Feeling Green
Throughout American history, the West Coast has always been a new frontier; fresh land, more people, unique opportunities. The “feel good, anything is possible'' attitude has become characteristic of towns on the Pacific Ocean and all of those who call the area home. Not many people embody the free and forward-thinking ideals like Lauren Barnes, a Southern California native and UCLA-grad living in Tacoma, WA, who captains the NWSL’s OL Reign.
In terms of soccer accomplishments, Lauren’s resume is stellar. A defensive standout at UCLA, she helped lead the Bruins to the NCAA Tournament from 2007-2010, including trips to the semifinals in 2007, 2008, and 2009. As a professional, she has had stints with the American Women’s Professional League, Australian W-League, and the Swedish Damallsvenskan. She also represented the United States internationally at the U20 and U23 levels, earning a silver medal at the 2007 Pan American Games. Perhaps Lauren’s greatest accomplishment, however, is her work with OL Reign. She has been with the team since the NWSL’s inaugural season in 2013 and helped lead the team to the NWSL championship game in 2014 and 2015.
Playing for Arsenal FC growing up, Lauren not only fell in love with the game, but she learned the values of creativity, self-motivation, and persistence. John Drescher, a German-national and Lauren’s most formative coach, began pushing his girls from a young age.
“He was making our goalkeeper play out from the back,” Lauren said. “We were, like, nine years old. We were getting belted 6-0 because we did not understand those concepts yet, but he was really trying to develop us as players.”
The lopsided score lines did not deter Lauren; they actually did the opposite. She wanted to master exactly what Drescher was looking to teach, as she was inspired by his devotion to the game. Luckily for her, he was her coach from U9 to U19, which is rare in the world of youth club soccer. Drescher always talked about how much he enjoyed being around Lauren and her teammates and wanted to truly help them see the bigger picture of soccer.
This constant persistence for a greater purpose turned into a lifestyle.
Lauren loved being outdoors, and her love for it kept her on the soccer field. But even away from the pitch, she knew there were many questions and cultural norms left unchallenged relating to the environment. How did the global population continue to increase, but resource shortages never seemed to become exigent? Better yet, how did we even gain access to our major resources, like food and water? What were the processes behind obtaining our precious resources, and who said they were responsible and ethical?
Questions like these floated through Lauren’s mind as she attended the Sundance Film Festival in 2015. She and her best friend, former Reign player Ellie Reed, watched Racing Extinction, a documentary directed by Louie Psihoyos highlighting humanity’s role in species extinction. They had no idea how much the film would change their lives.
“It all started there. It kind of sparked it,” she reminisced about this pivotal moment. Moved by the film, Lauren was determined to eradicate unsustainable habits from her life.
“I spoke to a vegan athlete named Leilani Munter, who’s a NASCAR driver,” Lauren said. “The fuel she uses for her car is more natural and sustainable than what her competitors are using. So I was like, ‘Oh, that's pretty cool.’”
Cool, yes. But difficult, also yes. Lauren’s transition towards a more sustainable lifestyle, including a vegan diet, was not easy.
“Obviously, the first couple of months transitioning, you can't just go to the store and pick up a sandwich,” Lauren said. “It's just not accessible like that.”
But she was compelled by her love for the environment and the profound effects of the film and persisted, and so did the movement. Lauren has noticed an increase in plant-based food and beauty products, as well as people making lifestyle changes.
“I do feel like it's been a lifestyle change, and I feel like there are a lot of options now in terms of being vegan and being a vegan athlete,” Lauren said.
Lauren is not alone in her quest to be a vegan athlete and excels on the field in great company.
“Tom Brady is 43 and just won a Super Bowl. I read an article on him, and he's 90 percent plant-based,” Lauren said. “I swear! Even Messi's gone plant-based. All of a sudden, all of these top athletes are switching, and I don't know if it's because it has been a trend recently, but even both Williams sisters have done raw vegan diets.”
It’s evident the movement was growing, and Lauren was going to assume her role as a pioneer. And as Coach Drescher taught her, persistence is key.
Lauren knew her work could not stop with her own lifestyle, and she wanted to inspire as many people as possible. Being the captain of the OL Reign, she figured her team was the first place to start. However, despite the initial success of the sustainability conversations with the Reign, these talks were abruptly paused due to the emergence of the coronavirus pandemic. Suddenly, the idea of washing and reusing materials, such as water bottles and utensils, became uncomfortable as the virus spread through our communities. By the time the NWSL, the first league to resume play in the United States, sent players to Utah for the 2020 Challenge Cup, sanitation was the main concern.
“Obviously given the protocols of the coronavirus, we were in a 100 percent safety-first mindset”, Lauren recounts of her Challenge Cup experience. “We were using so many plastic utensils because materials had to be ‘one and done,’ so there was a bunch of single-use plastic being used, as well as paper plates.”
“I was talking with a colleague who had a background in sustainability,” Lauren explained. “I thought, ‘Surely, we can fix this a bit.’ With that, I began working on an eco-friendly travel kit, which I developed while we were in the Challenge Cup bubble in Utah last summer. Then, I reached out to three different companies, and they were all on board with helping me. They sent sustainable utensils for the OL Reign staff and players. Now that we each had our own little sustainable kit, we totally removed our need for single-use plastic. So, for the few weeks in Utah, we were technically the most sustainable club in the bubble, which was pretty cool”, she told us through a smile.
Lauren’s persistence proved more than sustainability simply being something on which we cannot compromise in our lives; she proved it’s much easier to achieve than we think. Simply combing through our daily activities will show us exactly where we are using the most resources and where we can cut some down.
“I did my carbon footprint for the entire Utah series,” Lauren said. “Every time I got into the car to go from hotel to training, I clocked those miles. After calculating my overall carbon footprint, we realized that, for example, Reign might need to plant 10 trees to offset that”, Lauren illustrated to us. “But you know, plant 10 trees? We can easily do that, and we want it to be a community engagement thing. We are considering a community garden relating to the team’s carbon footprint. We have a girls academy here in Tacoma too, where we want to get them involved with soccer, but also other things as well, such as sustainability,” Lauren told us proudly.
Lauren is floating many different sustainability ideas around right now for her club, but one remains superior to the others.
“For right now, I'm working on the eco-friendly travel kits,” Lauren said. “Long term, though, I'm thinking of bringing them to each club and teaching them about sustainability in sports. Currently, I'm working with about 20 different sustainability companies, discussing things like deodorant, floss, razors, toothpaste, and headphones. Everything you think of when you travel. I've named my kit ‘MAD’ for ‘Make A Difference.’”
Lauren does not have any settled plans yet, but she is hoping to roll out her eco-friendly travel kits in the near future, especially as more teams enter the league.
“I think the overall goal would be to do all teams in the NWSL and then hit other sports,” Lauren said. “But I would love to get them into major tournaments, like the Olympics and World Cups. I've had girls now from the Chicago Red Stars reach out to me, and they're just like, ‘I want to know what you're doing, I want to do it with my team as well,'” Lauren said, failing to hold back another smile as her characteristic excitement radiated onto her face.
Successful projects are only as powerful as their support system, and Lauren could not pass up the opportunity to commend her club and her city.
“I'm so lucky to have a club that backs me and also wants to be more sustainable,” Lauren said. “Seattle and Tacoma, in general, are both really progressive when it comes to sustainability, and many of our sports are completely plastic-free. So this area has the culture for sustainability to be successful.”
Lauren credits the ability to even have these sustainability conversations at the business level to the team’s longtime owners, the Predmore Family. She recognizes how welcoming and instrumental they have been for her as a player with their team since the OL Reign (and NWSL) first took the field in 2013.
Playing for one team throughout the entirety of one’s NWSL career is very rare, but sticking to the status quo is not something Lauren enjoys. What Lauren does enjoy, however, is leadership. From being the team’s captain to becoming a champion for sustainability and eventually the league, Lauren hopes to inspire the next generation of players. She is starting this through the younger players on her own team.
“It's just who I am. It's in my heart,” Lauren said. “It's been really, really exciting for me to see these new players coming in and helping them. I actually want these kids to come in, and I want someone to come in and beat me out for my position. I just hope to create an environment where these young ones coming in are confident.”
With the increase of talented players entering the NWSL, that possibility is growing. But Lauren doesn’t care. A victory for one woman is a victory for all women, and having seen the growth of the NWSL since its inception, she can’t help but revel in its success.
“In my heart, I always felt like the NWSL was going to be successful,” Lauren said. “It's been only nine years, so the NWSL is still such a young league. But for it to have grown as much as it has, I think it has an opportunity to keep growing. I really hope it does.”
She also understands the magnitude that the growth of the league has for women as a whole.
“The young soccer players that are watching us are now able to have that role model in their sport,” Lauren said. “I didn't have that growing up. I was watching basketball. My idols were male basketball players”, she told us. Lauren knows the next generation is coming. Perhaps one of her greatest joys is knowing that she was able to inspire it.
What’s left for Lauren? Naturally, her sustainability efforts are in full gear as she looks to roll out her eco-friendly kits across the NWSL and beyond. In the short term, though, Lauren recognizes the young talent coming into OL Reign and knows what’s ahead.
“I just want to win,” Lauren said. “I've been to two finals now, and four playoffs and haven't won anything. I've had all the experiences. So I've also come to a point where there's just no more bullshit for me. I really want to win”, she reiterated. As one of the team’s most battle-tested players, she sits in the driver’s seat for this goal, too.
We don’t know when Lauren will hang up her boots with the Reign, but what we do know is that Lauren will keep on winning. A win for one woman in sport is a win for all women in sport. A win for one local sustainability effort is a win for the entire ecosystem. A win over the minds of the youth is a win over an entire group of people. Lauren’s persistence and devotion will help call the next generation to action, motivating them to keep building upon the foundation in which Lauren created.
And as she reflects on her accomplishments, she will only have one thing to say: “I won.”
Photography by Jane Gershovich.
