Sapphic Soccer Group Celebrates One Year Of Community And Competition
Footy With Friends in McCarren Park has created a fun and safe place for queer women to play soccer and make friends.
Featured Image: Footy With Friends meet-up. Photo by Kya Berry.
Footy With Friends has just celebrated its first anniversary—twelve months of turning an average Tuesday into a community-first, soccer-second, must-attend event for the sapphics of New York City. If you weave through the oncoming runners at the McCarren Park track, you’ll be rewarded once you reach centerfield. In a city with millions of people, where many newcomers are dealing with a shortage of connections, this “social club disguised as a soccer community” is filling the gap.
“People come up to me [and say], ‘You don’t know how much this has changed my experience in New York. I met my best friends at Footy.’ It’s crazy that something that started as, ‘Let’s get drunk and play soccer,’ has genuinely changed people’s whole lives,” says Footy With Friends founder, DK.
DK, 26, started the event after moving to New York City in 2022. Originally from Westchester, she first moved to the city for work and currently coaches soccer at Pratt Institute.
“When I started, I had a 9-to-5, and that was teaching. I had so much going on. It’s crazy how my life has changed so much in a year, but the one consistent thing has been Footy With Friends.” She has been hosting just about every single week for a year now.
DK began the event with a Partiful invite, her own soccer balls, borrowed equipment, plus a cooler of beer. Around 15 friends showed up to the first session, and word would spread quickly throughout the close-knit soccer and sapphic communities.
“It was really simple,” she says. “I put the Partiful on my Instagram story. It was like, ‘If you’re gay and want to play soccer, come to McCarren Park.’”
Footy With Friends group plays at McCarren Park. Photo by Kya Berry.
It isn’t always that easy to create this kind of space. There’s been a harrowing history of women, sapphics, and the queer community being disregarded in sports. A 2024 survey done by Kick It Out found that sexism, misogynistic attitudes, and homophobia run rampant at soccer games. The UK-based organization, which works to fight discrimination in soccer, interviewed 1502 soccer fans. 42 percent of regular match-going fans had experienced sexist behavior, including being questioned on their knowledge of the rules, wolf-whistling, and constant badgering or other forms of harassment.
75 percent of LGBTQ+ fans have personally experienced offensive language or behavior, and more than half of those surveyed say they have been put off attending games due to sexist behavior or concerns about such behavior.
“It’s a space I’m so innately drawn to. I want to belong here in this space, but they make it very clear I don’t belong here,” says DK, referencing her own experience with soccer and fan culture.
On co-ed recreational teams, women are often needed to fulfill roster criteria, and according to DK, women are often treated as an afterthought.
“They don’t pass to you. They don’t really talk to you. You’re kind of there as a requirement.”
And although much of the data on harassment in soccer only addresses gender, the sapphics of NYC aren’t excluded from these trends. For DK, there’s emphasis on keeping the group “permanently female and permanently queer.”
“Women and queer folks in sports have had to carve their own little niche spaces to feel truly like they belong on the field,” says DK.
“Footy With Friends is such a unique space because you’re able to fully express yourself in [any] way you want. It’s like our own little oasis within an environment that’s very isolated,” she says.
For Bryte Darden, who works at a tech company, Footy has allowed her to feel more comfortable in sporting spaces. “I probably wouldn’t feel as welcome [at the McCarren Soccer Field]… even though it’s a public space, and everyone’s supposed to be welcome. Having Footy out there and walking up to the field and seeing a group of queer women together, really makes me feel welcome,” says the 26 year old.
Group of Footy With Friends players at McCarren Park Photo by Kya Berry.
With so much interest from the sapphic soccer community, some infrastructure had to be created. To keep the crowd of 90 or so queer women organized, there are three whiteboards at the sidelines holding a rotating list of names. After each round, DK wipes the board, marks off who has just played, and pulls from the waitlist – remaking the new teams while prioritizing those who haven’t played yet.
It never really pauses. Players come off the field, new names are called, and the cycle continues. Players will ask others to put their names on the whiteboard—a quick way to learn a new friend’s name.
“I’m a big advocate of affordability in soccer,” DK says. “It’s the people’s game. It should be available and affordable. So the first hour and 20 [minutes] is always free. It’s open play.”
Later, the structure tightens into a tournament. DK checks who’s staying, organizes teams, and sets matchups—still tracking wins, still shaping the flow of the operation and atmosphere of the field to make sure it never loses momentum.
Two players embrace on the field. Photo by Kya Berry.
“I want it to always [have a] kind of ‘grassroots’ feel. … like your friend organized a pickup game, you just pull up. It’s very casual,” DK shares.
“Grassroots” is exactly the word Darden used to describe the meet-up as well.
“People are there just to enjoy each other’s company. You’re all having fun together, and it feels grassroots because it’s so approachable. You sit down on people’s blankets that you don’t know. You’re meeting each other…. Pretty much, it feels grassroots because it’s creating a space to meet people organically,” Darden says.
She lives in the McCarren Park area and says that Footy gives her an “excuse” to come to the track. She looks forward to spending time with her friends in an environment outside of drinking and party settings weekly.
Kaleigh Gallagher, another frequent Footy-goer, recalls the first time she came to an event. “I said, ‘You’ve got this place packed in a month, DK!” She joined the club only a month after it started and has been amazed at the growth.
Kaleigh Gallagher at Footy With Friends meet-up. Photo by Kya Berry.
After two months of Footy With Friends, the group went viral. A post with then-mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani circulated on socials, creating the perfect storm and helping to grow the org to the 1400+ group members it has today. As the organization grows, DK has plans to expand to cities including San Francisco, LA, Austin, Philly, and Toronto.
The group of members under the floodlights has quickly morphed into a group of friends—everyone bringing their own unique backstories to the conversation. People who were once strangers are now excited to call each other best friends and, in some cases, have even started planning vacations together.
DK believes sports are the best way to connect. She should know. She’s been playing soccer for about 20 years now—with a journey including D1 college, a professional career abroad, and now coaching.
“I started playing when I was five or six. I was really shy, and I wouldn’t get on the field. Then one day it just clicked, you know? It brought so much out of me. I would not be who I am today without soccer,” she says.
Women’s sports teams have historically been put on the back burner, but lately there’s been a substantial rise in interest. About three in ten U.S. adults follow women’s professional or college sports closely, according to a 2025 poll from The Associated Press. Women’s professional sports sponsorships are growing 50 percent faster than men’s major leagues. In 2025, 46 billion minutes* of women’s sports were consumed in the U.S. We can only hope that the recent surge of interest will contribute to a less discriminatory undertone in sports.
But until then, the sapphics of New York City will have Footy With Friends as a safe place, just as they’ve had for a year.
