fort Worth is people haven't known. So we're trying to get that word out. That number is a little intangible. Yeah, the exposure is really priceless. And we get social media and so on, but the exposure we're bringing nationally, internationally by bringing these high profile events is huge. The economic side, this last year, we hosted about... The folks that we brought in, we're bringing hundreds of thousands of visitors to the market. They're spending about $105 million. We estimated the last year in direct spending in our hotels and our restaurants, supporting our community. And that's great because we have these outside dollars that are coming into our community and being invested. So that's huge for us. And then we're all shopping, hotel, occupancy tax, all these other things, supporting businesses. Spending money in the stockyards, because obviously the stockyards has grown a lot over the course of the last few years, coming out of COVID really. We've got some great momentum coming out of COVID. We were one of the few cities and states that were open for business, and we really capitalized on that opportunity in Fort Worth, with Dickies Arena being brand new. And we were able to bring some high profile sporting events to the community, build some good relationships, show them what our city does to support these events and help them be successful. And they're all coming back and we're riding that wave as much as we can. Fantastic, fantastic. So you and I tangentially have been working on a youth sports complex, me from the council perspective and you from the sports commission and really gathering the data on what that would look like. Let's talk a little bit about that thought process there and what we hope to see in a youth sports complex here in Fort Worth. Yes, it was almost, I started about six years ago and right over the first couple of months, we worked with the city to bring in a consultant just to analyze the facilities we have to offer. And one of the things they came back with is said that you need outdoor youth complexes and they recommended a 20 field soccer complex as you could do like football and lacrosse and other long field activities. So we've been working with the city ever since to try to find, there's a worldwide pandemic in between there. Yes. We're trying to kind of go down this road. That kind of shut down a lot of activities. There's been a lot of sidetracks, but we're on this path and for us what's important is people need to understand the power of sports and the impact it can have on our kids. We've got an obesity issue with kids across the country and one of the ways that we can combat that is to get them active, get them playing sports, get them off the couch, get them off the couch, get them off the streets and show them sports, but if there's nowhere for them to play or if their parents have to drive 30 minutes or 45 minutes to a practice or league games, youth sports has grown so much in the last 20 years but there's a lot of kids that are getting left behind. So one of the things that we're trying to work with the city on is not only just this tourism kind of tournament ready facility, but also working with the parks department in the city to identify how do we invest in this infrastructure for our kids all over the city? Because we have a pretty big city, it's very broad. So how do we kind of give our kids, because again, 85% of the kids in the Fort Worth ISD are free or reduced lunch. So their parents can't afford maybe working a couple of jobs or so on to afford the fees for sports or in the time. It's time to get them around for sure. 100%. So if we can make sports more accessible and we're doing things with the parks department right now with an after school sports program to get to break down those barriers, if we can get more kids access to sport, get more kids playing sports, get them to learn the life lessons that sports can teach them about teamwork and perseverance and the payoff of hard work, all that stuff we can do together, we'll put the city in a great position. Yeah, and I think it just gives all of those kids a different perspective, a different outlook and maybe different opportunities they didn't have before. You talked a little bit about the partnership you do have with the parks department. You want to elaborate on that? Where are those sessions happening? And what are you teaching? Well, so the after school sports program is something that Dave Lurez The direct community centers. Yeah, well, the concept is to have kids stay after school and then they can participate in what we've done is eight weeks of soccer, eight weeks of basketball and eight weeks of flag football. So one day a week they stay after school and they participate and they do a practice for their soccer and then on the weekend they do like a jamboree style games with their parents at Rolling Hill. So it's very accessible and it's close. We're in five schools right now. We had about 200 kids participate in this kind of pilot program that we're talking about right now. The parks department is really executing that with their staff and their resources. And our goal is to grow that program next year, get more schools, more kids. And again, it's just getting kids active, getting them introduced to a sport that maybe they'd never heard of or never had a chance to play before. And if we have one kid that wants to play basketball or gets that soccer bug and wants to continue on, there's opportunities for them to do that. But we just want to get kids active and work with getting our kids more access to sports. Well, I think that's wonderful. And one of the things we've talked about with this youth sports complex that's been on the table and there should be more information forthcoming soon really is no matter where it's located in the city that there's accessibility. I don't know what that looks like but bringing kids over, getting them there so they can still use those facilities. And that's something I've been also a big proponent of of that no matter where it is located because there's only so much land that we have here in the city to use that we make sure that all parts of the city have access to it in a lot of different ways. You mentioned a little bit earlier some of the programming that we've had but I think you've tracked like 75 events or something last year. Who were some of those organizations and what brought them to Fort Worth? Besides you. Well, it's a team of folks. No, it's a team of folks and we've got a fantastic team or that's one of our strengths both at Visit Fort Worth, the sports team and then the city as a whole because we rely on everybody our hotel partners, our hospitality partners as a whole but we've had some fantastic events. We have the NCAA gymnastics championships for women's that's here. We started it in 2019 and we're hosting all the way through 26 so that event's coming up in April so we've got eight of the best women's gymnastics teams coming to Fort Worth to compete for a national championship and that's televised at ABC. I went last year and saw Simone Biles before. Yes, we've had the USA gymnastics and Simone Biles coming out of the pandemic. We had the national finals rodeo where we had all the ancillary events here. We had the Olympic team trials for USA wrestling which we put together in five weeks based off some COVID issues that they had at some of their other venue. So we've had a lot of great events in. We have the PBR, we've got their world finals out of Vegas and into Fort Worth. They really just loved where the city's going and the brands really aligned together and they're one of the biggest entertainment brands in the country. So for us to be able to work with them. What happens in Vegas doesn't always stay in Vegas. There you go. I love that line, yes. So we're working with them to continue that great relationship. We've got, we just had the women's tennis association. We had some of the best tennis players in the country in the world here in Fort Worth at Dickies Arena that really Dickies Arena helped get that event. So Rocket League World Finals which is esports. Everybody talks about esports but we've really hosted some of the biggest events. We just secured Halo's national championship for next year. So Halo is one of the biggest brands in esports and we're gonna host one of their championships. Where is that being hosted? That'll be at the convention center actually. Yeah, so a little bit different setup but another cool event. And we've also made a lot of ground up with the United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee. So four years ago, five years ago when I got here we didn't have a lot of relationships with those USOPCs but coming out of COVID and our investments with USA Wrestling and USA Table Tennis we've got fantastic relationships with about 15 of them now from Table Tennis to Taekwondo. It's a fencing. We just had 2300 fencers. Youth fencers from all over the country here at the convention center. Would that be part of the Olympic trials then? They might host them here as part of that. The Olympics are coming up quickly in 24. So that's next year. So they're already kind of getting ready to position. We're talking to USA gymnastics about opportunities for next year as well. So a lot of great momentum on the USOPC front and everybody when they come here to Fort Worth they love our downtown, they love the stockyards, they love the hospitality that they encourage here and that they feel and they wanna come back and that's a great thing. We're doing our jobs. All of us. Team effort. Team effort. That's the name of sports for the most part, right? Team effort. Well, if people wanna get more information of what's coming up, where can they find you? Where can they get that information of all the things, all things sports that y'all are involved in? Yeah, if they go to our website FortWareSports.com they can see all the different opportunities there to volunteer. We always need volunteers for events. So that's one way to do it. And we've also got a youth program, a reading program that we're doing. It's called Readers Become Leaders. We do it alongside the NCAA gymnastics championships. In the last four years we've had that program where it's a 10-week program. Kids read, they log their minutes, they compete against other schools. In the last four years we've had 55,000 students read 29 million minutes. Four years is the biggest NCAA community outreach program in their history. This year we had 81 schools participate, over 40,000 kids. That's pretty much 100% usership from our schools. And right now to this point they've already read 38 million minutes. Just in five weeks. So that's another program for if anybody wants to get involved in that, we'd love to have them too. Lots of opportunities. You don't just have to know how to throw a basket or shoot a basketball, right? No, we can find a role. We have a lot of role players on our team. Great, well, Jason, thanks so much. I appreciate all you're doing to highlight this other side of Fort Worth, another aspect that makes our city great. And I appreciate all the work that you're doing and we'll keep soldiering on with everything. No, we appreciate you as well. So I appreciate it. Great to be here. Yeah, thank you. Thank you. And now I'm here with Jasmine Henderson who is a former professional soccer player and now as a motivational speaker and coach. Welcome, Jasmine. Thank you very much for having me. Of course, of course. We just had Jason Sands on this previous segment and talked about youth sports and how important that is. And I think you started playing at a relatively young age. How old were you when you started playing soccer? Yeah, I was five years old and that was my first organized sport as well. So got in very early. Got in very early. And then you played a lot of other sports that sounds like growing up. Absolutely. What else did you play? Yeah, so we grew up in a household where sports were just a thing that you did. So I ended up playing everything from softball to even bowling, basketball, volleyball, soccer and track though ended up being what I played in high school. In high school. But at some point soccer became your thing. Yes. And tell us a little bit about that journey and then playing professionally in Brazil. Absolutely. Well, it was very interesting for me and I think it impacts a lot of the way that I coach nowadays because I like to tell everybody I'm kind of a recovering perfectionist. So if you tell me something to do, I will do it almost to the letter. Yes. And so soccer was the one sport though where I just found a lot of personal freedom. It was one of the sports where it's very creative. There's not really a playbook like you would have in American football or basketball. And so I just had to learn how to risk, make mistakes, get back up, you know, all the intangible things I think that are just really amazing for youth sports in general. And so I... And for kids to learn, right? Yeah, absolutely. Is that life is gonna throw things but you gotta figure out how to get through it. You gotta figure it out. And what I think is great too, especially when it comes to a team sport like that is you learn how to become a follower, you learn how to become a leader, how to use your voice again and how to just get back up and know, okay, if we didn't win this time, what could we do better the next time? And I think that that's really what's helped me as I've shifted into the many lives that I've led, I think, throughout the years. But it just made me so passionate about soccer and I think the way that I like to lead, I think really involves all that community which was really found in soccer. So when I saw the 99 team, the USA team play with Mia Ham and Julie Fowdy, that was so impactful for me and I had this gumption and this instinct that I knew I wanted to make a difference and I thought maybe soccer could be the way that I could do it but it wasn't really until I got invited to play internationally for a tournament, the biggest youth tournament for soccer in Sweden and I was 17 years old. And my eyes were just completely open. It's literally like a mini Olympics and you see country after country, I still get goosebumps right now thinking about it just because everybody's in there, we're coming from all types of background and yet we're playing one sport. And we speak that one same language and I thought, wow, this soccer unites people, that soccer is just such an international language that I just knew from then I was like, okay, how do I do this? Right, and get paid for it. And get paid for it, yeah, yeah. Which is so funny because I look back and I went to a college prep high school actually and we had to do a research paper and they wouldn't let me do it on being a professional soccer player, which was good and hindsight, you know, but. You're already putting together a business plan. Already putting it together. And I think it was just that hope and optimism, like my parents always created an environment where it was like it doesn't matter where you come from, it matters who you are and what goals you have and just to work hard for it. So I think I just went in guns blazing just thinking, nothing's gonna stop me, I'm just gonna figure it out. Figure it out, that's a big part of it. So you grew up in Los Angeles. I did. And so how did you make your way to Fort Worth, Texas? Well, you know, I never was like, yeah, I think I'm gonna move to Fort Worth now. But it was really honestly just how everything started lining up. Again, LA is very international and to all the aspirations and where I was going with the coaching and the playing that I was doing. LA at first just seemed to be the right fit as things were kind of falling together. And then, you know, COVID happened and I LA had been changing for a long time. And even when I had my son and became a mom, I kind of was like, man, do I want to be in LA? You know, my parents did a really great job of creating a very positive bubble for us. But we always kind of felt like a square peg in a round hole to be honest. Just with some of our own just personal values in the way that we were raised in. But we are a lot of my family is actually still in LA. So you kind of stay where your family is. And both my sister and I were both single moms and we just said, you know, I think it's time just for a new adventure. Yeah, a new adventure, a new change. And it was funny though, because when we were choosing Fort Worth and not Dallas or something like that, I was trying to prepare my sister because she hadn't traveled as much as I had. And she goes, I said, yeah, you know, well, it's gonna be a little bit slower pace. It's gonna be a little bit of this, that. She goes, well, what are we? I said, girl, we city. I was like, we're a real city. But I was like, I think it's gonna be a great change of pace. And honestly, it didn't take anything, but maybe a weeks that we were here where we were just like, we made the right decisions. Well, we're happy to have you here at Fort Worth and in welcoming. And I'm glad you found a place for yourself. Tell us a day, what's a day like for you as a soccer coach, motivational speaker? What does that look like for you? Yeah, absolutely. So again, just being a mom, a priority, priority number one, yeah, he's 10. Okay, yeah, so that's what I was just about to say. Part of my day is actually homeschool with him, which is really awesome because it gives that flexibility. He was actually able to come with me to France to help set a world record as well. So just really fun stuff to be able to incorporate that. Oh, it was the biggest five aside soccer game ever. So it was literally rolling subs for about four days. Okay, explain that to our audience and to me too. Yeah, no problem. So in a typical soccer game, you have 11 versus 11, 90 minutes. That's it. Okay. In this particular challenge, it was five aside. So five people on one side, so it's a smaller game. And so rolling subs meaning you could play for an hour or like me and all my other crazy ladies, we actually played for eight hours. Eight hours. We played the longest stretch. Wow. During that time. How long did the game last? Total. Total, that's what I'm saying. Four days. Four days. Yeah, four days. So especially because it was during the Women's World Cup, we had like people from all over the world participate in this one world record. Again, just anybody, man, woman, boy, girl who just wanted to support elevating women in sports. Oh, that's amazing. So yeah, so my day starts off, you know, homeschooling him and then which works perfectly because my sister and I tag team and then I go off and I coach and it's really awesome because what I really am finding about in particular in the Fort Worth area too is just really great families and players that are really encouraged with hard work, a great work ethic, a great attitude. So it's been really fun. So I'll go and maybe I'll coach a class at the game on facility or maybe I'll be doing some technical training or coaching my own team with the club, AFC or I'll be doing private lessons. And it's a really awesome way to be able, in my style of coaching, to be able to encourage not only the technical and tactical fundamentals, but then obviously all of that emotional and encouragement, that mindset support that I think a lot of players, especially now, just really, really need and they kind of can get lost sometimes either mentally or emotionally sometimes in the game. And I think sports is such a great way to kind of build that backbone and to have experiences that make you kind of come up against yourself. And so it's just basically going one-to-no versus you every day. So it's great to be able to draw those parallels while I'm coaching. And then so any of the motivational speaking stuff, sometimes coaches will invite me out to speak to their teams or sometimes it's just that one-on-one time where I'm, I spot it because I got it. And I can help walk a player through some of those either perfectionist or achiever tendencies. Well, it's interesting you are highlighting that a little bit because I think we've seen over the last number of years some high-profile athletes that have maybe removed themself because they realized their self-care was more important. If you get into a situation, I would say we find that in every profession, right? But you think about from a professional sports aspect that it can even consume you even more, right? Because you are performing every single time someone looks at you. And so if you don't perform well and we live in this world of when lose, how does that, how do you work someone through those issues? Absolutely, well, and that's, again, that's something that I think I coach a lot because I needed it a lot as a player. And soccer was one of those things where, I mean, you will fail. There's 90 minutes in a game. You will make a mistake. And so a lot of those times it's just helping them pinpoint whatever conversation is going on in their head. Because, and we all know, like- Sometimes it's beating ourselves up, that's the worst part, right? Exactly, especially if you're, and a lot of players that play sports, they have real high-achiever personalities, like I said, perfectionist tendencies. And unfortunately, sometimes their level of achievement is equated with their self-worth, right? Or with their self-confidence, especially for girls. And so as I speak with them, I try to help them become aware of what conversation is happening in their head. So that way we can stop that track and start replacing it with something new. Because like you said, unfortunately, I think even a lot of coaches can get very wrapped up in the achievement of achieving, we've won this medal or we've won this many games. And sometimes that can be, you know, taking a toll on the player themselves and not really stopping- Eroding their self-esteem. Exactly, yeah. Self-esteem or even just checking in on them with whatever it could be going on, maybe sometimes it's their home life. For me, a lot of players definitely play to escape at times. For me, it was never really to escape, like a home life or the community. It was really just to escape myself, to be honest. And the old- Those voices rattling around your head. Exactly, exactly where it was like the one time I could just be like, shh, and just kind of live in the moment and allow myself, allow those strengths to really come through instead of focusing on the weaknesses. And I think a lot of times, even some of the women that I've spoken to who have also played nationally, professionally, or even collegiately to a high level, really just speaking to them about helping this next generation with vulnerability and not equating that to weakness. And to say, hey, like I don't have to be strong all the time, because that's literally impossible. I kind of liken to, if I have an emotion that comes in and if it feels messy, right? Like if it's whatever, loneliness or discouragement, anything like that, instead of what I used to do is just kind of build up a wall, right? Well, that wave would keep coming, I just build higher. Because I'm not supposed to feel those things, right? Well, and then to your point is I think then we see all these high-profile athletes, they've built it up so much that then it just comes in like a tidal wave, crashes and wrecks everything. And I think it would just be so much more just in a healthy situation. I think for anybody really to really learn that emotion intelligence of, hey, I can feel this emotion, don't let it sit there, but I can let it come in and I can let it go back out. And I think if there was more of that, I think that we would see not only healthier players, but just healthier society that can kind of balance both of those kind of feelings and emotions that are kind of acceptable and also the messy ones. Yeah, it's interesting in a couple of points that at church yesterday, my pastor brought up and we talked about that we are living, we live in these peaks that we think that we're always gonna live in these peaks, but there's also valleys and that's part of life. It's for the idea of failure. Failure is okay, because you learn from those lessons and you take them somewhere else with you and you understand, wait, I'm not gonna be perfect all the time, I'm not gonna win all the time. And that leads to a lot of, the father of three daughters, I want them to know you're not gonna be perfect all the time, you're not gonna look like the perfect example on TV and that's okay. Yeah, and it's absolutely okay. And if actually it is so imperative that you have failure to succeed, right? And I think a lot of, what do they say, success? It doesn't look like this, it looks like this, right? It's a mess of, like you said, peaks and valleys and I think something that I've definitely encouraged other players and even in the many peaks that I've experienced, some people would ask, well, how did you get through that valley or how did you just not stop? And I think because of that training in athletics of experiencing those peaks and valleys and I think that those valleys and even the peaks actually sets you up for bigger, higher peaks and for you to endure even lower valleys so that way, no matter what goes on in life, I've pivoted many times in my life and I think that that has a lot to do because of that mindset. And I learned resiliency, right? Yes, exactly, yeah. Interesting, so you do something very involved in gender equality, let's talk about that for just a second. Absolutely. Did you Mount Kilimanjaro, you climbed? Yes, oh my gosh. It's so funny because like I said, my highest aspiration was professional soccer which is a great aspiration, but I don't think I like the me now and the me then, I don't think that the 10 year old me would have been like, yeah, we're gonna set world records, we're gonna climb mountains. But it was just one of those things that just seemed like the next right thing to do. My professional experience in the professional environment was not that professional and I definitely just wanted it to be better for that next generation. I have a son now and one day I'm hoping I have a girl. But even with my mom, you know, my mom also has a background of playing some of my pro softball over in Germany. And so I got to see that example of athletic femininity in my mom but also got to hear some of the things that she went through, obviously had my own experiences. And so when that opportunity came around, I was just like, wow, like I thought I was gonna be able to make things better by playing professional soccer, but being able to be a part of, I mean, climbing Kilimanjaro, I mean, we had 30 women from 20 plus different countries. And so for all of us to climb this mountain, especially no cell phones, so there's all these conversations that we're having and we're just realizing how many of our experiences we're the same. And so it just really bonded us. Totally different countries. Totally different people. Totally different countries. But I often say we have more in common than we do apart. Yes. The differences. The differences, absolutely. And so I think, at least for me, I think what I really appreciated about the organization Equal Playing Field who helped set, you know, organize these world records was that it was never a men versus women issue. And I think that that's where kind of people kind of get in the tall weeds about issues for me, equality is just, hey, you have just as many strengths to add to the table as I have strengths to add to the table. And I think if we acknowledge that more, like you said, our similarities, our differences, but if we decided to like work together instead of pitting ourselves against each other, we could actually go a lot further. So when I got the call and as long as that wasn't the case, I was like, I am up for it. Even though I was like, I'm an LA girl. I've never climbed a single mountain in my life, but let's do it. Yeah, you're city. You're going out to the country. Super city. I know, going out into the country and literally just climbing. And we basically played in the crater of Mount Kilimanjaro. So it was like, almost like, Yes, 90 minutes. Yes, 90 minutes full, full game. And I'm one of the players that played the full 90 game or full 90 minutes. FIFA rules had official referees and official goals. I mean, it's incredible what they created up there. And the fact that- Was there oxygen? Do you have oxygen? Like, was there- Yeah, so honestly, we didn't know what was gonna happen. We didn't know whether we were gonna just be playing walking soccer. Or even if we, how hard it was gonna be to make it through that 90 minutes. But I can say we were definitely running. I think we just got a little sprinkle of fairy dust. And, but more of just the will of just knowing that we were all inching toward a common goal. And so because of the extreme weather, we did have quarters instead of halves. They did provide oxygen. I took one, like- Breath of it? Breath of that during the very first quarter. And I said, oh, that just threw me off. I couldn't do it. It was such a rich wealth of oxygen that I was just like, I can't. I was like, I still have so many minutes to play. I was like, it is, but it was really great though, to obviously, like I said, for all of us working toward one goal together, even though we were playing, you know, of course, both teams, we definitely wanted to win. The score was 0-0. But you could see that both of us, we still were competitive. We wanted to win. But even more so, when the game was over, the final whistle blew, we just knew that we created something unique. Yeah, of greater value. And even, I mean, gosh, that was back in 2017. But it's still something that I look back at, and I can say, wow, like, and I can still share stories. And I can still encourage other women. And there's been plenty of young girls that are like, I want to set world records too, or I want to climb too. And I mean, the truth is, male-female doesn't matter. There's, everybody's climbing a mountain. Everybody's facing something that seems impossible. And it could be a personal battle, or it could be a literal mountain that you're climbing. But I just think that visual and that metaphor of being able to climb a mountain together and to conquer the seemingly unconquerable. Right, right. And then play a little soccer when you get up there. And play some soccer, exactly. And then we, all of us, I think we still all submitted after that, which was crazy, yeah. I mean, it's not that, once you get that high, it's not that much further to go, but you know, like I said, it's just an experience that I'll have with me forever. And not just the game, but really the bonds. You know, we all call each other mountain sisters. And no matter what distance we're at, we all go back to our separate countries and are doing our stuff to further equality in our own sections, in our own communities. And in our different ways, in our different gifts. But I think there's such a sisterhood of realizing you're not the only one. Right, everybody's climbing this together. Exactly, you're not the only one facing certain challenges, but you're also not the only one fighting for it either. Right, right. Well, oh my gosh, I could talk to you for another three hours, I think. But if I want to leave a couple of tidbits of advice, you've already given Sprinkle throughout this interview. If you're talking to today's youth, thinking about sports, thinking about like next steps, thinking about what their life is gonna look like, what would you tell them? I would just encourage them to whatever sport that they're playing, I think that that's super important to just not give up, not give up in that sport to be able to take, like we were talking about, those peaks and those valleys, and for parents especially, to know that yes, while attaining those high achievements by playing collegially or professionally, that those can be very important goals, that those can be achievable goals. And I would also say that sport is just an important base that no matter who you are, it can really build those intangibles in your life, because I know there's some crazy parents everywhere, but I've definitely ran into some Texas parents and I said, okay, it's another level. And in a great way, because we all want the best for our kids, but I think sometimes we miss all those intangible things that no matter whether they go on to play at a high level at their sport or not, if we allow sport to do what it does best, which is teach us how to win, how to lose, how to make friends, how to lead, how to follow, all those different things, if we really can focus on, are you having fun? Are you giving 10 out of 10? Those are the things that they're gonna take with them forever and that is gonna help our next generation just really lead. So I'm excited to be in Texas because- We're excited to have you. I'm excited to have you here for work. Exactly and I'm excited for potentially all of my international friends that can head this way and continue to make a difference around the world. That's awesome. Thanks, Jasmine. Thanks for being here. Thank you so much. Hey y'all, I hope you enjoyed this episode of Fort Worth Forward. It was fun getting out here at a game on sports complex on the west side. I hope you enjoyed all the interviews and learned as much as I did about all the great things happening with sports here in Fort Worth. This is what I'll say, get out there, grab a ball, whatever it takes, have some fun and just enjoy life. Let's go.