Kayla Thompson: Goalkeeper, researcher, club co-founder

Welcome back to Squad Depth with Theo Lloyd-Hughes.

This week Theo hung out with Kayla Thompson, who is currently the starting goalkeeper for Toluca Femenil in Liga MX. But she's also so much more than that. An idiosyncratic and inspiring figure, Kayla is working on multiple avenues of developing women's soccer in the United States and around the world.

Kayla started playing soccer in her hometown of Austin, Texas in the mid-00s and quickly took off as a talented young shot-stopper. After competing as a student-athlete at both the University of West Virginia and Brown University, she turned professional in 2022 with the Icelandic club FC Grotta.

Bright and industrious, it was whilst overseas that she started her own sports consulting company and helped lead a research project into player well-being in women's soccer.

In 2023, Kayla, along with four other Austinites, co-founded the soccer club ATX Woso with the intention of becoming the first-ever USL-W team in the Lone Star State in 2024. You can learn more about ATX Woso here.

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Follow Kayla on twitter: https://twitter.com/kaylamthompson1

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