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Over the course of her career, Jodi Grant has seen women’s soccer change, and she’s been part of that change.
Today, Grant is helping shape that change at Pacific FC. As the club’s Technical Lead on the girls side and Program Development Lead, she works across the youth program, supporting coaches, developing programming and helping create an environment where young players can grow both on and off the field.
No two days look the same. Grant can be found on the field supporting a coaching staff, checking in with players and families, or looking at the bigger picture of what the program needs. Her focus extends beyond what happens during training, with an emphasis on developing the whole individual.
That perspective comes from a career spent on nearly every side of the game. Grant played at the University of Memphis before moving into coaching, where she spent 14 years with the program. During that time, she watched women’s soccer, and the opportunities available to women within it, evolve gradually but significantly.
Now, as a coach, parent and mentor, Grant is helping create the kind of experience she hopes the next generation of girls will have. One built around opportunity, support and, above all, confidence.
“I think the opportunity is the biggest thing,” Grant said when reflecting on the changes she has seen throughout her career.
When Grant arrived at the University of Memphis in 1995, she was part of a brand-new women’s soccer program. The experience was exciting, but it also came with a number of realities that were difficult to ignore.
One memory has stayed with her.
“We didn’t have a locker room,” Grant recalled. “We were in the hallway changing for our game.”
The women’s team was changing beside the university’s established men’s program, something Grant remembers questioning even at the time.
“How can you not see that and understand that you’re getting different things?”
Grant says she grew up understanding that those kinds of differences were often treated as simply part of being a female athlete. But even at a young age, she knew something didn’t quite add up.
“I knew that that wasn’t right,” she said. “I think that’s been a part of me.”
That desire to challenge what women and girls are told they should simply accept has followed Grant throughout her career.
A changing game
Grant's time at Memphis eventually evolved from player to coach, allowing her to witness the growth of women’s soccer from another perspective.
Over 14 years as a coach, she saw significant changes in the program, from the level of play and recruiting to the resources available to the team. Today, the program is building a new multi-million-dollar stadium for its women’s and men’s teams.
The changes she has witnessed extend far beyond one university.
Grant points to the growth of professional women’s soccer around the world and, closer to home, the emergence of the Northern Super League as examples of opportunities that simply did not exist when she finished playing.
For Grant, the biggest difference she has noticed is opportunity.
Young girls today can see women playing professionally, representing their countries and building careers in the game. They can look at the sport and see a pathway that was difficult to imagine when Grant was their age.
And while she is excited by that progress, she is also realistic about the work that remains.
Gender equality and pay equity are still issues in sport, while Grant says organizations also need to better support women who are caregivers and mothers.
“There’s a long way to go still,” she said. “But there’s progress. We’re moving in the right direction.”
Building confidence
That progress is something Grant now gets to be part of firsthand.
At Pacific FC, she serves as the technical lead on the girls side and Program Development Lead, supporting coaches, players and development of the club’s youth programs. Sometimes that means supporting a coach. Sometimes it means stepping in with a player. Sometimes it means dealing with an injury or helping a family navigate what comes next.
But at the centre of it all is the same goal, developing the whole person, not just the player.
Grant has a particular passion for the mental side of the game. WIth a master’s degree in counselling, she sees the mental side as essential to helping athletes reach their potential.
“I don’t think that you can get to your potential without the mental side being strong and worked on,” she said.
And when it comes to coaching young girls, there is one thing Grant wants to help them find above everything else. Confidence.
“If you don’t have confidence, you’re almost wasting your time,” she said.
For Grant, confidence isn’t about believing you are the best player on the field. It is about believing that you belong there, that you are capable and that you are worth the opportunity in front of you.
She wants young players to eventually be able to tell themselves: I’m going to fully give my all to this. I’m worth it and I can do it.
That confidence, she believes, has to come from within.
A coach can help build it. A teammate can encourage it. A parent can support it. But ultimately, a player has to discover it for herself.
For young girls who struggle with confidence, Grant’s approach is simple. Treat it as a work in progress.
“Let’s have a growth mindset,” she said. “You can get there.”
More than a game
That philosophy extends beyond the soccer field.
Grant hopes that when players eventually leave her programs, they take more with them than improved technical skills. She wants them to leave with the tools to believe in themselves, take chances and continue working toward whatever comes next.
Because to Grant, that is one of the greatest things sport can give a person.
“We talk about what you get back from it,” she said. “Sometimes that’s scholarships or trophies or whatever. Those things are great, but what you’re getting is really the lessons.”
Those lessons have shaped Grant’s own life, and they continue to shape the way she coaches.
Now she gets to watch her own children experience sport from a different perspective. Grant and her husband, Pacific FC Youth Technical Director Richie Grant, have three children, and sport remains a major part of their family life.
Being both a coach and a parent has given Grant an even greater appreciation for the experiences young athletes are navigating.
She sees the pressures they face, the ups and downs in confidence and the challenges that come with growing up.
Most importantly, she understands that sport ultimately belongs to the person playing it.
“It’s their sport to play and pursue and fail and succeed,” Grant said. “It’s just their thing.”
Her role, as a coach, parent and mentor, is to guide and support them while allowing them to make it their own.
The next generation
That is perhaps where Grant’s journey comes full circle.
She was once the five-year-old girl playing soccer in Edmonton. She became a university athlete at a time when women’s soccer was still establishing itself. She experienced the frustrations of unequal opportunity, then spent years helping build a program of her own.
Now, she is helping create an environment for the next generation.
And her hope for the future of women’s sport is straightforward, equal opportunity, with the support to make the most of it.
“I never think that the men should get less now and women should get more,” Grant said. “I just think we should all have the proper opportunity, with support as well.”
At PFC, Grant wants young girls entering the pathway to know that they belong.
That they were chosen for a reason.
That they are worth the time and effort being invested in them.
And that they are capable of becoming more than just better soccer players.
“We are trying to develop kids to be the best they can be,” Grant said. “To support the whole individual… to bring opportunity but also to get the best out of them as players and obviously people as well.”
For someone who has spent her life in sport, perhaps that is Grant’s greatest lesson. The game can change, the opportunities can grow, the barriers can slowly come down, but it starts with believing you belong, and having someone there to remind you why you do.