About Us

Mission

Switch the Pitch is an innovative coach training program specifically designed to strengthen community, build individual and collective empathy, examine and challenge inequitable structures, and apply a racial justice lens to the practice of coaching youth.

Overview

The current youth soccer system in the US is widely known as a “pay-to-play system”, where access to soccer often reflects the racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic disparities in our communities. In addition to these systemic disparities, interpersonal racism, xenophobia, Islamophobia, sexism, and antisemitism often fester on youth soccer fields.

Those charged with the responsibility to create safe spaces for youth are often ill-equipped to respond to and repair harm when these incidents occur, exacerbating power dynamics and divisions between communities.

We affirm that soccer doesn’t have to mirror the inequities of our communities; rather, we can use its powerful influence to shape communities to change for the better. Switch the Pitch is the result of our decision to drive that change, together.

We disrupt traditional coaching methodologies by modeling racial justice through the transformative possibilities of soccer.

To achieve this, we must:

EDUCATE

ourselves by learning more about racism and responses to it, including within the youth and professional soccer industries, as well as the intersection of racial justice and other pressing issues of our time

EXCHANGE

by examining our privilege, leaving our comfort zones, and meeting others where they are in a spirit of collaboration while avoiding imposing additional harm on traditionally marginalized communities

ACTIVATE

ourselves, our teams, and our clubs toward unraveling oppressive systems by taking small but meaningful steps in our local, national and global communities