On July 7, Alyssa Farrell, 24, a nursing student from Wantagh, will join at least 8,000 other football fans around the world who have pledged to kick a ball in a social-distance virtual football game run by three other Long Islanders called Sell Out The Stadium.
At Point O’Woods Day Camp on Fire Island, Nicholas Perillo, 28, the Field Manager, will lead the campers through an hour of soccer drills as part of the event. And Ali Kucera, 28, of Smithtown, will meet one of the event’s founders, Shannon Fay, 27, at Fay’s parents in Sayville. “We’re going to walk around for about an hour,” Kucera says. “It’s such a great idea.”
Fay is one of a trio of women who run a business called SoccerGrlProbs, short for Soccer Girl Problems; the others are Carly Bayer, 28, and Alanna Locast, 30. “When the coronavirus arrived, it canceled a lot of girls’ seasons,” says Locast. “A lot of girls feel lost without their team, without sports.”
She says Sell Out The Stadium, which asks people to commit to socially distant exercise or family games in their backyards between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m. on July 7, “is our way of getting it all out. the world and remembering the sport that brings them so much happiness. ”They want participants to log on to Instagram, TikTok and other social media platforms and post pictures of themselves with the hashtag # selloutthestadium.
AIMING TO MAKE A DIFFERENCE
SoccerGrlsProbs was launched in 2011, after the three Long Islanders met as college football teammates at Fairfield University in Connecticut. They started tweeting funny laments and posting humorous YouTube videos about being a soccer player with the hashtag #soccergrlprobs. It has become a professional enterprise aimed at empowering girls and women ages 12-24; women have 325,000 Instagram followers and 54 million minutes viewed on their YouTube channel.
SoccerGrlProbs now includes a new book due out August 4th titled ‘The Ladyballer’s Guide to the Life’, with a foreword written by acclaimed female footballer Brandi Chastain, a weekly sports podcast hosted by women, fitness classes in online, summer football camps and selling products and t-shirts with sayings such as “I can’t, I have football”.
Ideally, they should sell the stadium to raise $ 20,000 to donate to charity and have 59,700 participants. They chose July 7 because it’s the first anniversary of the United States women’s national team’s World Cup victory in France last year, and they set an ambitious goal of 59,700 participants because that is the number of seats in the stadium on that day. More than 8,000 have signed up to date, including 500 from Long Island, Bayer said.
Registration on selloutthestadium.com is free, but if people choose to donate, they will receive exclusive Nike Dri-Fit merchandise in return, Bayer said. The effort so far has raised $ 10,000 which will be donated to the Black Lives Matter Global Network, No Kid Hungry, Women’s Sports Foundation and To Write Love On Her Arms, a nonprofit that helps people struggling with drug addiction, depression and suicidal thoughts, women say.
Alyssa Francese, a member of the Stony Brook University women’s soccer team, says she is trying to organize as many of the 31 members as possible to spend their hour together. “I try to make it as important a thing as possible in our team,” said Francese. “I think it will definitely be fun.” While Francese, 21, a rising senior, lives in Westchester, she says other teammates come from other countries, including Norway, Germany and Trinidad and Tobago.
Farrell says she will be reuniting with three friends she is training with to play at Cedar Creek Park in Seaford. She says she donated $ 30 and will receive a Sell Stadium t-shirt. “We’re just planning to shoot, keeping enough distance between us,” she said. “It’s a great way to bring together people who have a common love and interest. “
Beth Whitehouse writes about families, parenting, and the good things to do with kids on Long Island. She was the editor of Newsday and shared a Newsday Staff Pulitzer Prize in 1997 for coverage of the TWA Flight 800 crash.
