The Nebraska Women’s Athletic Leadership Alliance (NWALA) is helping women all around Nebraska achieve their goals and dreams.
The NWALA award ceremony took place at SET The Bar sports bar on Monday.
Founded in 2023 by president Jacque Tevis-Butler, NWALA’s goal is to multiply the number of women working in the sports field in leadership roles in Nebraska while also teaching them skills to stay in their positions and help mentor young female athletes. They serve coaches, officials, athletic directors, assistant athletic directors and assistant coaches at all levels in the school system.
Tevis-Butler grew up playing sports, then began her coaching career after graduating college. She has coached for 33 years so far, with the last 28 leading Millard West’s girls soccer team. She said that after doing some research about female coaches and a presentation on Title IX, she found that the number of female coaches had decreased, and she wanted to change that narrative.
“In doing the research, one stat came up that really shocked me,” Tevis-Butler told Hurrdat Sports. “And it was, back in 1970, 90% of all the coaches of girls teams were women, or women’s teams at the collegiate level, but by 2022, that was 42%. Based on my experience here locally, I’m like, ‘Well, that can’t be much different here in the state of Nebraska,’ and I just started to do some more research.
“I want to leave this profession in a better spot than it was when I arrived, and in 2023, I met with nine other women, our founders, and off we went.”
The process of finding other women to help create this organization started with Tevis-Butler contacting local coaches by email. From there, they met at a bar and began to formulate their idea.
“We met at DJ’s Dugout, I think it was June of 2023, and next thing you know, we’re like ‘Yeah, we can do some things to support women in athletics,’” Tevis-Butler said.
One of the nine founding members is former professional soccer player and current Omaha Central head soccer coach Jen Gillespie. She played her collegiate career at Old Dominion from 1995 to 1998 then played professionally for the Hampton Roads Piranhas of the USL W-League from 1998 to 2001. She also coached high school soccer and served as an Olympic development coach throughout her entire professional career. After moving back to Omaha, she coached club soccer for the Bellevue Soccer Club, Omaha United and SOFC before accepting an assistant coaching position at Omaha Central in 2020. She served in this role from 2020 to 2022 before transitioning to the head coach in 2023.
While playing collegiate and professional soccer, Gillespie had female coaches and referees for the first time in her career. She said that this had a huge impact on her, and that she wanted to bring this to Nebraska.
“I came back here and I was like, ‘Where are the females?’” Gillespie said. “Where are the female coaches? Where are the female referees? Where are the female athletic directors? So that’s where this was born.”
Another part of NWALA is its mentoring program. People within the program can choose to be mentors or mentees and work with coaches, assistants, athletic directors and student athletes. Tevis-Butler said that the mentors and mentees connect at least once a month with one another.
“We send out a monthly reminder like, ‘Time to connect if you haven’t,’” Tevis-Butler said. “We want you to talk for 30 minutes once a month. You can meet however you want to meet — phone, text, whatever the case may be. So we made it really flexible.”
As the industry grows, more women are starting careers in sports. Tevis-Butler believes that connecting with others is a great way to break into the field.
“One, know your why,” Tevis-Butler said. “If it’s about just simply winning, that’s probably not going to be very sustainable. But number two, as a woman, the first thing to do, build your network. And it doesn’t just need to be women. You need to find mentors and sponsors, especially if you want to advance.”
With the rise of women’s athletics, Gillespie said that she’s proud of all that the organization has done for women in sports.
“I’m just super grateful that we’ve gotten to this moment here in Nebraska,” Gillespie said. “It’s been a long time coming, and it’s taken a lot of very strong women. As I look over my shoulder, the people that I’ve been dealing with the last two years to get this baby off and running, mad respect. I couldn’t be any more proud.”
As for the organization’s future goals, Tevis-Butler said that she wants to expand NWALA to help women get all the services that they possibly can.
“One of the things I learned in this whole journey was there’s a lot of information out there that sort of opens your eyes, and I want to connect women to that information,” Tevis-Butler said. “Sometimes we just plow our way through, we put the blinders on, and we don’t really understand or comprehend what’s happening. So that’s one.
“Two, there are a lot of ways to do that. There are other organizations out there, We Coach for instance, The Tucker Center in Minnesota, that provide a lot of support for women. One of my goals is hopefully in the very near future, we can bring those organizations here to do coaching symposiums or clinics.”
The NWALA will continue to work to help expand women’s roles in sports, with hopes of growing its brand to help make a difference in the lives of young women.
