North Carolina Courage's Emma Thomson aims to break barriers as working mom-to-be
North Carolina Courage's Emma Thomson aims to break barriers as working mom-to-be
Assistant coach prepares for impending motherhood.
By day, Emma Thomson is found on the training grounds and sidelines with the North Carolina Courage, walking players through tactics and drills. But pretty soon, she’ll be adding a brand-new responsibility to her life.
The Courage assistant coach is set to become a mother, as she and wife Jamie prepare to welcome their first child, a son, due in July.
Speaking to Soccermusings after training on Thursday, Thomson relayed the many emotions she was feeling ahead of the arrival.
“It's exciting. We're nervous. We're not sure what to expect and we've been told you never know, you're never ready until you're ready. And that's what we keep reminding ourselves,” she said.
In her second season as a full-time assistant coach at the Courage, Thomson said the decision to become a parent was not a snap decision, but something she and her wife have been looking to do “for a few years now.”
A native of England, Thomson played for legendary club Doncaster Belles before moving to the United States to play NCAA soccer at Penn State. A two-year captain and four-year starter, she moved into coaching, with experience at the youth, collegiate and professional levels of the game.
Keenly aware of the relative lack of women coaching in women’s soccer, Thomson is eager to show that coaches can be moms, too.
“There's minimal women in the league but also in coaching in general, across the board, nationwide, even internationally, who are moms and continue to do this,” Thomson noted. “I think it does take a village, it takes a lot of family, it takes a lot of friends in support and to allow women coaches to do that, because naturally they take a big load, like any parent. I think it takes a supporting working environment, too, to allow for flexibility if and when needed.”
While acknowledging it’s hard to gauge the challenges ahead of a life-changing event like parenthood, Thomson feels reasonably prepared. Jamie’s family lives in the region, so while her own family remain in the UK, there’s family nearby as well as a sizable group of young women, many of whom who just happen to want to spend time around a baby when they’re not playing soccer.
Thomson said a key to being a good coach is to be authentic, and she believes that sharing her motherhood journey with the team will help break down walls that can impede women in the sport. She’s also willing to blaze a trail for others.
“As this league evolves, there's going to be mothers, whether they're players, whether they're coaches, and if I’m a role model for others, or if I'm following someone else's lead, you know, I think the more you see it, the more it becomes the norm,” she explained. “And the more that it tells women, whether they're professional athletes, whether they're professional coaches, that you can do both, and that's the biggest thing. It's important that it's not like ‘Okay, well I'm having a family so that means my career is now over,’ you shouldn't have to choose, and people do it all the time.”
With the baby due in the middle of the Courage’s season, the shocks and delights of new motherhood lie ahead, but Thomson acknowledged that this year, Mother’s Day — which falls on Sunday in the United States and where the Courage will host OL Reign at WakeMed Soccer Park — certainly holds special meaning to her.
“It's crazy, because it's definitely a little more meaningful now I know I'm about to be a mother. I think next year will be totally different. But just like Mother's Day, it's seeing babies around and seeing families with small children. No longer am I like, ‘Oh, it's just a baby.’ It's a family and now I'm actually paying attention and I'm like, ‘Oh, I wonder how old that baby is. I wonder how they handled traveling,’ so I think it just brings to light things that you typically just look past,” Thomson said.
“I think it just makes me pay attention more and really think like, oh, yeah, we're gonna be mothers now. So yeah, of course. It's our day,” she added with a smile.