Angel City FC's Madison Hammond talks opportunities, giving back and the gulfs in youth soccer
The pro gives a peek behind the curtain ahead of her profile on Fuse's "Like a Girl" show.
Early on in Madison Hammond’s episode of the new Fuse series “Like a Girl,” there’s a telling moment for the Angel City FC player. When recalling being told she’s the first Native American player in the NWSL, Hammond said she asked for that to be fact-checked.
Hammond is, in fact, the first Native American player in the league, and in her time as a pro, she’s established herself both as a professional athlete, but also a designer/model/advocate/spokesperson, with the sky being the limit. In “Like a Girl,” which will air on Wednesday on Fuse, Hammond tells host Beija Velez about her perspective as a Native-Black player in a league and culture around the sport in the U.S. that is largely white, dealing with outright racism as well as more sadly commonplace microaggressions, while also showing the new way she found fitness and a stress reliever this past offseason.
Hammond credited Angel City for giving players the opportunity to flourish on and off the field, by supporting them well and giving them chances to participate in appearances such as hers on “Like a Girl.”
“I think at Angel City we have a really interesting and unique setup in terms of the amount of access we have to opportunities off the field and that's a credit to the resources that we have, the full-time staff that we have to kind of just uplift us off the field as well,” Hammond told me during an interview last month. “And so I think that means being approached by Fuse and honestly being approached by a lot of different outlets in the last year has been in part because of how fun it is to work with Angel City.”
Hammond, who has remained active off the field while also doing her own full-time job on it, said the time spent on “Like a Girl” gave her the ability to show more than merely the competitive athlete most see her as on the field.
“It was a very in-depth conversation, that kind of allowed me to explore some things that I had never really spoken about, publicly or on any platforms,” Hammond explained. “And so to kind of be able to do that in a very uplifting, safe, empowering way hopefully resonates with people but also allows people to see a different side of myself that's a little more vulnerable. A little more of a person, and not just a soccer player.”
She also recognizes that those watching the program will be coming to different perspectives of their own.
“I think being a woman of color, being a Black player in this space, in this league, being an Indigenous player in this league, I think that sometimes people forget that I exist in those identities just in my day-to-day life and some of the things that people might find to be profound are just a part of my day to day,” she notes.
One tidbit Hammond drops in the show is that she began playing competitive soccer with boys, as a young girl in New Mexico. Hammond explained why that was necessary, but why her experience in both co-ed soccer and elite girls soccer helped her reach the heights she has in the sport. After living in New Mexico with her mother, who was in the military, they made a major cross-country move when she was 9 years old that represented a culture shift.
“When I was younger, the group of boys that I played with, we actually played an age where you just are doing all the sports and so it's the same group that was doing indoor 3-v-3 soccer, playing soccer in the springs, playing basketball in the winters,” Hammond explained. “And so I think just that camaraderie and sense of competition, just was kind of a fire that I felt when I was playing with boys. And I think that it kind of instilled in me that I just want to be better than them, and that level of competition.
“I feel like when it became time for me to transition over to girls soccer, it was something where I felt like I was honestly going down a level by going to girls soccer, but that was mostly because of a product of the environment that I grew up in, in New Mexico. The youth club soccer is not as good as when my mom and I moved across the country to Northern Virginia, where it was a completely different world. And youth club soccer [in Virginia] was basically like the Real Housewives of any county,” she added with a laugh.
“I think that competition and cutthroat-ness was inverted on itself because I when I moved to Virginia, I thought okay, I need to find another boys team, but it was actually that was when I switched to playing on a girls team. And I was like, ‘Wow, the resources are better. The fields are better, the coaches are better. The equipment is better’ and everything was leveled up even more than the boys team I had experienced. And so I think that it has always just been about finding the environment that was the most competitive. So if I had stayed in New Mexico, I probably would have had to continue playing on a boys team. I might have been more competitive from a physical standpoint, but the networking connections, politicking, college recruiting process would have looked completely different if I hadn't been able to tap into the ecosystem that is Northern Virginia,” she said.
While it’s not uncommon for professional players in the women’s game from the British Isles and Europe to start their soccer journeys playing as the only girl on a boys team, Hammond’s experience as an American going through a similar process is fairly rare.
In thinking about giving back to the communities that have done so much for her, Hammond noted that among other goals, she would like to host a soccer camp for Native kids, but she’s mindful of making it an experience that doesn’t place additional burdens on the kids and their families. When it’s a group that’s historically marginalized, those considerations magnify.
“Even if it's something as simple as wanting to run a soccer camp — which is a goal of mine — being able to set that up and the logistics that come with making sure kids have transportation, to their food, do they have someone to watch out, like look out for them? Do they have a guardian? All of those things are completely doable, but being a full-time athlete on top of it, it's more of like okay, how do I make this happen? And so I think that is definitely the next step,” Hammond says.
The episode profiling Madison Hammond on “Like a Girl” is scheduled to air Wednesday, April 19 at 9 pm. Check your local listings for more information and check it out! It’s a good watch.