By Kim Chaffin, Founder & Author of Breaking the Huddle Education
In the middle of all the research I have been doing lately, diving deep into what powerful women are doing to champion one another across every walk of life, and especially in sports, I came across a Facebook post from the Women’s Sports Foundation that was as empowering as it was heartbreaking.
The post was sharing their new collaboration with Mediaplanet on a Women in Sports campaign, highlighting the athletes, organizations, and advocates working to expand opportunities for women in sports and the profound impact sports can have on confidence, leadership, and lifelong wellbeing. I followed the thread, and it led me to a study the Foundation released in September 2024 as part of their 50th anniversary. Play to Lead: The Generational Impact of Sports on Women’s Leadership is the first study of its kind to survey seven generations of women, ages 20 to 80, examining how youth sports participation shaped who they became as leaders.
Although I wish I had found this study sooner, while still in my last few seasons directly coaching high school girls, the timing of stumbling across it today feels less like coincidence and more like confirmation of everything the Women in Sports campaign and other powerful, parallel movements are being built around.
The Moment We Are Actually Living In
We are in the middle of something that people will look back on and recognize as a turning point: the moment women’s sports stopped asking for a seat at the table and started owning the building.
Women have proved something the world has been slow to accept: they are world-class athletes, full stop. Not “good for women.” Not “impressive considering.” World class. And the audiences followed, because the product was always there — the platform just finally caught up. Front and center, women’s soccer and women’s basketball have done more than grow and lead this movement, they are drawing primetime audiences, signing billion-dollar media deals, and selling out arenas in cities that not long ago would never have filled those seats. The conversation is no longer about potential. It is about what is already here, already happening, already undeniable.
And football, tackle and flag alike, is writing its own version of that same story right now. The sport is finding its footing in the cultural mainstream at exactly the moment when the infrastructure to support it is finally being built. The NCAA has added women’s flag football as an emerging sport. The 2028 LA Olympics will put it on a global stage. Seventeen states now sanction it at the high school level. The girls playing today are not pioneers in the way that word used to mean, outsiders fighting for the right to exist. They are the foundation of something massive that is just getting started.
That is the world the Play to Lead research speaks directly into.
What the Data Actually Says
The most powerful thing about Play to Lead is not any single data point; it is the picture all of them paint together across seven generations of women.
Nearly half of all women credit sports with shaping them as leaders. Two thirds say they still carry those lessons with them today. The skills they name most, such as teamwork, learning from mistakes, handling pressure, pushing past limits, are not athletic skills. They are life skills and leadership skills – skills that show up in every room, every decision, every moment where something hard is being asked of you.
The research also found something that should matter to everyone who cares about where this movement is going: the longer girls play, the more likely they are to step into formal leadership roles as adults. They are not more likely by a small margin; they are significantly more likely. The field is not just where girls learn to compete. It is where they learn to lead, and the more time they have on it, the more that leadership compounds over a lifetime.
But the same report holds up a mirror that is harder to look at. Seven out of ten women surveyed said they faced barriers that kept them from playing as long as they wanted, including financial and structural barriers, the absence of a team that looked like them, or the lack of a path that felt built for them. This statistic was true even among the women who played and even among the ones the data counts as success stories.
That gap, between who gets to stay in the game and who gets pushed out of it, is not an abstraction. It is a girl right now who does not see herself reflected anywhere in the sports world she is trying to enter. It is a story she has never been handed that would tell her the field belongs to her.
That is what Breaking the Huddle Education was built to close.
A Movement, Not Just a Series
Breaking the Huddle Education is not just a collection of books. It is a sports literacy and leadership platform built on the belief that stories shape identity and that the girls who see themselves in a story are the ones who believe the field is theirs to claim.
Breaking the Huddle put a girl under center. Breaking the Huddle: Extended Version gave older readers the deeper narrative, one built for the classroom, for the curriculum, for the kind of literary and character work that turns a story into a lived value. Both books are already in the market, already in schools, already in the hands of coaches and educators who are using them as tools, not just reads.
And this spring, Every Field is Hers arrives.
This book was written for the girl who plays flag football on the local park grass and the one who lines up under stadium lights for tackle. It was written for the girl who is still figuring out which game is hers and for the one who already knows. Its message is simple and it is powerful: every field belongs to her. And, it belongs to her not in spite of who she is, but because of who she is. Being yourself is not just allowed in this sport. It is the whole point.
The representation inside Every Field is Hers reflects what the future of this game actually looks like: diverse, determined, and deeply connected to one another, because that is what a huddle is. It’s not just a play being called. It is a group of people who chose to be in something together.
Why This Report and This Moment Belong Together
The Play to Lead findings have been groundbreaking. And, they matter even more today than they did eighteen months ago because the playing field is rapidly changing. The proof that women’s sports drive real outcomes, real audiences, and real cultural impact is no longer something that needs to be argued. It is something that can be pointed to.
What that means for every girl who picks up a football right now, flag or tackle, is that she is not entering a world that will eventually accept her. She is entering a world that is already beginning to celebrate her. And, the research confirms that if we give her the access, the representation, and the time on the field, she will carry everything she learns there into every corner of her life for the rest of it.
That is the promise of this movement. That is why these books exist. And that is why, if you believe what the data says, that when girls play, they lead, and we all win. I hope you will share this post, read the full Play to Lead report at womenssportsfoundation.org/PlaytoLead, and come find what we are building at breakingthehuddleeducation.com.
Every field is hers. Let’s make sure she knows it.
Kim Chaffin Founder, Breaking the Huddle Education, March 2026
#PlayToLead #BreakingTheHuddle #EveryFieldIsHers #WhenGirlsPlayTheyLead #WomenInSports #GirlsFootball
