New collaboration will combine a statewide grownup pulse, parent and coach education, and live experiences for girl athletes.
Connecticut Junior Soccer Association (CJSA) and Girls &, the girls’ confidence and leadership initiative founded by best-selling author and global workplace strategist Joan Kuhl, today announced plans for Girls & The Game, a new collaboration designed to strengthen the ecosystem around girl soccer players and equip the grownups in their corner with practical tools to support confidence, healthy ambition and self-compassion.
The initial Connecticut initiative will focus on the formative years when girls are building beliefs about their abilities, voices and place in sport. It will include a statewide developmental confidence and sport experience pulse for parents, caregivers and coaches; a two-part virtual education series for grownups; and live Girls & The Game experiences at Connecticut soccer events. The partners also plan to track key measures over time to understand where grownups see the greatest needs and which resources are most useful.
National research underscores the opportunity. The Women’s Sports Foundation identifies ages 7-13 as a particularly formative period for girls’ sport participation and highlights supportive coaching, parental involvement, belonging and learning from mistakes. Separate Confidence Code for Girls/YPulse research reported a 30% decline in girls’ confidence between ages 8 and 14.
“Youth soccer can give girls an extraordinary place to practice confidence – not because everything goes right, but because it doesn’t,” said Joan Kuhl, founder of Girls &. “She misses. She gets feedback. A teammate gets an opportunity she wanted. She has to decide whether to speak up, try again, and keep going. Girls & The Game is about helping girls build the self-trust to navigate those moments – and giving the grownups around them better language and tools to help.”
Girls & The Game builds on three years of on-the-ground practice in Connecticut. Kuhl has led the Girls & program at the Darien Depot Youth Center, delivering monthly workshops for elementary and middle school girls alongside Girl & Grownup sessions for parents and caregivers. The program has brought girls face-to-face with role models including Darien’s own Ali Truwit, Paralympic medalist swimmer, and Chloe Humphrey, Tewaaraton Award winner and U.S. Women’s National Team lacrosse champion.
“At CJSA, we want the youth soccer experience to benefit kids first,” said Josh Krusewski, CJSA Executive Director. “This collaboration gives us an opportunity to listen to families across Connecticut, understand where girls and the adults supporting them need more resources, and test practical ways to strengthen confidence and the overall sport experience.”
For Kuhl, Girls & The Game marks a return to soccer as a platform for leadership development. A U.S. Soccer #SheBelieves collaborator since 2017, she helped lead the SheBelieves Internship Program, led interactive sessions at SheBelieves Summits, and co-created the SheBelieves Online Academy – the research-based confidence and career-development curriculum U.S. Soccer launched in 2020.
When the U.S. Women’s National Team secured its historic equal-pay agreement in 2022, Kuhl wrote in MSNBC’s Know Your Value that the next frontier was upstream: “Invest in women earlier and elevate girls’ programming.” That conviction became Girls &, which she launched in 2024.
About Girls &
Girls & was founded by Joan Kuhl to help girls strengthen confidence, ambition and self-compassion – and to equip the grownups in their lives with research, language and practical tools to reinforce those qualities. Kuhl is a best-selling author, speaker and global workplace strategist with more than 25 years of experience designing leadership development around the world. She has worked across five continents, reached leaders in more than 60 countries, authored five books, and partnered with organizations including U.S. Soccer, BlackRock, Eli Lilly, Goldman Sachs, Johnson & Johnson and the New York Mets, and led culture and leadership programs at Columbia University and UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School. She currently serves in the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Committee Women’s Initiative. Girls & grew from a question connecting her work with women to the next generation: What if we started earlier? – a question Kuhl has been answering in practice since 2024 through the Girls & program at the Darien Depot Youth Center.