GM Lesle Gallimore Introductory Press Conference • Tuesday, June 6, 2023
OL Reign Introductory Press Conference • Tuesday, June 6, 2023
General Manager Lesle Gallimore
Opening remarks:
“Well, first and foremost, thanks for coming. This has been a heck of a week for me, hasn’t even been a week yet, actually. It’s been an exciting time. Many of you around town know me from the University of Washington, where I was for 26 years. I ended my time there in 2019 and since then I’ve been working as the commissioner of the Girls Academy – a 13,000 girl league, which our OL Reign Academy participates in. I am so thrilled to be in this position and I just wanted to take the time to thank the OL Groupe and (OL Reign CEO) Vincent (Berthillot) and the search committee for reaching out and really being transparent about everything about this position. A lot of people would think, kind of a no brainer, but it’s interesting time to come to the club in the middle of the season, etc. I’m thrilled to be here. I can hopefully be a part of their winning ways and have an impact. I’m very familiar with the club from day one, since they started in the NWSL with (Reign founders) Bill and Teresa (Predmore) back in the days of Memorial Stadium and it’s just been fun to watch the evolution from playing at Memorial to being down in Tacoma, the OL purchase, the movement to Lumen, now at Starfire, there’s just been so much progress. I think sometimes we lose sight of the progress by just kind of living in the moment and everything in this club that’s happened has been a forward movement, in my opinion. So, I’m excited to be a part of that. I think it’s a fun time to be able to support the team and support the technical staff in their quest to win a championship. To be a part of a club that’s already won the Shield three times, you know you’re coming into a situation where the expectations are very high and I’m here to try to live up to their expectations of me in this role. So, again, I’m thrilled to be here and to work with everybody in the organization, the people I’ve met so far that I didn’t know previously are outstanding, they’re passionate about this group and I know the city of Seattle is passionate about this team and this club and it’s my intention to increase that awareness about the club even more and build an even bigger community and fan base around this group, which I don’t think will be the most difficult thing, they’re already in a really good place.”
On what convinced her to take the role and if it was a difficult decision with the club being for sale:
“I think people would think it would be a difficult decision because of that. I don’t know if I misspoke, but it wasn’t a difficult decision for me. So, for me, the timing was right, it was at the end of year three with the Girls Academy and I’ve put in a lot of tireless hours with a great group of people to start that league and get it to where it is. I think they’re going to do great with a new form of leadership and I don’t think without those three years under my belt, just coming out of 34 years of college coaching, that I was necessarily ready for a general manager job, but I had been reached out to before by other clubs – I didn’t think the timing was right, for me, personally. I wasn’t overly enamored by where the league was a couple years ago, to be fair, so that was one of the tipping points and the timing being perfect for me, to be honest, towards the end of the (Girls Academy) GA season and at a point where I feel the league is doing great things and really improving the environment for players, upping the standard of hires and just expectations and policies in place – the CBA, the fight for players to be in a position to be true professionals. So, it was a little bit of a no brainer for me and being home is the icing on the cake, to be honest, but it wasn’t the only reason; I believe in this club, and I really am passionate about professional sports in this city and sports in this city in general. So, the sale piece was one that I didn’t really think about too much, in that I do feel comfortable that regardless of what happens, this club will stay in Seattle – not guaranteeing that, but I have that feeling. Seattle is a soccer city, and this club has done well and this is a market where a professional team should be. So, for me, it’s an interesting time – the sale, middle of the season, World Cup – you go with those three things, it’s just an interesting time to plop yourself into a GM role, but I’ve been on the job for, if you count the weekend, maybe take Sunday out, five days and I feel great about my decision and hopefully, the club feels the same way.”
On if the club being for sale makes her job more difficult and if players will be hesitant to re-sign because of the uncertainty:
“I’ve been here five days. I haven’t felt that at all and during my interview time, I did interview with the players – these players are professional and to be honest, that part never came up – it was, how is someone going to come into this role with a general manager having been missing since March when (former OL Reign general manager) Nick Perera departed to just coming in in the middle of their season, they want to high perform today. Of course, there’s the future, but being here five days, I can’t tell you anything specifically about how players are feeling. I know they’re dedicated to winning. They’re pros and they’re being paid to win and they want to be in a situation where everything around them is supporting their efforts on the field and that’s my intention, to figure out where I can fill gaps, where I can help the staff that’s been working kind of tirelessly over the last few months to pick up maybe where we’re missing a couple spots. But their intention and my intention is to be in the moment with how the technical staff and the players are preparing each week. So yeah, I think it’s a fun challenge, is how I look at it.”
On what she was told about the stability of the club in the interview process and if she communicated with Perera beforehand:
“I did not communicate with Nick and as far as the sale is concerned, I think, again, I’ve been here five days and questions about the sale should go to the OL Groupe themselves. Those aren’t conversations I’m in. As far as that piece of it with the search firm and with Vincent and with (OL head of international women’s football) Sophie Sauvage, who, more Sophie than Vincent, I had dealings with before because of the academy, so we talked youth soccer and some other things, so I had a prior relationship and I felt they were extremely up front and transparent with me about that piece of it and it wasn’t one that deterred me at all. They’re committed, they’ve invested, they’ve developed this club. I think that any specific questions would have to go to them, but the questions I had were answered during the interview process and I felt really comfortable that they were up front with me about what they knew and what they know to be the process moving forward.”
On what her mission is to bring players from the youth academy to the first team:
“(OL Reign Academy executive director) Amy Griffin has a done a tremendous job with the youth academy and I’ve seen it firsthand. I’ve known Amy for close to 40 years now and we worked together 24 of my 26 years at the University of Washington. She’s the executive director and when COVID hit and U.S. Soccer dropped the development academy for girls and boys, the boys fell into the lap of the MLS Next and the girls were left to twist in the wind. I watched Amy’s club go from several hundred kids to 15 overnight during a pandemic when no one was playing soccer because outside clubs, out of fear, prayed on parents and kids saying that the club was going to fold and that no one was playing soccer, so I watched Amy tirelessly rebuild her club and they’re upwards of 300-400 players now, two teams deep in every age group. So, it’s been a build and I’ve watched it and I’ve watched how much progress she has made in a short period of time. Some of those 15 kids that stayed were some of their top-end players that are now seniors leaving and freshmen that are in college, playing the likes of Portland and UCLA, etc. and there’s going to be a big connection between the first team and the academy. I think, if you speak to Amy, which I think everyone should at some point because she’s a wealth of information and unbelievable at what she does is that she has so many great ideas about what it means to actually develop a player. When you talk about youth soccer – I’ve been in the midst of it for three years, in my room, that was my job every day – working remotely on trying to run [the GA] and trying to hold academy directors to standards of coaching and more importantly for girls, the environment that they’re in and whether it’s safe, whether it’s educational and that they’re being treated as people first and players second and there’s no better example of how that is done to perfection than Amy. The quality and competitiveness of their clubs is growing overtime and that’s what the rebuild has been for her and the competition in the state for players, but there’s absolutely an intention to develop kids to be able to interact with, see the role models, be pushed up to first team training when called upon, which they have in the past and to continue to have them, firsthand, be able to feel what it’s like to be a professional.”
On working with head coach Laura Harvey:
“I think I was one of the first people Laura met when she came to the states. (San Diego Wave FC President) Jill Ellis had told me about her and recommended that I tell Bill and Teresa about her. They made contact and they hired her, and I met her at the convention in January of that first season and we sat down and had a chat and hit it off really quickly. I think some people would come in and if – Laura and I had a mutual respect for each other as coaches, for sure, we played the community shields, we played against (USWNT head coach) Vlatko (Andonovski), too, when I was at UW and I just want professional soccer for women in this country to succeed and for sure in the city of Seattle. I think that Vincent and Sophie and maybe players, I don’t know, would have the concern about me coming in and maybe being too familiar or having more of a friendship than a working relationship and it’s just not the case. I think Laura and I have such a love of the game and a mutual respect for one another that it’s very simple for the two of us to have difficult conversations, it’s really simple for us to have a differing opinion from one another but all for the reason of trying to do what’s best for the club and the individual players, so we’re thrilled. I think we’re both really excited and just in the few days that I’ve been on the job and the times that Laura and I’ve had interactions and the same with Vincent and the rest of the staff is, it’s just clear that the people are here – look at this group of players in particular, three of whom have been here since the beginning of time of the club and we all just really want to do what’s best by them and that takes professionalism and a sense of what your role is here in the club and I know what my role is and it’s to help build the roster and to help the support staff have clarity in their roles that support the first team. I think Laura’s confidence in me means a lot to me and I think she knows I have confidence in her, so I think it’s just a great combination of mutual respect where we can be a great team. It’s fun. I’m super excited about it.”
On her missing being around soccer and working from home for the last three years:
“One of the last times I saw Laura was at the U20 World Cup in 2020 – not saw her, I’ve seen her since then a little bit, but one of the last times that I was out doing soccer work, I had left UW in 2019 and in February/March, I was at the World Cup in the Dominican Republic for the U20s, Laura was the head coach and I was consulting for Concacaf and they won Concacaf. We left there, I went to do a coaching license in Florida and two days later, we all got called home because of the pandemic. I was still doing coaching education for U.S. Soccer, so I was doing A licenses, which were primarily remote up until last year, almost like 90 percent. So yeah, my room office, where I ran the Girls Academy, I wasn’t on the field with players, I wasn’t socializing in a work manner with people in person, face to face daily, I wasn’t out on the field and that was a big drop off for me, to be honest. From coaching for 34 years and being around players and coaches and coaching education to just, kind of cold turkey and then have it feel like when the pandemic started to end and things started to open up, I was still home. I didn’t meet my four employees until seven months into my job, the four people that ended up working with me when had an event and I’d only see them in person when we had events, so the majority of my job was done online. Thankfully for Amy and the OL Reign group, I could go out to their practices once in a while or to their fixtures and watch a game and then events would be about every other month, so I was traveling some, to events. But, the day to day, in person, with people, on the field, in the game, I missed greatly and I would say that, for me, especially in the last year, I lost my mother about a little bit over a year ago and that kind of isolation, for anyone that’s ever had severe grief, you understand that it gets compounded and I would say that this last year, even in the Academy, as grueling as the work is and as impactful and exhilarating as it was to help with a start-up league, for me, personally, I needed to get out and about because I just wasn’t used to being that isolated, to be honest. I think there’s a lot people that thrive, working 100 percent remotely, I am not one of them. So, I think this has, for all kinds of reasons, been great timing for me. It just so happens that it’s my mother’s birthday today, she would’ve been 84 and I know at 82, almost 83, before she passed, she worked up until a week before she passed away. She was a hospital administrator for 65 years and ran convalescent homes and there was nobody that was a bigger fan or champion of mine and my life devoted to the game than my mother and so today, it’s perfect, it really is. It’s just perfect timing and meant to be, in a lot of ways. The challenge of it and the day to day and kind of things in soccer that feel like an emergency are fun to me because I’ve seen it and I’m really just excited to get started with the club and get off the TV and off the video and work and be the team behind the team, not in front of the team.”
On being approached about general manager positions in the past and if she was ever approached about an OL Reign general manager position in the past:
“No. This was the first time that I was approached, by the search committee on this one. I will go back and say even during the pandemic and right when I had left UW, there were a couple that were open that I did speak to people about who approached me, there were some international national team jobs that were available overseas that I was approached about to continue coaching. My mom was still living in southern California at the time and working and the pandemic and her job, I mean, the fact that she never got COVID was crazy, working in a convalescent home at 82, 83, but I just didn’t feel like moving away any further than I already am from Seattle to Los Angeles was the right thing to do. I also don’t think I was energized enough to start something yet and I mentioned before, I wasn’t enamored with where the league was, to be fair, and that sort of came true. I think the reckoning in this league over the last 12,15 months, whatever it has been now, has really shown me that the players and their voices, which we talk about a lot in the Girls Academy, and their bravery and their ability to find other people and allies to stand by them in creating policy and change and safeguarding that is what they deserve, is really cool to be a part of now. I feel great being a part of this league for that reason.”
On if she would’ve explored general manager opportunities outside of Seattle or if this was convenient:
“It is a big piece of it. It certainly makes it convenient, but I would also say that the knowledge of this club is a piece of that, too. Laura having been here before and come back, watching the progression of the club, as I mentioned before, over the last 10 to 11 years has been fun to see and this is home to me. I care about this club specifically. Some of the other roles – compelling but not compelling enough for me to relocate at the time I was approached. So yeah, I’m hopeful that I wasn’t the convenient hire, I don’t think I was, but it certainly, like I said before, I think it was meant to be and I’ve been humbled by the enthusiasm around the announcement.”
On the future and her thought on where she wants the club to go regarding player signings:
“So, what did I say this was, my fourth day? Obviously, it’s a big discussion – the priority, more importantly right now. I mean there’s obviously priorities with the roster and the future build out and looking at what the length of the contracts are, who is performing, having discussions with the technical staff and what we see down the line being important to the club and the build out, but the World Cup is also an important time in being in the middle of the season and making sure that national team replacement players are in place sooner than later is important, so we’re working on that. As far as specifics to the roster, it’s not that I won’t give them, but I don’t have enough details right now because I’ve only been on the job technically three weekdays. So, we can come back to that, here, over the next bit and we can certainly talk more about what the roster is going to look like. I have a pretty clear idea in my head of where we are and I know this club, having won the Shield three times, wants to continue to compete for Shields and most importantly for NWSL Championships, so what that looks like is what we’ll be talking about just about every day. My first big meeting on the current roster and where we are with numbers and where the contracts are and free agency and all of that is tomorrow.”
On the lessons she is taking with her from the Girls Academy to this role:
“So many, I can’t even tell you. The managerial job, just the word manager, so as Commissioner of the league, I feel as though managing people during the pandemic was a challenge for everybody, managing four new people that you’ve never met and worked with them over Zoom, trying to start something that was a huge risk, it was so much hard work over the last three years for all of us, but it was work we were all aligned in with the passion to make it happen for these kids, so we never really lost sight of that. So, for me, I feel like every bit of the job that I did with the board, with the club directors, with the players in that league and with my staff was culminated in me being way more prepared for this job than I ever would have been coming out of UW as a coach. From dealing with the standards of the game, the safeguarding piece for 13,000 kids, trying to manage budgets, trying to make sure that the standards withing the league were upheld and without being in every single club environment, making sure, again, that kids were safe and being protected while they’re playing youth soccer is probably one of the most difficult tasks we all have in this country, in youth sports, is taking on that responsibility. So, partnerships with the league, convincing people that we were worth it to partner with was another challenge that we had. So, everything I did over the last three years with the group I did it with was a lesson for me. I started the league, telling them my mantra has always been, ‘There’s no such thing as a soccer emergency,’ and coming out of the pandemic, the first event we were able to have was in February in Round Rock, Texas, and I don’t know if you all remember, 2021 in Round Rock, Texas, the power grid of all of the state of Texas went out. Well, that was in our first event, so I may have been curled up in a ball in my room texting my director of ops saying, ‘OK, there might be emergencies in soccer.’ There’s no potable water, there’s no energy, there are families of 15 moving into this hotel where we are right now, it feels kind of emergent. She laughed, but once we were kind of out of the clear, things only went up from there. So, if we could pull that off, we felt like we were on the right track to kind of put our stake on the ground as a league. I’m just really proud of the work we were all able to do during that time, but it absolutely prepared me for everything that has to do with management within the game of soccer – from networking with people, negotiating with people, making sure that fiscally, you’re responsible, there are so many pieces to it. At the end of the day, it all revolves around the players and putting them in an environment where they can perform at their best.”
On how she’ll make sure that players of color are really supported in the environment:
“We talk about this in our league a lot and we have a long way to go. I just think we have a long way to go in this country in general, in sport, in life, we just do. I’ve always taken the approach that, particularly someone of my experience and wisdom, we’ll put it that way, I’ve been around a little bit, is that I just listen. I really try to be someone who listens and takes the time to learn, myself. I try to make sure that the work that needs to be done to educate myself and to educate others is not the burden of someone who shouldn’t be doing the educating. So, in the league, we’ve talked about that a lot as well. I would tell you that over the last three years, I sat on the Equity Action Committee with a player group, an academy director group from (Major League Soccer) MLS and what a great group of people. I live for those Zooms every week because I was just able to hear shared stories from people who have faced challenges their whole life because of the color of their skin. I would say that it would probably be in my top 5 takeaways was being a part of that group. It was formed right after George Floyd and I’ve tried as much as I can to be a part of change. So, for this group and even the club and the staff and everything else, it’s going to be something that we look at from a hiring policies process to what the representation is across the board in the club and how people are treated on a daily basis. But it goes back to what I said originally, it’s just having my ears and eyes open and being willing to learn, myself, and trying to call out what’s not right when I see it.”
On what she is most looking forward to:
“I think just continuing to evolve and take the standards to a higher level. We talked about, after the OL purchase, getting to Lumen, coming back from Tacoma and also now being in Starfire and having their own training facility, which they didn’t really have, the Sounders moving to Longacres so being able to takeover more of the space and the build out and what that looks like and more importantly, just the continued professionalization of all of it. To be fair, not just within the club, but also, it’s going to be great to be a voice in the room on some of the committees within the NWSL. The good news about my commissioner role at the GA is that I’ve been able to interact already with (NWSL Commissioner) Jessica Berman and (NWSL Chief Marketing Officer) Tatjana Haenni and (NWSL Director of Player Affairs) Steph Lee, those are people that I’ve known from the past and I have relationships, as well as a lot of the GMs, the majority of the GMs are people that I know from the game and just being around, so we’re all really, I think as much as everyone wants to compete and win and it is becoming an extremely competitive from club to club and attracting players and the things you have and the people you hire and the structure within your club, all those things, you have to keep up or you’re going to get left behind. But I think the most important thing is to be in a room with people, even though they’re competitive to win games on the day and try to win the league is, we’re all very much in it for the greater good of the game, for women in this country and for the league, so it’s really fun to be a part of this group. My first day, I was already on a GM call and I don’t think I said anything, I listened, primarily, but I might’ve made a couple jokes to some friends that were on the call, but I’m excited for the next one because I think there’s a lot of policy and a lot of the things, again, with the newer Commissioner, that they’re looking at and it’ll just be great to be in the room to be able to help strategize around what’s best for the league.”
On how important it is for her to work for a club that values Pride and uses its voice for good:
“Extremely important, yeah. I just think that inclusivity it’s, to me, just shocking to me that the opposite of inclusive is exclusive and why in this world would we ever want to be exclusive to anyone for any reason? So, it’s been that way in this club from the beginning and it’s extremely meaningful, not just to me personally, but to the people I know who have struggled to find inclusive environments. So to be a part of one that is, for any player that’s ever rostered here, you don’t keep everyone forever, so if they leave, they retire or they go to play for another club or they’re a trialist or you draft them and you don’t sign them, our goal, my goal, is for every player that steps into this locker room or into this club feels like they were treated equally to everyone else for whatever reason.”
On scouting players abroad:
“We have a few internationals on our roster already and the World Cup is this summer, so I’ll be watching closely and I do think there are diamonds in the rough and I also think there are big-name players that will be really attracted to the NWSL as they start to notice, with the exception of a couple leagues, ours probably has more parity from top to bottom, so regardless of what team you play on, you’re playing a really high level match, every fixture, every week as opposed to maybe waiting for those two or three that are really, really challenging. The women’s league in England is obviously probably one that’s starting to – they’re getting bigger crowds. It’s done really, really well but still from top to bottom, it has a little bit of growth to do, as far as the teams being more competitive from top to bottom, but all of it’s great. Whatever country – women’s leagues starting in African nations, women’s league starting in the Middle East, women’s league starting in Canada – maybe. So, it’s just exciting to me. I think this player movement domestically, player movement internationally is what we want. I’m going to work really hard to, I wouldn’t say re-educate myself but jump back in to the thick of it. I’ve always been a fan. I’ve always been a coach. I’ve always been someone who has watched with a critical eye of players that are on the rise. I was supposed to probably go to the World Cup this summer, I’m still debating whether to use some of my tickets and go or just to make sure I’m watching that games that I think potentially have players for the future for this club. It’s just a really exciting time. The more opportunities for women to play the game wherever professionally or just to play the game, even as amateurs, is a positive. I’ve been in this game my entire life and there’s people in the moment that are always, at times, trying to find the negative or just sort of the hot topic and I just kind of giggle because you have to always look back at where it started and where it is now and it’s so fun that we can have these conversations because the growth of this sport has been one of the great joys of my life to watch, since I’ve played.
On her responsibilities:
“Right now, the group that I’ll be overseeing is the medical group and then the first team, the first team staff, as well as the operational staff. So, that group is in my charge and I obsess sometimes about org charts and reporting lines, but I think as this club has evolved and continues to evolve, it’s probably one of the things I’m most excited about is getting in here and figuring out how we actually operate on a daily basis and how that way of operating is positive for the players and how that way of operating maybe hinders them or just doesn’t tick all the boxes for them to be able to just got about their business of taking care of themselves and performing on game day and to make everything around them, not easier because what they do is really hard, but to move any obstacles out of the way that they shouldn’t have to be seeing on a daily basis or experiencing and again, to just make them feel like professionals. There is still a long way to go with everything in this league and the CBA was a big step forward so now that that’s in place, what’s the next step – the salary caps, the buy-in for the league, the expansion, the prize money for certain things and their ability for multiple people on rosters to be able to get their own personal sponsorships, just the professionalization of women sports. So, I mentioned it before, the exciting thing for me is to just get on the train of taking it forward and all those things that are out there for this sport that are there for the taking. From an organizational standpoint, we want to be an elite club, not just in the NWSL, but an elite club in the world. The American women and the U.S. in general has been at the forefront of this sport since the beginning and we have been the example for a lot of other countries and people like to talk about how we’ve been caught or they’re catching up and we’ll see how the World Cup goes. Again, all of that is great, but here in the U.S. and our league, we’re going to try and get the best players we can from wherever they come from to make this the league that people want to be in.”
Download here: GM Lesle Gallimore Introductory Press Conference • Tuesday, June 6, 2023