Tori
Photography by Diana Hernandez.
“We are the league.”
Tori Huster juggled in 2020-- but not just a soccer ball, or a roll of toilet paper.
When soccer leagues across the world shut down in March 2020, players juggled toilet paper with their feet and knees in the viral #StayAtHomeChallenge, and NWSL teams played checkers against one another via Twitter. Professional players raised money for COVID-19 relief funds and donated food. Basements, parking decks, and public parks turned into training grounds as team practices were put on pause, but players looked to stay fit for the undetermined day that matches resumed-- return dates that kept sliding backwards as COVID-19 cases rose.
Yet, whenever the Washington Spirit’s Tori Huster went to train individually, she was often interrupted by the chime of a Zoom call.
“I remember the first couple of weeks of COVID, I don't even think I touched a soccer ball because I was on Zoom calls constantly,” Huster says. “I think every time I went to go work out, somebody else would call me, asking like, ‘What are we doing?’”
What are we doing? It was a question for a veteran NWSL player leading her team through organizational turmoil and for a president of the National Women’s Soccer League Players Association representing the players’ union during a tumultuous year.
Huster is both.
Amidst global and league uncertainty, Huster balanced training with her role as NWSLPA president. Her duties became especially critical as the PA entered collective bargaining agreements with the league and looked to secure guaranteed pay throughout the changing format of the 2020 season.
Then, in 2021, the NWSLPA's work would again increase as matches stopped once again, this time for league-wide moments of reckoning in the wake of the exposed verbal abuse and sexual coercion of NWSL players.
“Protect the players,” read banners hanging from the stands at NWSL games as Huster and the players association created a list of eight demands for the league to meet. “A restorative fire is necessary for the health of the ecosystem,” read one sign in Portland.
As NWSLPA president, Huster is looking to shape that ecosystem into one that centers the voices of the players-- players with journeys like her own, which began where many do: a co-ed youth team, followed by a deepening love of the game and several career-defining decisions.
Career-defining decisions, and league-shaping decisions, in Huster’s case.
Huster’s Soccer Journey
Huster grew up in Cincinnati, Ohio, and was signed up for a youth soccer team at age four by her parents while surrounded by football and baseball fans. According to Huster, Cincinnati never felt like a soccer city at the time; FC Cincinnati, the city’s MLS team, wouldn’t be founded as a USL team until 2015.
However, Tim Lesiak, Huster’s club soccer coach in her early teen years, helped introduce Huster to the English Premier League and players like Ronaldo and Messi. She began attending individual training sessions with him to work on skills outside of practice, finding joy in the challenge of the game as she became more invested in the sport.
“He spoke a language that was music to my ears at the time,” Huster remembers.
After playing youth volleyball, basketball, and softball in addition to soccer, Huster made the decision to focus primarily on soccer during her early high school years. Sitting on her bed after losing the soccer state championship with her high school team, Huster realized she didn’t want to go to basketball practice the next day as she prepared for the transition between sports seasons.
“I wanted to go to soccer practice,” Huster recalls. “I wanted to continue competing for whatever it was that was going to be next, whether it was a soccer tournament or whatever… I remember calling my dad, being so scared that he was going to be upset with me. But he was like, ‘No, this is good that you know what you want to do. You’ve got to put your whole heart into soccer and really go after it.’”
And Huster did “really go after” soccer. At the club level throughout her teen years, Huster won a national championship with her Super Y team and the 2002 US Club Soccer National Cup. She played for the Region II ODP team from 2003 to 2007 and was named to the All-North American final select team in 2007. She led her high school, the all-girls Saint Ursula Academy, to a 2007 state championship with the game-winning goal and All-State honors.
This success helped Huster reach the Division 1 level, playing at Florida State University under Mark Krikorian, who had seen Huster play at the Disney Showcase as a high school junior.
“I had a great phone call with him after and had been in contact with their assistant coach, Eric Bell, for a number of years-- met him at ODP and liked both of them, like how professional they were,” Huster says. “The girls were super serious. They had a lot of international players, and I loved that. I think they were going to be able to create exactly what I would want in a professional environment. So it felt like it was going to prepare me for my next step.”
Huster started all four years at Florida State. In 2011, the team qualified for the College Cup, and Huster was named ACC Women’s Soccer Scholar Athlete of the Year. She knew she wanted to continue playing soccer beyond FSU; she played for teams in Boston and Colorado in the semi-professional American W-League during her college summers.
Still, she considered what she might do post-graduation, in the case that she left the oftentimes-uncertain path of a professional soccer career. Initially premed, Huster studied exercise and sports science and eventually settled on the idea of one day attending school to become a physician’s assistant after playing professionally “for a few years” or so, as Huster says. She shadowed some physician assistants after graduating college.
Meanwhile, her professional soccer career was just beginning-- “a few years” of soccer, and then some.
Huster graduated from FSU a semester early and declared for the 2012 Women’s Professional Soccer Draft in which she was selected by the Western New York Flash in the second round, eighth overall.
However, just a week after Huster was drafted, the WPS folded, ending the second attempt at a United States women’s professional soccer league after just three seasons.
Tori's former FSU teammate, Amanda DaCosta, told Huster stories about playing in the WPS, about how players had lodged a grievance with the WPS, and that the owner of the magicJacks club was in a legal stand-off with the league over financial disputes and his alleged mistreatment of players. The WPS first canceled the 2012 season, then folded completely, citing a lack of resources due to low investment and legal battles with magicJack's owner.
“I was so young,” Huster remembers. “Thinking about it, if the league were to fold now, I would be devastated, but I didn't fully grasp how terrible that would have been at that time for those players in the league. I can't even attest to if they were blindsided or not. I hope that they weren't, but it's very likely that they were.”
After the WPS folded, the Western New York Flash joined the Northeast- and Midwest-based WPSL-Elite semi-professional league for its 2012 season. Huster and the WNY Flash won the WPSL-Elite championship, with midfielder Angela Salem making the winning penalty kick in the championship match’s PK shootout.
Once the WPSL-Elite season ended, Huster had another big decision to make-- where to play next. An Australian teammate had spoken with both Huster and Salem about playing “down under” for a season in Australia’s W-League, and Huster had had a roommate at FSU who had made lists of potential Australian clubs to play for-- the idea had been planted in Huster’s head for a while. At the time, this was a popular option for professional or semi-professional women’s soccer players in the US, with opposite league schedules allowing them to play two seasons per year.
“Word of mouth at that time was how players moved,” recalls Huster. “It wasn't so much agents and all that at the time.”
In her first 2012-2013 Australian season, Huster played with the Newcastle Jets; she would later play a season for the Western Sydney Wanderers before returning to the Jets for her final W-League season. One of her biggest takeaways from her time in Australia was her love for Australian coffee and breakfast-- “avo on toast” and a fried or poached egg.
"They are so good at making coffee. There are Australian cafes all over the world, and if I am in Europe, or if I am in a different city in the US, I'm trying to find an Australian-style cafe, and there's Bluestone Lane in [Washington] DC."
Other than her affinity for Australian coffee, Huster gained valuable leadership experience playing in the Australian W-League. With no college system in Australia, some teenagers play for W-League teams immediately after playing for their youth teams, so even in her mid-twenties, Huster brought veteran experience to her W-League rosters.
"[It] made me seem like an older player, which was fine because when I was here playing [in the US] for the first couple of seasons, some of the leaders that were on my team were amazing: Ali Krieger, Lori Lindsey, Diana Matheson," says Huster. "I was getting taught what I should do down in Australia, which was a pretty cool experience."
Then, the return: in 2013, professional women’s soccer reemerged in the United States with the inaugural season of the National Women’s Soccer League.
Huster, wanting to return to play in her home country, had to work around the distance between the US and Australia to talk with interested NWSL coaches and managers. She relied on the advice of college coach Mark Krikorian, who passed along contact information for coaches and let Huster know if coaches had reached out, asking about her.
"He probably deserves an agent fee or something," Huster says. "I remember being super overwhelmed with the time change in particular and talking to some of these coaches-- I would miss them, or I would have to leave voicemails or send them an email."
Huster flew home on the day of the first NWSL draft, a 15-hour flight back to the US. She landed on home soil, turned on her phone, and saw messages from friends, family, and teammates that she had been unable to receive while still in the air.
For the second time in her professional career, Huster had been drafted to a professional women’s soccer team in the United States-- this time, to the Washington Spirit.
“It happened midair,” Huster says, laughing. “I had no idea.”
Unlike with the WPS, where the league folded before Huster could play a single game, Huster would log over 150 professional caps with the Spirit through the end of the 2021 season.
Those first 150 caps would span eight years and both highs and lows with the D.C.-based organization.
The team's inaugural season saw them place last out of the NWSL's eight initial teams, with a coaching change mid-season. Huster recounts the team's first win at the Maryland Soccerplex-- a 1-0 win against the Chicago Red Stars that was called off around the 60-minute mark due to lightning, allowing the Spirit to preserve their lead and head back into the locker room with a home victory.
“It was like, are we excited about this? We'll take the points,” recalls Huster with a grin. “That was kind of like our season in a nutshell, like we couldn't even win a full game.”
But the Spirit had a foundation of players accomplished at both the international and club levels, and throughout the next three seasons, the team qualified for the playoffs, reaching the finals in 2016 before falling to the WNY Flash. Huster led the team in minutes in 2016 and played all 120-plus minutes of the team’s postseason matches.
After the departure of multiple starters, the 2017 and 2018 seasons saw the team again finish near the bottom of the NWSL table.
Heading into the 2018 season, the Spirit added 14 new players, according to Full90. Still, Huster was a constant presence for Washington, playing in multiple defensive and midfield positions across seasons and competing alongside and against players that she had looked up to.
“I think it was encouraging for me because I was able to play with [these high-quality players],” Huster says. “I never knew, you know, these national team players are going to be here-- am I going to play? Am I going to be good enough to play with these players, even in practice? And I was, and I think that was really great to see because I have been playing for all my life and I've been putting in so much effort… Maybe people not expecting as much for me as I was able to give, I think that was probably my favorite part about it.”
While Huster played with the Spirit, she took odd jobs to supplement her league pay, which she said was less than $20,000 per season for her first few years. She wrote articles, took photography gigs, trained youth players, coached for club teams, walked dogs, and worked as the executive assistant for a natural turf grass consultant at Maryland Soccerplex, the latter which helped her develop small business and organization skills that would translate to her work with the players association.
“I was putting together travel itineraries for him, answering emails, pretty much anything and everything that he needed,” says Huster. “I definitely learned how to multitask.”
Huster knew that having “odd jobs” and side hustles was common for her teammates and others in the league. The club helped them find host families to stay with, and many players, like Huster, relied on the support of family members.
These financial obstacles were only a portion of the turmoil faced by Huster and the Spirit during recent years, however.
The Spirit’s 2021 Season: Before the Wins Begin
On August 11, 2021, The Washington Post released an article detailing allegations from former Spirit player Kaiya McCullough and two other anonymous former players, recounting how Spirit coach Richie Burke emotionally and verbally abused the Washington team, making racially insensitive comments and targeting players with aggressive personal attacks.
The same day, the Spirit announced that Burke would move into the team’s front office “due to health concerns.” The next day, the team’s front office suspended Burke pending an investigation into the allegations.
The NWSL hired a third party to investigate, and over a month later, Burke was officially fired by the league, having been found to be in violation of the league's anti-harassment policy. Assistant coach Kris Ward stepped into the role of interim head coach for the remainder of the 2021 season.
Attention then turned to Spirit owner Steve Baldwin, who had hired Burke despite prior allegations of Burke verbally abusing youth players. Baldwin had overseen an “old boys’ club” work environment, an employee had told The Washington Post.
Huster and other players released public statements voicing their demands for Baldwin to sell his share of team ownership to co-owner Y. Michele Kang, then donate any of his profit to the Maryland Soccer Foundation. “The person we trust is Michele,” read the players’ statement. “She continuously puts players’ needs and interests first.”
Baldwin said he would step back from his CEO role but retain ownership of the club; this move was criticized again by players and fans.
“When we asked you to step aside, step back from management, we clearly meant you should not retain any management control. We are sure you understood that,” read the Oct. 5 statement from the players of the Washington Spirit, as posted on Huster’s Twitter. “You will still have a firm grip as majority owner on the decisions that need to be made at the club… This is not a fresh start.”
“Sell the team, Steve” became a common sight in the Spirit’s Instagram comments and on players’ gameday signs. On Oct. 14, The Washington Post reported that Baldwin told investors he recognizes the “calls for change” and intends to sell his stake in the club, expecting the deal to go through by the end of the year. A deal has not officially gone through at the time of this story’s publication.
Throughout the fall, Huster and the other players balanced advocating for new club ownership with high-level training. At one point, during a disagreement between Spirit and D.C. United ownership over the use of D.C. United facilities, the Spirit trained at a local high school in Virginia.
Huster, as a veteran and a captain for the Spirit, has stepped into a coordinating role for the team, helping ensure schedules and training remain as consistent as possible throughout these changes.
"I've been dealing with so much stuff with the Washington Spirit... having to be a leader and a voice," Huster says. "Simply just like logistically sending out messages for our day-to-day here with the Spirit, it's all very time-consuming. I'm trying to remain as steady as possible, not only for players around the league but for my team here, because they see me every day, and I'm really just trying to make the best decisions possible. Luckily, there's so much support around me-- I don't feel like I'm ever just making the decision for anyone but really weighing all these different opinions.”
These patterns of power imbalances and abuse within the NWSL would prove to not be one-off occurrences isolated to the Spirit. Huster and other players knew, even when the league was in its earliest years, that players’ interests, safety, and voices needed to be protected.
"I think that it's been tough because, for so many years, everyone's so concerned about the stability of the league," Huster says. "People may really fear saying the wrong thing-- saying something that's bad, and then it has a detrimental effect like it had in the WPS."
“In past years, there has not been a place for players to go, or that they feel comfortable going if they have experienced sexual abuse, verbal abuse, any type of harassment,” Huster also notes. “The league in the past has said that they had a policy which they were not able to provide us at the beginning of this year, when we demanded that they put it into place right now before the start of the season. We believe that they may have been operating with US Soccer's anti-harassment policy. But again, they didn't provide that… If they were using it, players didn't know, and players didn't know where to go if they had issues.”
That’s where the work of the NWSLPA comes in.
NWSLPA: Its Founding & Huster’s Path to President
While playing for the Spirit in 2014, Huster’s path crossed with that of fellow NWSL player Yael Averbuch, a defender who played professionally for over 16 years and founded the football training app, Techne Futbol. Averbuch played with the Spirit for just one season in 2014, but this season was enough to form a connection that would change the trajectory of Huster’s off-the-field career.
Averbuch moved onto FC Kansas City in the following year, when she soon began looking into founding a players association for the young league. Huster was familiar with the concept, having played in Australia, where all men’s and women’s soccer players share a collective players union.
“Yael is such a go-getter that she’s just got to get shit done-- and you can write that,” Huster says. “She is hands-down somebody that I want to be when I grow up still to this day.”
While compiling signatures to get the union formally recognized by the league, Averbuch talked with former teammate Huster to see if she might be interested in being the Spirit’s team representative for the association. A handful of older players on the Spirit roster fell into the group of United States Women’s National Team players who did not qualify for the NWSLPA due to their allocation status. Averbuch looked to Huster to potentially step into that representative role.
“I feel like people know that I'm well organized, so that could have been easily a reason [Yael reached out to me],” Huster says. “Or maybe that I just responded to her text messages, I don't know,” she adds, laughing.
“I do think there is a certain level of respect for Yael, so much that if she was reaching out to me and needed help, I was going to help, regardless of what that was. It ended up being the PA, and then when I ended up understanding better what it was going to serve, I was like, ‘I absolutely want to be a part of this.’”
“This” was the fledgling players association that officially formed in May 2017. The first task for the executive board and PA representatives was establishing relationships with players and opening channels of communication, says Huster.
“If there is a goal of the PA, it's to gain players' trust, but then also get them to participate. The organization is the players-- it's the players association. We're nothing without the players. We want players to tell us if they like something that we're doing, if they don't like it, because it's literally their decision, the way our bylaws are written, the way that we vote on things. I think if there is any change that has happened… it's so many more people are asking questions, they are wanting to get involved or wanting to bring ideas to the table.”
Each NWSL team has player representatives that work with the NWSLPA executive board to communicate between teams and the league.
“If you have problems in your club, we want you to bring them to us because we're trying to develop this bridge. We're supposed to be this bridge [to the league] because otherwise, it's just going to be this player going to this person at the league office, this player going to this other person who we don't even know what their name is. It's just an email," Huster explains of the PA's goal to streamline communication.
Early NWSLPA leaders worked to establish connections with the league’s commissioner at the time, Amanda Duffy, and “anybody else in the league office that [Averbuch] could get in contact with,” Huster recalls. The NWSLPA looked to the MLSPA for early guidance and ran auctions to raise money for the PA. Huster collected jerseys and balls that players autographed to be auctioned off on Black Friday, and they sold player-signed Refocus wristbands branded for the players association.
“We had like 180 of [the wristbands] that people went a little bit crazy about, which was great,” recalls Huster.
The PA officially unionized in November 2018. The Chicago Red Stars’ Brooke Elby was elected NWSLPA president in early 2019 and served for a year before retiring. Huster was her vice president.
And as the world shut down in early 2020, and Elby and Averbuch retired from playing and slid into executive director roles for the PA, a new PA election was held.
On April 20, 2020, the NWSLPA announced their 2020 executive board via Twitter: Nicole Barnhart as secretary, Emily Menges as treasurer, Rachel Corsie as vice president, and Huster as president. Huster had worked with several of these players before on the executive board, and the group tapped into their previous PA experience to lead the players association.
“I say I'm organized, but like I am messy compared to [Nicole Barnhart,” Huster says when reflecting on the strengths of the other executive board members. “When we have calls, she takes minutes, and they are perfect-- like she is worth a million dollars for the way that she is able to keep us all on task and just gosh, our Google Drive is perfect too."
In the middle of a global pandemic, the role of PA president put Huster at the forefront of several initiatives that the PA spearheaded as the NWSLPA entered its next two pivotal years.
2020 & 2021: Game-Changing Years for the NWSLPA
March 11, 2020: the NWSL announced a three-year partnership with Twitch and CBS, CBSSports, and CBS All Access. CBS was set to broadcast the league season opener on April 18. The NWSL preseason had begun two days prior.
That same day, COVID-19 concerns led to the first canceled NBA game.
April 18 came and went, with no NWSL league opener.
Slack channels, group messages, and Zoom calls-- Huster was on them all as COVID-19 cases climbed.
The start date for the NWSL season slipped backwards, then was called off entirely at the end of May. The league announced that the regular season and playoffs would be replaced by the inaugural Challenge Cup in a Utah-based bubble.
This Challenge Cup came after weeks of discussion between the PA and the league, working to “create an innovative tournament, replete with player safeguards, protocols, and protections that have support of both the Players Association and the players,” according to a statement released by the NWSLPA on May 27, 2020.
In addition to input on the tournament structure, the NWSLPA advocated for-- and secured-- contract guarantees for all contracted NWSL players, including salary, housing, and benefits, plus insurance for the calendar year. Amid widespread financial insecurity caused by the pandemic, making sure a return-to-play deal came without pay cuts was one of their biggest areas of focus, Huster says.
“We had to be the voice; we had to organize. There had to be leaders,” Huster says. “And I think we were well-positioned to do that because we had built the relationship with the league.”
On June 27, the Challenge Cup officially began, making the NWSL the first professional sports league to return to play in the United States. Twenty-three games culminated in a tournament title for Houston Dash. One team, the Orlando Pride, had to withdraw prior to the tournament due to positive COVID-19 tests.
Huster and the Spirit placed second in preliminary play and reached the tournament quarterfinals before falling to Sky Blue FC in penalties.
It was during this period of time that many players were kneeling during the national anthem in protest of police brutality, systemic racism, and discrimination after the killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and, later, Jacob Blake in 2020. The PA released statements demanding justice and highlighting various players’ responses throughout the league and, in August, the PA’s social media accounts posted multiple statements attributed to the Black players of the NWSL. “We will never stop fighting for progress and justice,” they wrote in response to criticism of players’ BLM protests from now-former Utah Royals owner Dell Loy Hansen. In fall 2020, a group of Black NWSL players, including the group’s current executive director Midge Purce, would form the Black Women’s Players Collective to uplift, support, and advocate for Black players in the league.
Nearly a year later-- after an NWSL fall series of games and almost 12 months after the NWSLPA met with the league to determine how to return to play in a year that looked wildly different from any of the NWSL’s previous seasons-- the players association began talks with the league to address issues that were more familiar, present since the league’s 2013 inception.
The NWSLPA announced on April 7, 2021, that they were entering talks with the NWSL to strike the first collective bargaining agreement in the league’s history.
Huster had seen the early days of the players association, when the PA and the league struck a deal that the union wouldn’t go into CBA negotiations right away because “the league wasn’t set up for that, or so they told us they wouldn’t be prepared to develop a contract and negotiate and have lawyers,” says Huster. “Now, I don't think [the PA] would have been ready for that either. That was something that we actually agreed upon with them if they were going to recognize us.”
The PA was ready now, Huster knew.
“The sustainability of our League is inextricably linked to the stability of players’ careers,” said NWSLPA Executive Director Meghann Burke in her statement. “Through this CBA, we seek to secure stability, equity, and longevity of a playing career in NWSL for all players.”
Burke, the NWSLPA’s first full-time employee, was brought on at the beginning of April 2021 as well-- though Burke wasn’t entirely new to the players association. Having formerly served as the association’s general counsel and chief operating officer, the current lawyer and former professional goalkeeper has helped the NWSLPA draft official statements and navigate legal agreements.
"As far as the law is concerned, [Burke] has run the gamut," Huster says. "She's had to take her experience at the DA’s office and utilize it for some of these issues that are happening in our league. She is the best person for this job."
Huster said that the PA -- after receiving input from Burke and players -- provided the league with a proposal with 26 articles on various topics of employment that players would like to see improved. Since then, a bargaining committee of around 30 players has been in negotiations with the league regarding the agreement.
“I have left the training field in my gear prior to going to shower, prior to eating, prior to getting treatment, just to get on CBA calls, because that's how important it is,” Huster says. “We have done our level best to be at every single call… It's not just bargaining sessions that we're on. We're on bargaining prep calls. We're on the Slack channel discussing different proposals that come back and forth.”
These proposals include salary and benefit increases, plus key changes such as free agency and players’ ability to “control their own destiny, where they want to live” and “own their own rights,” Huster says.
"Something as simple as that-- something that's free, that doesn't cost the league anything," says Huster. "Something that if you are not going to pay the players a livable wage, that they can own themselves, and they can determine what market they want to play in because they have a spouse or their family is from there, or maybe they go to school in that area, or they have their side hustle there."
According to CNBC, the 2021 NWSL season salary minimum was $22,000, and the maximum was $52,500 plus housing or a housing allowance-- a 10% and 5% increase from the prior year. The NWSL estimated that 4% percent of the players receive compensation less than $30,000. The NWSLPA and Burke's calculations estimated that about three-quarters of the players association made $31,000 or less, and a third of the players association made the league-minimum salary.
During ongoing collective bargaining talks, the NWLSPA looked to raise awareness of players’ financial situations beyond league negotiations, extending the conversation into the media and team fanbases in order to speed up the negotiation process.
“We weren't seeing a concerted effort to get it done,” Huster explains. “It is my understanding there has never been an owner on the call, or the Board of Governors-- they haven't been on the calls, any of the any of the sessions, which only slows the process down because then whoever is on the call-- labor lawyers, league officers-- then have to go and share everything with the Board of Governors after.”
At the end of July 2021, the NWSLPA unveiled their #NoMoreSideHustles campaign in which current and past NWSL players shared publicly about the second, third, and fourth jobs that they picked up to make ends meet-- similar to Huster’s past executive assistant, coaching, and dog-walking gigs.
“The [bargaining] process is just taking too long, so we wanted to shed light on all of the things that we do as players in order to have a league and to have it be the best league in the world-- we're professional athletes by day and insert whatever other occupation at night,” explains Huster.
On social media, players posted about their side hustles: North Carolina Courage forward Jessica McDonald once packed Amazon boxes on 10-hour shifts and trained youth teams, in addition to her own training and raising her son. According to the Washington Post, Portland Thorns midfielder Gabby Seiler would wake up at 3:30 a.m. to work the front desk at Orangetheory before heading to her own training. She made $19,000 per league season and went into debt to furnish her apartment and buy a used car.
The NWSLPA now hosts an online store selling black t-shirts and scarfs with “No More Side Hustles” in bold, white letters, aiming to raise money for the PA.
Rewind the past eight months for Huster and the PA: in the spring came the start of collective bargaining discussions. The summer saw the launch of #NoMoreSideHustles. Then, in the fall, on the final day of September 2021, The Athletic published an article by reporter Meg Linehan.
This Athletic article detailed that Paul Riley, former coach of the Portland Thorns and North Carolina Courage, had “coerced a player into having sex with him; forced two players to kiss and then sent them unsolicited sexual pictures; and yelled at and belittled players,” as summarized by The New York Times.
In speaking with former Portland Thorns players Mana Shim and Sinead Farrelly, who came forward with their stories about Riley, Linehan’s reporting also revealed that Shim and Farrelly’s reporting of Riley to Thorns executives and the league eventually led to Riley’s dismissal due to violation of team policies, but ultimately did not prevent him from being hired by the Courage, and the NWSL did not reopen an investigation into Riley’s actions with the Thorns, despite players’ requests.
This report came in the wake of the aforementioned investigation and firing of Richie Burke after McCollough came forward, in addition to the prior dismissal of various team and league executives, coaches, and technical staff throughout the past several months, with several instances due to league investigations into violations of anti-harassment policies.
Riley denied the allegations to The Athletic; he was fired by the Courage after the article was released.
The players association released a statement on Twitter, voicing support for Farrelly, Shim, and McCullough and condemning the league.
“We refuse to be silent any longer,” the statement said. “Our commitment to players is to speak truth to power. We will no longer be complicit in a culture of silence that has enabled abuse and exploitation in our league and our sport.”
The PA demanded an immediate investigation into the allegations in The Athletic and how Riley was hired within the NWSL after the initial investigation into his conduct.
The women’s soccer world at large responded to these revelations, voicing support for the players and condemning the lack of protections established within the league. Shim, Farrelly, and Alex Morgan appeared on the Today Show to discuss the players’ perspectives. Morgan tweeted screenshots of Sinead’s April 28 email to NWSL commissioner Lisa Baird to express concern about Riley’s current position in the NWSL and to ask what steps the league might take to address his conduct.
“The league must accept responsibility for a process that failed to protect its own players from this abuse," Morgan wrote. "This is unacceptable," and "the players deserve more," came from league stars like Christine Sinclair and Nadia Nadim. “Making their own bogus investigation, keeping it confidential, and then keep having the back of people that’s doing wrong have to stop,” Nadim tweeted.
Meanwhile, Huster and other NWSLPA members set up a 24-hour anonymous reporting system for current and former players through Lighthouse, a sexual harassment reporting system. They worked with their executive director, Burke, to craft each statement released on behalf of the PA.
"[Burke] may write something, or we also have a communications person that is working pro bono for us," Huster explains of the process. "They will draft something, and then we'll get many eyes on it, like the executive committee, and then we'll tweak it. Once it's tweaked, we then go to our board of representatives, and they'll look at it. We ask them to be super in-tune and in-touch with how their teams are feeling about any one topic, and if they feel like there's a sentence or a word that needs to be changed, we will change it, or we will have a discussion over what will be best at that moment to say… No one person is putting out any statement, because if it's coming from the NWSLPA, it needs to come from the wider group of players."
The Athletic had released its article on a Thursday, and a slate of weekend games quickly approached. Huster and her fellow players discussed how to respond as a unified front as Saturday drew nearer.
“One of the ideas was, ‘let's not play, how could we play?’ Why would we want to play-- we don't feel safe,” Huster remembers. “I think, just from a performance standpoint, the emotions that we were feeling, people weren't sleeping, we were all exhausted because we were on calls, experiencing levels of anxiety that we haven't experienced before… I was concerned across the league, that people were going to get injured.”
The slate of games scheduled for the weekend was postponed at the request of the PA, a request granted by Commissioner Baird and the Board of Governors. Fans gathered outside NWSL stadiums to protest, and signs reading “Believe NWSL Players” appeared on broadcasts of MLS games that weekend.
Before the next games set for mid-week on Wednesday, the players worked to plan an in-game symbol of unity to show support for the affected players. The NWSLPA Slack channel was “going crazy,” Huster puts it. She joined all-player calls and calls with labor lawyers.
Eventually, the players reached a decision: at the six-minute mark of each game, players-- both those on the field and on the bench-- gathered at the center circle to link arms and hold a minute-long moment of silence. The six-minute mark symbolized the six years since Shim and Sinead first brought their sexual harassment complaints to the attention of their club without significant response.
“Linking arm-in-arm in forming a circle-- we had all of the subs leave the bench and come out and join us, which typically during the run of play, you're not allowed to do,” Huster says. “We wanted everyone to be able to take part in that, forming a circle. It seemed like you just couldn't break us-- I think that’s what the sentiment was supposed to relay.”
Fans joined in with the sentiment, standing with signs declaring “Believe players” and “No more silence.”
NWSL commissioner Lisa Baird stepped down on Oct. 1 and was replaced by interim CEO Marla Messing, and the NWSLPA began writing a list of demands that they wanted the league to meet.
One demand included an independent investigation into every club, coach, owner, general manager, and Board of Governors representative to determine whether any abuse had occurred, in the past or currently; another expanded the investigation into the league office to determine whether anyone in a position of power had neglected to address any known abuse. The NWSLPA also demanded that their representatives have a voice in selecting the next NWSL commissioner.
"Each of these demands is seen by the players as one set closer to the goals of taking our league back," Huster told CBSSports.
On Oct. 29, a month after the original Athletic article broke, the NWSLPA announced via Twitter that the NWSL had met all eight of the demands and would remain in communication with the NWSLPA about the next steps, moving forward.
Huster reflects on her hopes for these demands and the legacy that her work as NWSLPA president might leave on the league:
"I was actually on a call with young women from the Girls Academy League a couple of nights ago, and one of the girls asked me what my biggest accomplishment is with the Players Association. There are so many things that I probably could say, but what I want to say is that our ability to come together so quickly, after Meg Linehan's article broke, to quickly figure out a way to have a show of solidarity for the following games after having games postponed and players having so many different emotions-- they were angry, they were scared for the league. We're having the commissioner step down, we're not sure exactly where things are going to go. Then we're having six teams play a midweek game."
“But coming together so quickly, having all of those discussions, being dog tired, exhausted, but being able to do that at the six-minute mark to honor Mana, Sinead, players who have spoken up, a really courageous and brave of them to do, but now empowering other players to do so. All of that-- then also being intentional about our list of eight demands that we sent to the league-- it's the biggest accomplishment of the Players Association, and I'm honored to have been a part of those discussions.”
"I am not the loudest one in the room, but I will try to observe everyone in the room and how they're feeling about things," Huster says. "I can sometimes get caught in my own head, in my own realities, but I really want to leave the league a better place and a better situation for players that have the same dreams and hopes that I did. I know that I'm not going to benefit from a lot of the work that I'm doing right now-- and I'm okay with that. I think that's how it should be.”
What Now & What’s Next
Tori Huster scored in her 150th appearance for the Washington Spirit on August 13, 2021, in a 2-2 away tie against the Houston Dash. Her 150-plus appearances were honored that Halloween, at a 1-0 home victory against the Dash-- over eight years after being drafted in the NWSL’s founding season and two days after the NWSL agreed to meet the NWSLPA’s eight demands.
Nearly a decade of NWSL play for Huster, with league changes still to come.
Collective bargaining talks continue, and the Washington Spirit’s ownership remains in flux, with fans bearing “Sell the team, Steve” signs at games. At the Spirit’s first 2021 playoff game, the Spirit Squadron supporters group handed out stickers bearing the NWSLPA logo and reading #NoMoreSilence. At the Portland Thorns’ playoff match-up against the Red Stars, supporters chanted, “you knew, you knew,” and released smoke at the 24th minute to recognize Shim and Farrelly’s numbers.
What comes next is, in part, still in motion.
The Spirit headed into the 2021 NWSL playoffs with forward Ashley Hatch as the league’s Golden Boot winner and four players on the NWSL October Team of the Month-- including two NWSLPA players reps for the Spirit: Hatch and goalkeeper Aubrey Bledsoe.
The team finished third in the NWSL regular season table and, with the exception of two games forfeited due to breach of COVID-19 protocols, haven’t lost since August under the direction of interim head coach Kris Ward. A turbulent season, over several months, began to crystalize into a championship run.
A quarterfinal match-up between the Spirit and the North Carolina Courage went into overtime, tied 0-0 after 90 minutes of key saves by both teams' goalkeepers. Huster, who subbed into the midfield at halftime, helped drive the Spirit's chances but fell in-stride on a through ball at the 98-minute mark, seeming to turn her ankle.
Trainers and head coach Ward came onto the field as Huster held her leg; they helped carry her off, and Anna Heilferty subbed on. Players jogged over to pat Huster’s arm and shoulder as she left the pitch.
Hatch would put away a goal in the 113th minute off a deflected shot from Trinity Rodman, sending the Spirit into the semifinals.
There was no conclusive word on the severity of Huster’s injury until Nov. 13, when Huster tweeted that she had torn her Achilles and would have surgery the next week.
“An injury at such a critical point in the season and in my career is devastating, as you can imagine,” Huster tweeted. Then, her focus turned towards the Spirit’s semifinal game, scheduled for the next day against the OL Reign: “While I can’t wait to take the field again, I also cannot wait to watch the team play tomorrow… I hope, with everything, I’m there to watch them in Louisville.”
Well wishes quickly populated in the replies to her tweet, with messages from fans, coaches, and fellow players hoping for her quick recovery. A Twitter user, @JJCooper24 with “#NoMoreSideHustles” included in their profile picture, said, "You've got this. Can't wait to see you back on the field but your leadership can still shine just as bright off it!" @Annaleman73: "Nothing but respect and admiration to you as a player but especially as the amazing person you are. Wishing you a speedy recovery." Brien Kinkel, user @AbuZeina: “Wishing you a speedy and complete recovery, Madam President.”
A user with the players association logo as a profile picture, Paul O’Brien, or @DashFanIRL, tweeted, in addition to wishes for a strong recovery: “Thank you Tori for everything you have given this sport, this league, this club, and us fans. This season and all the ones before.”
And the next day-- goals from Trinity Rodman and Ashley Sanchez booked the Washington Spirit a ticket to their second-ever NWSL final. They’ll face off against the Chicago Red Stars on Saturday, Nov. 20, in Louisville at the Lynn Family Stadium.
The Chicago Red Stars-- the same team that Huster and the Spirit beat to win their first-ever home victory back in 2013. After all this time, Huster’s here for the rematch.
Though Huster may not play in this final, she remains a fundamental part of the team, on and off the field. She holds the record for most caps with the Spirit and is the only remaining player on the roster from the Spirit’s 2016 runner-up squad.
Off the field, Huster still enjoys her coffee-- especially Australian coffee-- and works as an ambassador for St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital to help raise money and awareness for their work to combat childhood cancer.
The game of soccer both looks different and remarkably familiar for Huster, compared to 2016, to 2013, to growing up playing in Cincinnati, focused on just her training and gameplay. There’s more to the game now, for her.
“I think so much of soccer has taken a backseat to me as an athlete… in what could potentially be a few of my last years in my career,” Huster says. “I think that sometimes if I get caught up in it too much, I'm like, you know, ‘I just want to go back to being an athlete,’ but I think I am called to serve in this way. It is, most days, most times, okay with me.”
"I think in some of these other things that I'm doing off the field, it makes being on the field that much sweeter because I know that there's so much work that needs to be done, but at the end of the day, we've all come here for the same thing, which is to play. And we are so good-- these players are amazing, and we hope to be able to showcase that in what will hopefully become the world stage at some point with more media, more sponsorships. Let's get that going. I'm excited. I'm excited to have been a part of it, even if I'm not here for when we have that bigger stage."
When the 2021 season ends-- with a Spirit victory, or otherwise-- its impacts will linger far beyond scores, results, and championships for Huster and the NWSLPA. The association’s work to address long-standing problems will continue, paving the way for a more player-driven league.
"I think that if we [the players, the NWSLPA] are able to empower other people to speak up… if we can be very transparent and honest about that process, individually, and as a collective, I think that gives other people the courage to do the same in whatever walk of life that they are living."
"We're going to be able to get things done that we could never have imagined before… because we're not worried about the league crumbling down, because we know that we are the league.”
Photography by Diana Hernandez.
