Women Behind the scenes in Sacramento: Lisa Wrightsman
|Lisa Wrightsman (right) with fellow Sacramento State alumni Tiffany Fraser Image: Hrach Avetisyan, Sacramento State
“It feels like coming home, it's very personal because of the journey I've been on since then, as if it was designed to happen this way.”
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.
Lisa Wrightsman played at the Homeless World Cup in Rio de Janeiro in 2010, now she is Managing Director of the Sacramento Chapter of Street Soccer USA and playing a key role in bringing the Homeless World Cup to the USA for the first time.
When Lisa was first invited to come along to a football practice with Street Soccer USA, she nearly didn’t go. Why would she do something that had never worked out for her in the past? Football was the reason everything had gone wrong.
At Sacramento State University, Lisa was on the soccer team, she was good, very good in fact, and had the chance of going professional. She’d set her sights on the National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL).
But her dream failed to materialise. Her life that was once punctuated with soccer practice, driven by her ambition to become a professional footballer and supported by a family made up of her soccer team, disappeared almost overnight.
“When it didn’t happen, I didn’t deal with it very well, and I filled that void of losing my team, losing my structure and losing the space where I felt confident, and I got really into drugs and alcohol,” Lisa explained.
For the next five to six years, Lisa’s addiction got worse and worse. By the end she was driving under the influence, taking opiates and methamphetamines, and ended up in jail. It wasn’t the first time she’d been arrested, but something about her final arrest made her wake up. This wasn’t the life she wanted to live.
She realised, “I’m not going to get out of here, and I’m definitely not going to keep living if I keep using.”
“if this is sobriety, I can do this. I can do this every day.”
On her release she started a rehabilitation programme. Shortly after completing it, she moved into supported housing. While living there, Lisa heard about the men’s street football team, who were getting ready to go to Street Soccer USA’s national tournament in Washington. They knew she played and wanted her to join.
It took some convincing, but eventually they were able to persuade Lisa to give football a second chance. The training was different to anything she’d done before, and the players were different too.
“The guys, they weren’t soccer players. They were just recently sober and super tatted up – they were these big dudes who were just trying to stay sober. But when I played with them, it was the most fun I’d had in five years.”
She kept playing, and went to the Street Soccer USA tournament in Washington DC with the team. This experience would convince her that not only was she willing to give football a second chance, but maybe it could give her a second chance too.
“It was really raw, and really authentic and lots of people were owning their lives and not being afraid to move forward and that was really inspiring. It motivated me to want to go forward.”
It also challenged her view on what a life without alcohol and drugs might look like.
“Part of me was just getting sober because I didn’t want to die, but I didn’t know what that looked like. I was expecting it to be a pretty meek existence. But when I went to the Street Soccer USA tournament, I was like, ‘oh, if this is sobriety, I can do this. I can do this every day.’”
What Lisa didn’t realise was that by playing in Washington, she was taking part in a trial for the Homeless World Cup, which was taking place the following summer in Rio de Janeiro.
Representing the USA at the Homeless World Cup in BRazil
|The Homeless World Cup was held in Rio de Janeiro in 2010. Image: ©2010 Elaine Chen-Fernandez / Photographers for Hope
“All of sudden I am getting a passport, and someone is paying for me to go and play in Brazil. It’s crazy! I interpreted this as being my comeback. I’m going to train and go to the Homeless World Cup and outplay everyone and go pro again. Then I met my teammates.
“They were not like your average soccer players, they were 18-60. But they identified as soccer players and they drew a lot of confidence and pride from it. For me, what was really good about that event – and there were a lot of magical moments – was that we knew we weren’t going to win straight away. So, it let us be there for each other.
“The 2010 Homeless World Cup in Rio was pretty incredible, there was a lot of brand-new experiences; having a crowd, the uniforms, the teams and the matches. Even the highs and low, the wins were always really fun when you got those.”
Lisa used her football skills to help train the other players, telling them, “You guys want to be better; I can show you how to play. That is literally the only thing I can offer a person right now. So, it was really good for me.
“Those seven days were really transformational for me. When I came home, the women I lived with said I seemed very different. They wanted to do whatever it was I just did. So, I was like, ‘the good news is that you don’t actually need to be good at soccer for this experience!
I will attempt to coach a team if you guys commit to coming to a practice and if you keep doing your sobriety stuff, which we are all going together, I will work out how to fundraise and we can get passports.’”
Lisa met Tiffany Fraser who was volunteering with Street Soccer USA shortly after. Together they brought a team to the Street Soccer USA national tournament and to the Homeless World Cup in Paris in 2011. Then they set up the Women’s programme in Sacramento.
“It’s been my life for the last ten years or so, trying to explore how can I create the Homeless World Cup for me every day.”
“Back home you get caught up in the logistics and the administrative side of things, it’s so easy to get separated from what’s really important. So, every year we have gone to the Homeless World Cup, it never fails, it’s like this is why we do this. This is why I’m here now.”
As well as recreating the experience of the Homeless World Cup for herself, Lisa also loves seeing how it changes lives for the players.
| USA celebrate after winning the Celtic Cup at the Homeless World Cup in Cardiff in 2019. Image: Mile44
“I really enjoy watching the players go through the process of being really excited, and then nervous, and then out of their comfort zone and then sometimes losing, and sometimes winning. There is so much going on and they just give into it and then they’re like a different person. Sometimes they can keep their guard up, their armour on longer than others, but it always comes off by the end. There’s just too much love.”
Looking down at her hands, there are two tattoos of Chinese characters – one means crisis, and another that means opportunity.
At her darkest point in prison, Lisa asked for drugs to calm her down, the guards didn’t give her that – but gave her a brochure with some breathing techniques and the two Chinese characters in them which shows that a crisis could be an opportunity, or it can break you. It’s down to you. For Lisa, the choice was clear.
In July 2023, Lisa will return to Sacramento State University as a celebrated alumni, to see the Homeless World Cup at the Hornet Stadium.
“It feels like coming home, it's very personal because of the journey I've been on since then, as if it was designed to happen this way.”
“We came to them with the idea and they heard us out. It's important to leave the door open in life, because you never know what opportunities may come along later. Staying open to relationships is also important, no matter what has happened in the past, and now we are working together to bring this fantastic event to the city.”
“We don’t expect it to change everything but we hope it will spur discussion and change negative perceptions of homeless individuals. These players deserve respect, not because they have been homeless, but because of what they have overcome to be where they are today. We want everyone to see the possibilities of the human spirit.”
After thinking her life with soccer was over as she sat in that prison cell, it turns out, it was just about to begin.
Street Soccer USA is our partner in America, operating nationwide in 17 cities - which they call chapters. Lisa is at the heart of the Sacramento chapter of Street Soccer USA. Find out more about their work.
Words: Rebecca Corbett with additional quotes gathered by Peter Barr
Images: Hrach Avetisyan, Sacramento State / Elaine Chen-Fernandez, Photographers for Hope / Mile 44