Women behind the scenes in Sacramento: Tiffany Fraser
|Tiffany Fraser (right) with team USA at the Homeless World Cup in Cardiff in 2019.
“I was in my early twenties - going to Europe and seeing all these iconic places and people from all over the world was pretty mind-blowing for me.”
It’s not only the FIFA Women’s World Cup that is putting women on the international football stage this summer, at the Homeless World Cup there are many women in Sacramento making the 18th edition of the Homeless World Cup possible. In this series we meet some of these inspiring women.
Tiffany Fraser first joined the Street Soccer USA family as a volunteer in 2011, since then she’s become a key part of the programme in Sacramento and is one of the key people on the ground helping to bring the Homeless World Cup to California.
Tiffany Fraser “wears a couple of different hats” for Street Soccer USA: she sits on the board in Sacramento, is a regular volunteer at sessions and is Chief of Staff for the central office.
For the last ten years she’s also been a regular at the Homeless World Cup, helping to coach and manage the USA’s women’s team alongside former player turned coach Lisa Wrightsman.
We caught up with her in Rome where she was wearing yet another hat, as an extra with the USA team in Netflix feature film ‘The Beautiful Game’.
Tiffany first came across Street Soccer USA after graduating from college. She’d played football throughout university and done some semi-pro locally but in the years after graduating her playing became less and less frequent.
Meeting Lisa at a Sacramento College alumni event, she heard about their programme and wanted to see it for herself.
“She told me about what Street Soccer USA were doing and I thought it was pretty phenomenal, so I went out to a practice.”
Lisa had recently returned from playing for USA at the Homeless World Cup in Brazil. When Tiffany turned up to the practice, it wasn’t exactly what she had in mind.
Tiffany laughed as she explained: “It was the most disorganised, hodge-podge soccer, I mean you could not convince me that was a soccer practice when I walked up. It certainly looked like I’d walked into some sort of outdoor activity and not a soccer practice at all.”
The Sacramento programme had just started, and it was in its infancy. This meant playing football in an open area that was close to the hostels where people were staying. There wasn’t a blade of grass in sight, this was street football in its rawest form, played on tarmac, with an additional defender in the form of a slightly precarious drain hole in the middle of the pitch.
“It was a real mix of people. Then we started playing and it was the most fun and so much love and acceptance and people were laughing and having a really great time. It was a super unique moment. I hadn’t played soccer in that way ever. The goal was drawn in chalk on the wall and people were holding cigarettes while they were dribbling, then they’d catch the ball – it was the most ridiculous thing I had seen. But it was amazing.”
From that first training session she was hooked, and each week would come and volunteer, helping to run sessions and then fundraising for the team. First to go to the national tournament, and then ultimately to help players to follow in Lisa’s footsteps and represent the USA at the Homeless World Cup.
| The opening parade at the Homeless World Cup in Paris, where games were played with the view of the Eiffel Tower in the background.
In 2011, Lisa and Tiffany travelled to Paris for the Homeless World Cup.
“It was phenomenal. The venue was amazing. I had never been to Europe before that so had a similar experience to some of our players that I didn’t have a passport before that.
“I was in my early twenties - going to Europe and seeing all these iconic places and people from all over the world was pretty mind-blowing for me.”
“After that it was like, how do we recreate what we’ve experienced?”
“Every time we leave a Homeless World Cup, we think how do we keep this alive and keep it in our lives. 2011 was the first one and then we’ve (Tiffany and Lisa) been to every Homeless World Cup since.”
Each Homeless World Cup, Tiffany explains, follows a similar pattern for the women from team USA.
It’s not the result and trying to fight for the title that keeps them coming back. It’s the personal journeys that all the players go on in the run up, during and after the tournament.
“I really enjoy watching the girls get past their first handful of losses. We normally get out there and don’t win a ton in the beginning. Then the group is the right level, and we tend to do well. Watching them push through the losses and then they’re able sort it out, arriving at that win just feels very satisfying.”
The Homeless World Cup is divided into three stages: qualifying, group stages and finals. The first few days are the qualifying, where teams play a round robin tournament within mixed seeded groups.
If a team finishes in the top half of their group – they progress to the opportunity to win the top trophies, where as if they finish in the bottom half, they move to the lower stage of the tournament.
As the tournament progress, all of the teams find their level and are able to compete on a more even playing field, with all teams playing the same number of games and having the opportunity to compete for a trophy.
“It’s sometimes not a win, but it’s a game where they come out the other side of pushing through something really hard and discouraging.”
| Lisa (far left) and Tiffany next to her travelled with Street Soccer USA to the Homeless World Cup in Mexico in 2018. Photo: Elaine Livingstone
Street Soccer USA have a motto, which is ‘I play for’ and both Tiffany and Lisa have it tattooed on their arms, but their love of the Homeless World Cup and street soccer runs a lot more than skin deep.
After working together for a while, Tiffany and Lisa fell in love and became a couple. A lot of people, they explain, still don’t realise they’re together.
There’s only some special treatment that creeps in their day-to-day work. Tiffany for example always holds the bus for Lisa, the bus won’t wait for anyone else, but she laughs and says they’ll always wait for Lisa.
The Homeless World Cup in Oslo in 2017 was a particularly memorable year for Tiffany and Lisa as they got engaged during the tournament. They got married a year later in Costa Rica after the Homeless World Cup in Mexico. There were more than 35 football players and coaches at the ceremony, including Street Soccer USA founders Lawrence and Robert Cann, who were their bridesmaids.
Lisa explained: “These experiences run deep. You share something with people, whether you see them all the time or not, it stays with you. It’s very authentic and real and I think most people want to have more of that in their lives. I think if we stay close after this, it reminds you of who you want to be.”
It turns out a love of football really can change your life.
Street Soccer USA is our partner in America, operating nationwide in 17 cities - which they call chapters. Tiffany is a core part of the Sacramento chapter of Street Soccer USA. Find out more about their work.
Words: Rebecca Corbett
Images: Photographer