On this week’s episode of She Thinks, we consider what it means to be an authentic female athlete. With the fight to protect women’s rights in sports, it has never been more important to look at how we can positively impact the culture of female athletics and preserve equal opportunity. Samantha Kelley joins to talk about the unique challenges that women face and what true femininity in sports looks like.
Samantha Kelley is the Founder & President of FIERCE Athlete, Inc. and a former Division I soccer player for UConn. After college, she worked with student-athletes for five years through FOCUS and Varsity Catholic. She currently holds a master’s in Catholic Psychology from Divine Mercy University and is pursuing a Theology of the Body teaching certification through the Theology of the Body Institute.
TRANSCRIPT
Beverly Hallberg:
And welcome to She Thinks, a podcast where you’re allowed to think for yourself. I’m your host, Beverly Hallberg, and on today’s episode, we look at what it means to be an authentic female athlete. With the fight to protect women’s rights in sports, it’s perhaps never been more important to look at how we can positively impact the culture of female athletics and preserve equal opportunity. So we’re going to talk about the unique challenges that women face and what true femininity in sports looks like, and we have a wonderful guest to break it all down, Samantha Kelley joins us. Samantha Kelley is the founder and president of FIERCE Athlete Inc. And she is also a former Division One soccer player for UConn. After college, she worked with student athletes for five years through Focus and Varsity Catholic. Samantha, thank you so much for joining us today.
Samantha Kelley:
Yeah, thanks for having me, Beverly.
Beverly Hallberg:
So as I just mentioned, you’re a former Division One soccer player for UConn. Did you ever think that female athletes would have to face competition against men?
Samantha Kelley:
No, definitely not.
Beverly Hallberg:
And so what do you make of the fight that we are seeing? Of course, Riley Gaines is the woman that is leading the charge. She works with IWF. We’re so proud of her. What do you make of this situation that so many female athletes find themselves in, and does it surprise you?
Samantha Kelley:
If you had asked me when I was playing college sports 12 years ago, it would’ve surprised me. Unfortunately, being involved in the area of women’s sports, the areas of femininity and all the craziness we have going on, I’ve seen this coming for probably about four or five years. My hope was that sport would be a natural end because people are finally having to wake up to the biological differences between men and women. But unfortunately in the process, a lot of women are getting hurt. A lot of women are feeling like they don’t matter. I was just talking with a 15 year old basketball player about this topic, and this is a popular topic amongst female athletes, we talk about it a lot. And this 15 year old said to me, “It just makes me feel like I don’t matter.” And I’m like, “That’s the exact opposite goal of sport.” And so, it is a sad reality, but we have great women like Riley speaking out on this. I do a fair amount of speaking out on it as well. So I think there is hope.
Beverly Hallberg:
So when you spoke to that young woman and she said that it makes her feel like she doesn’t matter, what is it about the competition, the unfairness of having to compete with men, why does that make a woman feel like she doesn’t matter?
Samantha Kelley:
I mean, from a young age, I had a goal to play Division One soccer, and I worked and sacrificed so much to get there. And this girl, this 15 year old, is a very competitive basketball player. She wants to play D One. She’s working hard. Most of her life is spent training for this goal. And when somebody is allowed, based off how they feel, to step in, not have to work as hard and just have an advantage, that makes us feel like all our effort doesn’t matter. People don’t care. Yeah, it’s degrading.
Beverly Hallberg:
And I was hoping you could also touch on, too, what sports means to you and also to other women that you’ve competed with and maybe even against. I think sometimes people mistakenly think of, oh, it’s a fun hobby that women can do on the side, but unless you, maybe tennis player like Serena Williams, you really can’t make a career out of it. What did competing mean for you? There’s the mental side in how one views themselves as we just discussed, but also just opportunities in your career in the future. What does women’s sports mean for women?
Samantha Kelley:
I mean, it’s a tremendous opportunity for growth. I mean, you look at, the majority of CEOs today are former college athletes. So there’s something in just the natural virtue and character that you learn through sport that helps you learn how to work on a team. It helps you with your confidence. It helps you navigate conflict. It really empowers you. I think sport, for me, it taught conflict management, it taught me that I can do hard things and taught me how to endure suffering of injury, taught me how to get along with people that were very different from myself, and those are lessons and things that I use today. And then beyond that, it gave me an opportunity to go to a prestigious university and earn a degree and get that paid for. And so it set me up for a lifelong career too.
Beverly Hallberg:
And are you concerned that if we continue to see men competing against women in sports, that a lot of women are going to lose out on scholarships, for example? I’ve thought about young women who maybe don’t come from a background with a lot of money. Is this going to prevent them from being able to get a college education, just like you said, you had college paid for. Are you worried about that aspect, the scholarship aspect?
Samantha Kelley:
I mean, that’s definitely a factor in all of this. That financial damage. I think the emotional damage is almost worse, the opportunity damage. So yeah, it’s definitely a concern.
Beverly Hallberg:
Well, I think it’s awesome that you have devoted a career to still help women in sports. You’ve started an organization called FIERCE Athlete. Tell us a little bit about it and why you started it.
Samantha Kelley:
So our mission is to promote true identity and femininity in female athletics. Obviously, I was a Division One athlete and then spent years after college working at the University of Texas and at various universities across the country, mentoring female athletes. And what I realize is the struggles that women go through in sport are a little bit different than men. There is just the very natural pressure, and that’s only increased in today’s age with this issue but with also all the now college athletes can get “sponsors” and all the social media and media presence, there’s just a lot of pressure on women to perform. They’re really under a microscope and so I saw this pressure, but then I saw a lot of the unhealthy ways that women are trying to deal with that pressure. There’s a lot of body image issues and eating disorders. There’s a lot of mental health issues. There’s a lot of acting out in pretty unhealthy ways. And so I started FIERCE as really an answer to that, as a place where we could talk to women about their inherent dignity.
They’re not just good because they’re good at a sport, they just are, they just are good, but also help them with, I have a master’s in psychology, so help them with different mental toughness tools, different spiritual tools to help integrate themselves and be able to enjoy sport for what it is, but be able to really play freely.
Beverly Hallberg:
One of the things I found interesting in looking at a past video that you did, you talked about your own journey and your identity as far as leaving sports, leaving after college, and then who were you after playing in this competitive world, just your identity after it. Tell us about the journey on that, and is this something that you do work with with the women that you deal with? It’s how do you find identity without the sport that that’s not a full reflection of who you are?
Samantha Kelley:
I mean, like I said, my whole life up until 22 is oriented in many ways towards playing Division One soccer and when my career ended, there was this question of, well what now? I’ve spent so much time, what I ate, what I did on the weekends, everything was oriented around this goal. And so yeah, there’s almost a death there and a lot of athletes, it’s a really big pain point for them. A lot of institutions don’t provide great resources for that time. It’s like, “Oh, thank you for playing for us and good luck.” But there is a real crisis that happens. So something we navigate, we actually are in the process of beta testing a whole course on this. It’s 12 weeks. It’s been phenomenal to walk with some women through this time so far just with that identity question of, well, what now? Who am I?
I am something without my sport. I am very good. But then just, okay, how do I live now? How do I work out now? How do I find balance in my life now? How do I find other passions? So walking with them through that is a lot of fun.
Beverly Hallberg:
And you also talk about the need to change the culture of female athletics. What is it about the culture that you think needs to change?
Samantha Kelley:
Oh, a lot of things. I mean, at the basis, I’d say at the basis of sport in general, it’s a very utilitarian field, meaning a coach looks at a player and says, “Well, what can you do for me? You’re a commodity that helps me win a game.” And that reduces people to what they can do, rather than sport is something, and it’s an adventure, it’s a gift, it’s something we do together in order to grow as people, in order to compete together, to suffer together, to obtain something higher. And so trying to remove the almost impersonal utilitarian nature of it, we talk a lot about the dignity of every person, the dignity of our opponents, the dignity of our teammates, our own dignity, our own goodness. And with that utilitarianism, I think comes a lot of body shaming for women. You hear horror stories of coaches pinching girls’ sides and saying, “You have too much body fat percentage.” And that leaves deep, deep wounds in women’s hearts or the comments made. I do think that women are objectified and oversexualized in sport as well. That’s a whole nother realm.
So there’s a lot of things. And again, we’re trying to promote that true view of sport. We’re trying to help women advocate for themselves, really teach them about their own goodness and dignity and a balanced life, navigate the mental health issues they face. So yeah, there’s a lot we’re combating.
Beverly Hallberg:
Well, I even want to pick up on what you’re saying about people’s view of their body. Of course, we think about, maybe gymnastics, as being the ultimate tough sport in relation to body weight, what a coach might say to a female. But do women face this in a lot of different sports? For example, did you ever face that in soccer where a coach would talk to you about your weight?
Samantha Kelley:
Not me specifically in terms of weight. I was a pretty big track athlete in college, I mean in high school. And that was something in the back of my mind. Running is the other sport with weight. But I think on the reverse side, there is this fear of getting too strong. In college, I remember a teammate saying to me, “Well, I don’t lift in the summer because I don’t want to over bulk.” And that’s a lie because you actually, I have a certification in strength and conditioning, and you actually have to take a lot of protein in to really bulk. But there is this anti strong woman mentality. And I think because of the likes of Serena Williams, that is a stigma that maybe isn’t there as much now. But I do think a lot of women, when they get big muscles or things, they feel unfeminine. Now that’s a lie. You just are feminine.
But there can become this body shame on the other side of, well, I’m too jacked, or I’m too strong, or I look different than a lot of other women that I’m going to school with because I’m fit. So there’s a lot of different false views of the woman’s body and then the way that is acted out can be pretty unhealthy.
Beverly Hallberg:
And speaking of bodies, there’s a lot of discussion about men competing in women’s sports and if they take the right hormones for a certain amount of time that they can compete with women. So some of the testing that’s done and some of the standards that are set by different governing bodies of sports. Anything that you can share just based on your knowledge of it, the difference between a male and a female body?
Samantha Kelley:
It should be pretty obvious but these are things that we do have to unfortunately define today. I mean, from just a physiological standpoint, men have bigger lungs, they have bigger hearts, they have greater muscle mass, greater strength. And so even these hormone and blockers or inhibitors, they don’t cut the advantage unfortunately, no matter what. I mean, Lia Thomas being the prime example. I forget what his rank was in the 200s or the 400s or something as a man and then he is the number one female. So yeah, they’re just things that no matter what we do, we can’t compete with. And I think the strength difference for different sports, I think you guys actually put out some really good statistics on that, varies. But in terms of Olympic lifting, it’s something like 40% of just raw strength and muscle capacity between men and women. So yeah, there are differences.
Beverly Hallberg:
There are big differences. We do have that information on iwf.org if people want to check that out. I do want to pick up on a word that you’ve been mentioning a lot, and it’s this word femininity. And the reason I want to talk about this is often people can think of, let’s say for example, you played soccer, you’re a tomboy. The women who play certain sports, they’re tomboys. Where does the term femininity fit in, even with somebody who may be determined or considered a tomboy?
Samantha Kelley:
Yeah, it’s scary to think if I grew up today, in today’s world, because I was a tomboy. I grew up in a neighborhood of all boys. We were playing tackle football. If that was me today, and I didn’t have a family unit that I think was grounded in truth, people might suggest that maybe I was meant to be a boy. And that’s scary. It’s so important to note that atypical interests don’t determine sexual identity because oftentimes those are cultural things. I liked sports, that doesn’t actually negate my femininity at all because I mean, wherever your faith is, I think all of us can acknowledge that we have this sense of a body, but then we have a soul. We have some, whatever you want to call it, we have some internal sense of self that’s different from the rest of animals.
Those things are, in my mind, those things are united. And so the fact that I was biologically created as a woman makes me feminine. I just am, in my whole being. It’s almost something that I really can’t deny. I can try culturally to live differently, but I’m just a woman and I am feminine. There’s certain things that are particular to a woman. Maybe I have a little bit more receptivity to others. We see this because women are more team oriented in sport versus men are a little bit more individualistic. I have a little bit more attuneness to people’s emotions, some of those things. But at the end of the day, I am feminine because I always believed this lie that I wasn’t. And that’s a lie. And so that’s something I tell a lot of women. I give them permission to be feminine, to embrace their competitiveness and their desire to win, but also not divorce that from this very natural heart that we have as women, this tender side that is beautiful.
Beverly Hallberg:
And so with your organization, I know that you focus on promoting true femininity in sports. What exactly do you mean by that? How do you work with young women to help them embrace their true femininity?
Samantha Kelley:
I mean, again, I think it’s some of the things I just shared. It’s praising femininity. It’s praising woman in sport. I think there’s a very anti-woman movement today, or trying to redefine woman. And I think that, again, that basketball kid, it makes women feel like they don’t matter or they’re lesser. And so really empowering them to believe their goodness, to embrace the beauty of their female body and the amazing things that it can do on the sports field, and off, to help them believe the truth that they are feminine and that their athleticism isn’t at war with that, it actually compliments that. And then just helping them navigate the pressures that they face, giving them mental toughness tools and spiritual tools to live that out.
Beverly Hallberg:
And I’m just curious, with the women that you interact with, are many of them talking about the fact that we are in a place in society where men are competing and against women? And do they talk about being fearful of speaking up on that or what are young women saying these days about the differences in competition these days?
Samantha Kelley:
Yeah, it’s a common conversation, actually. And when people hear what I do, it’s a very common conversation. But yeah, young women are concerned. They feel like it’s unfair but they also, some are more bold than others and that comes from their confidence they learn in sport, I think. They’ll just state that they’re not okay with it or they’ll stand up against other people’s opinions. But I think there is so much shaming that happens, especially on social media these days. A lot of kids, even in their silence, if somebody posts something and they don’t approve it, if they don’t make an act to affirm that person who’s maybe decided that they are trans, they’re seen as a hater. So even silence these days is seen as something hateful. And so it’s hard for them. But again, I try to remind them that they’re not alone.
I try to remind them that there are a lot of female athletes out there that are speaking out, that are there to support them. Legally, they actually have the right to not say anything, or they have the right to voice their opinion. Obviously, I try to help them navigate that truth with tenderness and love. The last thing we need to do is start swinging, throwing punches but we do need to speak truth. And I do also make the point, there’s a difference between tolerance and love. Tolerance, people don’t need to be tolerated. That’s just, oh, yeah, you do whatever’s good for you. I mean, I don’t care how it affects other people. But love is willing the good of the other. And love can be challenging other people, it can be speaking truth, it can be defending women’s sports. And so helping make that distinction for them that this call to just accept everything isn’t really love, that’s tolerance.
Beverly Hallberg:
And so just as we round out the conversation, I’m sure that there may be a parent or a grandparent who’s listening right now who knows of a young woman in their family who is an athlete, maybe could use some support. What is it that your organization, FIERCE Athlete provides, and how can people get in touch with you? What is it like to work with you?
Samantha Kelley:
Sure. I mean, everything we offer is on our website, fierce.org. We have FIERCE Athlete, and then we actually have a new branch, FIERCE Coach for coaches. But if you go on there, there’s a bunch of free videos of mine. We have a podcast, which is just a great resource. It’s geared towards the female athlete. We talk about all sorts of topics and then there’s different information. And I travel the country speaking, leading different clinics, retreats, all that. So there’s all sorts of information on that. And then also I do personal mentorship and coaching. So if anybody just wants to be journeyed with through what they’re going through, me or my staff would be more than happy to do that.
Beverly Hallberg:
Well, I think it’s a really important opportunity for young people to be able to connect with mentors, for people to hear what you have to say when you speak. We think that you are fierce, you are bold in what you are doing.
Samantha Kelley:
Thank you.
Beverly Hallberg:
And we thank you so much for joining us today. Samantha Kelley, founder and president of FIERCE Athlete Inc. Thank you so much for being here.
Samantha Kelley:
Thank you for having me.
Beverly Hallberg:
And thank you all for joining us. Before you go, IWF does want you to know that we rely on the generosity of supporters like you. An investment in IWF fuels our efforts to enhance freedom, opportunity, and wellbeing for all Americans. So please consider making a small donation to IWF by visiting iwf.org/donate. That’s iwf.org/donate. Last, if you enjoyed this episode of She Thinks, do leave us a rating or review, it does help. And we’d love it if you shared this episode so your friends can know where they can find more She Thinks. From all of us here at IWF, thanks for watching.
