U.S. NATIONAL TEAM TRAINING CENTER (Fayetteville, Ga.) – The epiphany came to Emma Hayes about a decade ago.
She was well into her coaching tenure at Chelsea and her team had just lost to rivals Arsenal, 1-0, in the 2016 FA Cup final at Wembley Stadium.
When Hayes talks about this moment, she explains the Gunners deserved to win that game. What she couldn’t see at the time – but very clearly understands now – is why her players were so off that day. Their reaction times were slower than normal and their coordination was like “watching a group of people that looked separated from their bodies,” Hayes recently told a small group of reporters at the U.S. Soccer National Training Center near Atlanta.
“I remember in the middle of the game thinking, ‘What’s wrong with them?’” Hayes continued. “‘Is it their nerves?’”
Emma Hayes and the U.S. women’s national team. (Photo by Georgia Soares/USSF/Getty Images)
Hayes later learned her players were at different points in their menstrual cycles and that, in some cases, those hormonal fluctuations were affecting their performance. She was at a loss. “Why don’t I know these things?” she asked herself.
Brain fog, fluid retention, inflammation, cramping, pelvic floor issues – these are things women know all too well. This caused Hayes to think about her own body – she’s been open about her endometriosis diagnosis – and how little she really knew. In her players’ case, they were navigating this while trying to compete at the highest level.
“We’re asking players to perform in a culture that says, ‘Oh, you’ve got a period? Sit out,’” Hayes said. “I was like, ‘It’s not good enough. We don’t want to sit out.”
Since then, Hayes has made it her life’s work to normalize conversations around women’s health and transform what was once treated as a taboo topic into a superpower.
Through her own research, she discovered there is no degree devoted solely on female physiology. If she wanted to truly understand women’s bodies, she would have to build that education herself – seeking out scientists, former players, coaches and other like-minded people who were asking the same questions.
So she did.
The result is an entire ecosystem – first at Chelsea and now as the U.S. women’s national team manager – created around putting the female lens “at the heart of everything we do.”
Part of the end goal is that this contributes to developing a team to win. The Americans are preparing for the 2027 World Cup in Brazil and then the Olympics on home soil in 2028. The squad is currently in the middle of an international window – they fell to Spain 2-0 in a friendly on Saturday and will face the defending World Cup champions again on Tuesday – before turning focus to qualifying for next summer’s tournament in November.
Emma Hayes led the USA to Olympic gold in 2024. (Photo by Brad Smith/ISI/Getty Images).
The other part, though, is larger than that.
Hayes and her passionate staff want to share their findings with women and girls at every level of the sport. Which is why Hayes and U.S. Soccer opened the second annual HerLens Conference – which was held internally last year – to 300 people, ranging from NWSL general managers to youth soccer coaches at the National Training Center earlier this month.
The two-day event included interactive sessions about bias and inclusivity, why girls stay or leave the game, building women- and girls-centric team culture, and more. And she introduced attendees to the term “Female 360,” a holistic approach that considers every aspect of the female player’s experience on and off the field.
“For me, this is more than winning on the pitch,” Hayes said. “This is transformational. I think my purpose, my mission, came from a losing situation and I felt robbed. I felt denied. I felt like, how have I, at this stage of my life, [not known] Are these about me?”
HAYES PASSED As the head coach of the US national team, just weeks before the 2024 Paris Olympics. It was a whirlwind way to start a new job, and he led a group of players he had just met to gold.
He then polled every player and staff member: “Okay, where do we go from here?”
A few months later, Hayes presented her approach to rebuilding women’s soccer through a women’s lens rather than copying and pasting a game inherited from men. He has been cultivating his vision ever since.
USA and Manchester City midfielder Sam Coffey told me: “A light bulb went off in my head, ‘Yeah, ah!'” “Wow, that makes a lot of sense. How do I recognize this?’ It was almost like realizing my own bias and accepting the way things had been up until then.”
Sam Coffey is one of the USWNT stars to benefit from the new approach. (Photo by Brad Smith/ISI Photos/USSF/Getty Images)
A key part of Hayes’ methodology is recognizing that women and men have different needs, from nutrition, sleep and recovery to uniforms and even placing scales outside the locker room. His staff examined data that revealed differences in how male and female players pass the ball into the box and how much space goalkeepers occupy there. What works for men doesn’t necessarily work for women, and building a better plan starts with understanding these differences.
“I think a lot of the women’s game has been dominated by just what we know about male players, hold on a second, these are completely different athletes,” said Coffey, who was part of the team that won Olympic gold two years ago.
“And it’s not a weakness or a lack. It’s just how to best serve us instead of how to get the best out of men. Because we’re not men.”
The US women’s national team ahead of their game against Spain. (Photo by Georgia Soares/USSF/Getty Images)
Hayes calls the senior team his “proof lab,” and the National Training Center serves as an incubator for new ideas—a space to think critically, connect, and reimagine what’s possible. The aim is for these principles to extend beyond the national team to youth clubs and football communities across the country.
With the support of the Federation and its CEO and Secretary General JT Batson, Hayes hopes to change the future of the game for women and girls. The 2031 World Cup, which the United States plans to co-host, offers a chance to see how much progress can be made when the needs of female athletes are at the center of the conversation.
“Emma wants us to be trendsetters,” Tash Patel, director of sports analytics for the women’s national team, said at a class session on coaching the women’s game.
This program has always been known. From winning World Cups to finding ways to start a family while still playing to fighting for equal pay, the national team has consistently pushed the game forward, leaving it better than they found it and serving as an example around the world.
It’s just the next iteration of that legacy.
THESE INFLUENCES The players on it were transformative. Hayes has seen their confidence grow as they gain more knowledge, and Coffey can attest to that. He’s more comfortable talking openly about where he’s at in his cycle and how his body feels, whether he’s competing for club or country.
Georgie Bruinvels, the group’s head of women’s health and research innovation, has been instrumental in organizing much of this. It tracks players’ laps and Oura Ring stats – only if they want to, it’s not mandatory – to better understand each player’s individual needs and how best to support them.
The USA will challenge Spain as one of the top teams at the 2027 Women’s World Cup. (Photo by Scott Taetsch/USSF/Getty Images)
“She’s always looking for the smallest 1% of ways to approach things from a woman’s perspective, right down to the temperature of our boardroom,” Coffey said, noting that it should be 68 degrees because that’s the temperature at which women process information most effectively.
“I’ll fill up my plate for lunch and he’ll be like, ‘If I were you, I’d buy extra anti-inflammatory foods!'” And I’m like, “All I want is chocolate, but okay!” Coffey said with a laugh. “All these little things add up over time and cumulatively affect how we feel and how we perform.
“They are detailed to a T. It’s not just taking an ibuprofen and calling it a day. I felt a difference.”
As for how that whole mentality spilled over into the sport, Coffey said he brought habits back to Man City from the national team camp – like the ‘yogurt bowl’ parfait recipe that Bruinvels gave him.
“In my club and country environment, I feel 100% that nothing is out of my reach,” Coffey said. “It’s an adaptive feeling of being a woman, and we’re getting deeper and deeper into understanding that, which is great.”
While Hayes’ strategy may give the Americans a competitive advantage — because not every team or federation will have the same resources — all that information isn’t something they plan to keep behind them.
“I want every little girl and woman to feel that no matter what they do in our sport, it’s more than just playing a game,” Hayes said.
“I think we can have a profound impact on society.”