American professional soccer player Shea Groom ran a four-day clinic for more than 60 football coaches in Addis Ababa with the group Athletes in Action, FIFA.com reported in August 2019.
Addis Ababa Stadium before a Saint George S.C. home game, Oct. 20, 2018 (Joehawkins / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0) [file photo]
Groom, then a forward for Reign FC in the U.S. National Women's Soccer League, first went to Ethiopia about two years earlier on a sports chaplaincy program for local teams, after hearing of the trip at a team Bible session with FC Kansas City. She returned in the 2018 off-season and planned a third visit in December 2019.
She told FIFA.com it was the first coaching session she had ever led, and that standing before 60 men in a country where women's football was still underdeveloped was intimidating. Once the coaches saw her play, she said, they were “extremely respectful.”
Groom also trained for two days with Saint George, the Addis Ababa club that fields men's and women's teams. She said some youth players trained in socks or in shoes without laces, on a field made of volcanic rock.
“I feel like just being able to show young girls, even if they don't play soccer, whatever platform you're given, there's so much you can do with it,” Groom told FIFA.com.
Sources: FIFA.com, via Wayback Machine