This past year has been a roller coaster for all of us, but an important part of taking on challenges and setting goals is celebrating the wins, both small and big.

This month, we celebrated our fifth year in business, so we wanted to highlight five moments from 2021 with the theme of growth: trying new things, welcoming new team members, growing as a business, and standing up for ourselves. Let’s dive in.

1) Launching Lead Softball with Olympian Haylie McCleney

To celebrate 5 years in business, we welcomed 2020 Olympic silver medalist Haylie McCleney to the Lead Team as Co-Founder and Investor for Lead Softball. The first annual Lead Summit for softball players is set for June 2022 in San Diego, California.

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2) Recording a live podcast at the 2021 Lead Summit

After postponing the 2020 Summit, we hosted 145 girls in Denver, CO for our fourth annual Lead Summit, our best event yet. One of the highlights of the event was the first ever live podcast recorded at a Summit, in partnership with Caroline Fitzgerald of GOALS Sports and presented by our friends at Nav.It. Caroline interviewed 2020 Olympic medalist Natalie Hinds on the main stage and dove into why it’s good business to invest in women’s sports.

Listen now

3) Adding the Nutrition Course to the Lead Academy

Back in the spring, The Nutrition Course with Jenn Brunelli, RD dropped on the Lead Academy. This is not your typical nutrition course with diet tips - it’s an absolute master class for female athletes on fueling for your best athletic performance and goes deep on everything from nutrient timing to how nutrition interacts with your menstrual cycle and sleep.

Learn more

4) Opening the Lead Insiders for membership

One of our goals for the year was to provide even more content, so that learning and interacting with mentors and peers wasn’t just limited to the annual Summit. We launched the Insiders membership program in April and kicked off the year with an incredible webinar on body image with influencer and mental health advocate Victoria Garrick and sport psychology Dr. Megan Cannon.

Become an Insider

5) Writing an Open Letter to USA Swimming

Last but not least, way back at the start of 2021, our founder Kara Lynn Joyce wrote an open letter to USA Swimming to call them out directly for infringing on our intellectual property for the use of "Lead Summit" to promote their own events.

In July, we were awarded a registered trademark, protecting our woman-owned small business from the unethical actions of a national governing body. USA Swimming has since ceased use of "Lead Summit" but has never publicly apologized.

Read the letter

BONUS Content:

• Lead Intern Ellie Friedlander created the GIRLS WHO LEAD blog series of girls and women in sports changing the game.

• Chief Comms Officer Courtney Randolph was featured on the Life After Swim podcast to talk about mental health during and after college athletics.

• Lead Intern Avery Hall joined the Lead Lately newsletter and authored our weekly Academy Challenges and Women in the Lead updates. Subscribe now to join us in 2022.

• We’re on TikTok! Join content creator Gabby Piontkowski for all the latest.

We are so fortunate to have an incredible team and community that supports our mission of empowering women and girls in sports. We could not do this without you. With Summits in San Diego (softball) and Denver (swimming) coming up in 2022, we are so excited for what the future holds for Lead Sports Co.

See you in the new year.