Joking around in the Walsh Athletic Centre locker room after their third training session of the day for the women’s soccer team, Carly Beyar ’14, Shannon Fay ’14 and Alanna Locast ’12 never expected that their Twitter account SoccerGrlProbs would turn out to be a rising company and make them famous among the soccer community. While the company only started with a few tweets followed by the hashtag #SoccerGrlProbs, they now have over 180,000 Twitter followers, three million views for their first YouTube video titled “Sh*t Soccer Girls Say” and an apparel line. Recently, the girls just revealed their identities after keeping them secret for over two years.
Where did the idea for Soccer Girl Problems start?
Carly Beyar: We were all exhausted, beat up and covered with ice packs. We started tweeting funny complaints and problems with the hash tag #soccergirlproblems. Then it occurred to us that it would be even greater if we made a Twitter account called SoccerGrlProbs that our whole team could follow and relate to.
Alanna Locast: Whenever one of us thought of something clever or funny, we would tweet a soccer problem we were having, and the rest of our teammates would read it and burst out laughing. It really was just a twitter for our teammates to vent on and laugh about. Probably two or three days later, we check it and we had 100 followers on it. We couldn’t believe it. We decided to just keep it going until our following grew bigger than we could have ever imagined.
What made you keep your names a secret in the first place?
Carly: When we created SoccerGrlProbs in 2012, we were still members of the varsity Fairfield women’s soccer team. We did not want to put Fairfield’s name on any of our content just in case it violated any rules or reputation. We also thought it pulled fans in, keeping them constantly wondering our names and where the mysterious SoccerGrlProbs girls attended school. This anonymous element definitely kept people wanting more.
Shannon Fay: We didn’t want it to be about us — we wanted to keep it as a unifying factor that everyone could relate to. We also didn’t want people knowing where we went to school — it left a mystery element for the account.
What is the process for filming your videos?
Carly: Alanna, Shannon and I find time to sit together and collaborate ideas for every next video. Whenever we are together, we bounce ideas off each other, which helps our video content become more creative. After writing a few things down, we simply grab Alanna’s iPad and, for the most part, improvise each scene wherever need be.
What will happen once you all graduate? Will you continue it or pass the torch?
Shannon: We hope to focus more on the company and expand. We want to write a book and create other products and apparel, run camps and so forth. I hope we can get our brand exposed and make something huge out of this. I hope the company will expand — we can sell our line in athletic stores and possibly co-brand with a company like Nike or Adidas.
Alanna: We will definitely continue making videos, even after Shannon and Carly graduate. We’re not ready to give up this thing we’ve got going. Soccer is not something that ends just because we graduate, and we want to show our followers that it has had a lifelong impact on us.