Oct. 7, 2016

By Joanne Norell

NOTRE DAME, Ind. — For the fourth straight season, the University of Notre Dame women’s soccer team will focus its efforts to benefit a cause close to the program when the Irish host their annual charity game against Virginia on Sunday.

The Irish will take donations and auction their game-worn jerseys to support the SEGway Project, an initiative founded by former Fighting Irish soccer player Lindsay Brown (’12). The SEGway Project, which stands for “Soccer Empowering Girls Worldwide & You,” is a nonprofit organization that uses soccer to empower girls in the developing world, helping them to fulfill their potential both on and off the field.

Brown founded the SEGway Project after a 2011 trip to Surkhet, Nepal, to visit the girls of the Kopila Valley School. After witnessing the transformative role of soccer in the lives of the girls, Brown set out to change the taboos surrounding girls playing sports in the region to show their power to teach girls to be competitive, to gain self-confidence and to acquire the life skills to be leaders.

The jerseys the Irish wear during the game against Virginia will be auctioned off in the week following the game, with more details to follow.

To learn more or donate to the SEGway Project, visit segwayproject.org/donate.

— ND —

Joanne Norell, athletics communications assistant director at the University of Notre Dame, has been part of the Fighting Irish athletics communications team since 2014 and coordinates communications efforts for the Notre Dame women’s soccer, men’s tennis, women’s tennis and fencing programs. Norell is a 2011 graduate of Purdue University, where she earned a bachelor’s degree in mass communication, and earned her master’s degree in sports industry management from Georgetown University in 2013.