Life is good for one-year-old Sloane Phillips.
She’s got two soccer star moms in defender Ali Krieger and goalkeeper Ashlyn Harris, an entire roster of doting aunts and one of the most stylish wardrobes of any toddler in the country. To Sloane, the USWNT power couple are her loving parents, but to the rest of the world, they are champions for equality.
The past year has been a whirlwind for Krieger and Harris. They adopted their first child, got traded to NJ/NY Gotham FC from the Orlando Pride and have been busy settling into their lives in New Jersey. The couple married in Miami in December 2019, and Sloane was born on Feb. 12, 2021, adding the role of motherhood to the two-time world champions’ already impressive resumes.
“The team is incredible. They are the best part of this move, honestly,” Krieger said. “What a great group of people we get to surround ourselves with everyday, and even more importantly, they are so engaged in Sloane. They are so warm and welcoming and it’s been a really easy transition. We love the fact we are surrounded by such genuine people.”
As both women in sports and members of the LGBTQ+ community, Harris and Krieger — affectionately referred to by many fans as “Krashlyn”— have become the representation they wish they’d had growing up. And it’s making a difference.
Barbara Simon, the Senior Director of News and Campaigns at GLAAD, the world’s largest LGBTQ media advocacy organization, lives with her wife and two kids in Montclair. She coaches her children’s youth soccer teams and said it’s been a joy to watch Ali and Ashlyn use their platforms as mothers to “show how parenthood is so special and yet so universal.”
“Seeing Ali and Ashlyn grow as a family is an excellent reminder that queer people are soccer moms, too (and dads, and aunts, uncles, and nonbinary family of every relation),” Simon wrote in an email to NJ Advance Media. “Ali and Ashlyn show that LGBTQ families are just like everyone else’s — we love our kids and want them to grow up knowing they are beloved and belong.
“New Jersey has been a leader in LGBTQ representation and inclusion, with laws to support nondiscrimination, marriage equality, gender equality, LGBTQ curriculum and other important protections. Ali and Ashlyn reflect and represent all families like mine in New Jersey that make the state an amazing place to live and raise our kids to be the next generation of equality-first leaders.”
Both athletes have a strong, far-reaching Instagram presence. Krieger boasts 917K followers and Harris has 808K. They also have 57.9K followers on their joint Instagram account, sloanephillipsdoesfashion, featuring many of their daughter’s adorable outfits and stylish kicks. A recent post shows Sloane smiling as she looks down at the soccer ball placed in front of her with the caption: You can take this ball right back and give me my Cocomelon.
Between their own accounts and Gotham’s Instagram page of 114K followers, the soccer stars have a large and captive audience on just one site alone. Factor in other social media, televised games and numerous outlets covering the couple’s journey — their wedding was featured in Vogue and People Magazine — and their reach knows no bounds.
“It is really, really important that we use our visibility,” Krieger said. “We use our platforms and we use our voices for those who don’t have a voice and who don’t have a platform so we can speak up for them. And more importantly, if we don’t fight for them, who will? I just think that it is really important to make sure that even on our individual platforms we speak up and we are visible, but also our team platforms and the NSWL platforms, and kind of use that even more to amplify our voices is really critical during times like these.”
Since their arrival in New Jersey, Harris and Krieger have continued to utilize those platforms in multiple ways. Krieger said she was extremely proud of her wife for being at the forefront of Gotham FC’s Protect Trans Kids campaign.
Harris first spoke out for trans children with the Orlando Pride after Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a bill on June 1, 2021 preventing trans girls from participating in girls youth sports. Three weeks later, the Pride donned rainbow tie-dye “Protect Trans Children” shirts over their jerseys during the national anthem in a home game that just happened to be against Gotham.
Joanna Hoffman, the director of communications for Athlete Ally, a non-profit organization working to make sports inclusive for LGBTQ+ individuals, said that having women in sports like Krieger and Harris as advocates has made a significant impact.
“I think what Ali and Ashlyn do so well is they lead with love,” Hoffman said. “They are not leading with messages around negativity as much as they are leading around messages of: ‘We love and support trans youth.’ And that is really important too, that framing of it, because trans kids need to hear that. They need to hear that in a world where they wake up everyday and see headline after headline of politicians demonizing them, basically, to see such influential people in sports saying I love and support trans kids, that makes a huge difference.”
“Krashlyn” sported the Protect Trans Kids tie-dye T-shirts Gotham is selling on the club’s Instagram page with the caption: Trans kids: we love you, we value you and we stand with you and your families. Gotham forward Kumi Yokoyama came out as transgender in 2021 and was also among players posing in the shirt. All of the proceeds will be given to The Stonewall Inn Gives Back Initiative in NYC.
“Ali and I work so hard for everyone, like human rights, in general — equality across the board — and that doesn’t mean we just have to pick up and move our family to a place that is more progressive,” Harris said. “Is it easier? Yes. But the work doesn’t stop. We are not turning our back on Florida. We are still fighting for the children there who still don’t feel like they have a voice or they don’t belong.”
In March, DeSantis signed the “Parental Rights in Education” Bill, known as the “Don’t Say Gay” bill. The controversial law bans public school teachers in Florida from holding classroom instruction about sexual orientation or gender identity.
“The political climate in Florida is not good. There is a lot of hurt and heartache there for our community. ..” Harris said. “Ali and I are still doing the work in Florida, because we hope one day it is a place like New York, where Ali and I showing up at school and Sloane being able to openly talk about her two gay moms is not an issue.”
Equal pay
Sloane’s first birthday wasn’t the only big occasion the family celebrated in February. After a six-year legal fight, the USWNT settled its class action equal-pay lawsuit against the U.S. Soccer Federation for $24 million.
“We were very happy. It has been a long road. It has been so tiring and it has been daunting at times, but we kept fighting for more. We know there is a lot more that needs to be done, but this is just kind of a small step towards that work,” Krieger said.
“It was kind of like a breath of fresh air. We were like: ‘Wow. Tables are kind of turning.’ And we could see the light at the end of the tunnel. Hopefully, this will make it a little easier for our youth to be able to dream big and play the sport they love and actually get what they deserve by playing it. Just showing up to work everyday and enduring the same amount emotionally, physically and mentally as their male counterparts so it is really exciting for us.”
When Gotham announced minority owners Kristin Bernert and Karen Bryan, co-founders of KB2 Sports — a consulting firm focused on driving investment and innovation in women’s sports — both spoke about the next era of women in sports and the importance of visibility.
As kids, just like Krieger and Harris, there were very few women sports icons for Bernert and Bryan to look up to. But as Bernert said in a virtual Gotham press conference, it only took one to inspire her: The late basketball coaching great Pat Summitt. Youth now having access to so many athletic role models of different backgrounds and accomplishments to aspire to, Bernert said, makes it an incredible time to be growing up.
“We are not fitting one mold anymore,” Harris said. “We are authentically all being ourselves and being celebrated for it and I think that is the beauty of our teams. ... We are so diverse and we are fighting for so many different things that we believe in. Anyone can look up and be like: ‘I want to be like her or her or whatever the case, so it is super cool.”
And in being their authentic selves, they’ve not only been celebrated, but changed the lives of others.
“It’s so important for every LGBTQ kid or kid with LGBTQ parents to see themselves and their family represented in the media,” Simon said. “As a lesbian parent myself, I want my kids to see other families like ours, to know they are not alone and we are welcome and loved. Ali and Ashlyn show fans of all ages that they too can be accepted as their authentic selves, be proud of who they are and speak up for friends who might be different from them.”
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Joey Chandler may be reached at jchandler@njadvancemedia.com
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