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] this about me?
They took Hayes as the US national team’s head coach a few weeks before the 2024 Paris Olympics. Turbo was on his way to start a new job, and he led a group of players who had just met with a gold medal.
Afterwards he looked at all the stage and staff: “Okay, where do we go from here?”
Two months later, Hayes introduced his approach to reconstructing women’s diseases through a female lens in an effort to not just copy and paste the game inherited from men. The vision was always hinted at by her.
“Like a light bulb went off in my brain, like, ‘Yeah, duh,'” US and Manchester City midfielder Sam Coffey told me. “It was, Wow, this makes so much sense.” How do I know this so much?” It was almost like taking over my interest and my acceptance of how things had been up to that point.
Sam Coffey is one of the USWNT stars benefiting from the new approach. (Photo by Brad Smith/ISI Photos/USSF/Getty Images)
A fundamental part of Hayes’ methodology is the recognition that women and men have distinct needs, from nutrition, sleep and recovery to uniforms and even the placement of scales outside the room. His staff analyzed data showing differences in how male and female players pass the ball into the box and how much space goalkeepers take up inside it. What works for men doesn’t necessarily work for women, and a better impression begins when you understand those differences.
“I think the women’s game is just so dominated because we know it’s true that male players come in second place, these athletes are completely different,” said Coffey, who was part of the squad that won Olympic gold two years ago.
“And this is not a weakness or a disadvantage. It is just how we best serve ourselves instead of how you are better than humans. Because we are not humans.”
The US women’s national team’s upcoming match is against Spain. (Photo by Georgia Soares/USSF/Getty Images)
Hayes calls the senior team an “approving lab” and the National Training Center serves as an incubator for new ideas, a space for critical thinking where it is possible to connect and rethink. The goal is to extend those principles beyond the national team, reaching youth clubs and soccer communities across the country.
With support from the federation and its CEO and general secretary JT Batson, Hayes hopes to transform the future of sport for women and girls. The 2031 World Cup, which the US plans to host, provides an opportunity 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 in her school session on coaching the women’s game.
That program itself has always been known. From winning the World Cup to finding ways to start families while continuing to play to fight for equal pay, the national team has consistently pushed the game, striving to go better than it found and serve as role models around the world.
This is just the next iteration of that legacy.
The blow had a transformative effect on the stage. Hayes saw their confidence grow as they learned more, something Coffey can attest to. More sweetly, she talks openly about where she is in her world and how her body feels, whether it’s the club or the ground.
Georgie Bruinvels, women’s health and research innovation lead for the team, played an integral role in these long-running projects. Oura Ring tracks players’ cycles and stats – only if they want this to be unimportant – to better understand each player’s individual needs and how to best support them.
The USA will challenge Spain as one of the top teams in the 2017 Women’s World Cup. (Photo by Scott Taetsch/USSF/Getty Images)
“She’s always looking for small 1% ways to approach things from a woman’s side, at the temperature of our meeting room,” Coffey said, noting that it’s 68 degrees because that’s the temperature at which women process information most effectively.
“I’m going to fill my plate for dinner and it’s like, ‘I’m going to eat inflammatory foods if I were you!’ And I’m like, ‘I want it all to be chocolate, but OK,'” Coffee said with a laugh. “All these little things add up over time and cumulatively make such an impact on how we feel and how we act.
“Drawing to a T. Not just taking ibuprofen and calling it a day. And I’ve noticed a difference.”
How this whole issue spreads through the game, Coffey said, brings the attitude back from the nation’s camp to the City of Man — like the “yogurt pot” parfait recipe that Bruinvels introduced her to.
“In my club and the culture of the country, I do 100. It feels like being formed as a female and we only go deeper in the understanding of that, which is super cool.”
While Hayes’ plan may give the Americans a competitive edge — because not every team or league will have the same resources — not all of this information is something they’re planning to keep at the gate.
“Although I want a girl and a woman, whatever your experience is in the game, this is more about feeling than playing a game,” Hayes said.
“I think we are breaking society very closely.”