Tulane Athletic Women's Association Welcomes Lauren Holiday
Apr 14, 2016 | General
By Kaitlin Maheu, Tulane Athletic Communications
Newcomb-Tulane College is home to over 7,000 driven, inspired and hard-working women who have all come to New Orleans to pursue nationally-ranked degree programs. On the north side of the Uptown campus, Tulane Athletics is full of similarly dedicated female student-athletes. For Tulane's Athletic Women's
Last Tuesday evening, professional soccer player Lauren Holiday visited the women of Tulane's AWA to talk sports, college and everything in between, girl-to-girl. The spring reception was held in the Multi-Purpose Room of Yulman
"The goal of this event for me was to bring both Newcomb students as well as Tulane student-athletes together under one common roof and have a good time with Lauren Holiday,"
Holiday, who has a lifetime of soccer accomplishments under her belt, spoke to a room full of eager women about her experiences on and off the field as a female professional athlete, recounting her struggles and what it took to get to the top of her game despite setbacks starting at a young age.
"When I was three years old, I had open heart surgery," Holiday remembered. "The doctors told my parents
From humble beginnings, Holiday spoke about the difficulties of moving up the ranks in her profession, from fainting at her first National Team camp to being cut from the Olympic team. However, Holiday overcame them all, and since then has won two Olympic gold medals in Beijing and London, as well as a first-place finish in the 2015 World Cup.
Despite her star-studded soccer career, Holiday recently hung up her cleats and retired from the professional stage. The wife to Pelicans' point guard Jrue Holiday, Lauren now spends her time doing public speaking to groups such as AWA. For this reason, Holiday's message was especially relatable for many women who struggle with the end of their athletic careers.
"The hardest part is being that girl who says that soccer doesn't consume me, that it's not my identity," Holiday lamented. "I feel like at some point it is a little part of our identity. It becomes a part of us. Giving that up was the hardest part. Just identifying with a team and a sport and not having that anymore to rest on, that was really difficult."
Following Holiday's talk,
"I think it takes a lot to change how the world sees female athletes," Holiday explained. "It's going to require a societal change for us to get the same respect. Maybe we're not as fast, maybe we're not as strong, but talent- and ability-wise, that gap is close. We need to not only encourage that and see that, but there has to be a change."
Holiday closed by encouraging women to be the best that they can be by focusing on changes they can make to improve themselves.
"The best piece of advice I've gotten is that you can only control what you can control," she shared. "You can't control someone's opinion or what people think of you, but you can control how hard you work, what type of person you are and how you treat others."
The talk was highly informative and inspirational for everyone in attendance, especially since her role in athletics made her so relatable.
"I have some of the same struggles as her, even though she's on this pedestal as an Olympian,"
Though the AWA organization is young, it is rapidly growing. With this semester wrapping up and elections for next year's executive board coming up soon,
