Last week, a group of incarcerated women at the Century Regional Detention Facility gathered for their graduation from Angel City’s six-week program in collaboration with the UK-based Twinning Project, a nonprofit that pairs football clubs with prisons and jails where they lead courses in coaching and refereeing. Angel City is only the second US-based participant, and the first in this country working in a women’s facility.

Over the course of the twice-weekly program, participants at CRDF learned soccer and coaching skills, as well as life skills like leadership, teamwork, and accountability, from three volunteer coaches, Dani Hanson, Fish, and Tori Lathrop. Hanson and Lathrop are also participants in ACFC’s coaching network. Angel City forward Simone Charley attended one session, where she told the group about her journey to professional soccer and sat in on the soccer portion in the facility’s rec room—still on crutches at the time, she even showed the group how to perform a Cruyff turn.

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