A couple of years ago, Eastern Massachusetts Girls Soccer Coaches Association President Greg Rowe and a few other members of the state’s soccer community had an idea.
The vision was to foster leadership development for women and girls by offering soccer players education and training in leadership, coaching and career development, and also connect women to opportunities, and young players throughout New England, via community-based initiatives.
With that in mind, the Boston Dream Soccer Association, a nonprofit organization, was founded in 2020.
"What I was noticing was that we would give these awards to these (high school) seniors and they would go on to Clemson, Duke, Northeastern, Boston College -- all over the place -- and they’d do really well for four years but then they’d just drop away from the sport," said Rowe. "That’s when we got together and said ‘what can we do to keep women engaged in soccer after that?’ How can we show them that there’s still a pathway after college -- the men have multiple professional opportunities and things like that, more clinics geared to that -- so how do we keep our women’s players engaged? That’s where the Boston Dream came from."