These women are changing the game. Up2Us Sports and Dodgers RBI coaches Destiny Lea, Nancy Lemus, and Gaby Zubia have been named 2021 Coaches of the Year by the LA Dodgers Foundation (LADF), and demonstrated the powerful impact a caring (female) coach can make. All three women have integrated their unique perspectives, extraordinary empathy, and skills gleaned from Up2Us Sports’ sports-based youth development (SBYD) training, to show up as game-changing coaches for the youth they serve. 

Dodgers RBI is LADF’s youth development program, which has partnered with Up2Us Sports since 2019 to provide sports-based resources to underserved youth and communities across Los Angeles. Up2Us Sports’ SBYD training, which is trauma-informed and emphasizes the development of social emotional learning (SEL) capacities, provides coaches and other LADF ambassadors with the tools to help youth reach their potential on and off the field. Thanks to its partnership with Up2Us Sports, LADF doubled its 2020 Field Champions program and increased the number of kids served, with an additional 2,700 youth served in 2021.  

Coach Destiny coached an all-girls softball team of 9-12 year-olds this past year. Having worked with the organizations Girls Inc. and Girl Scouts LA before coming to the Dodgers RBI program at Wabash Recreation Center, she has a great appreciation for the girls she works with, and for her pre-teenage athletes’ stage of development. Coach Destiny was 11 or 12 when she began playing sports; she understands the middle school mind, and the importance of nurturing key attributes in her girls, such as confidence, self-efficacy, and a self-affirming mindset. Coach Destiny tells her athletes, “It’s what you think—that’s what matters. What you tell yourself—that’s what you’re going to do.” She also holds her athletes accountable, refusing to let them fall back on disempowering notions about what girls are or are not capable of. “They think with a [male coach] they can say, ‘Oh, but I’m a girl, I can’t do that,’ or ‘Oh, that’s too much.’ But I [remind them], ‘No, hi, I’m a girl too! I know what’s up!’” 

Coach Destiny also understands how significant a role model can be at that time in a female athlete’s life—someone old enough to look up to, but close enough in age to be relatable. “I think at that time they really want someone who they feel, ‘Oh I could tell you something that I wouldn’t tell my teacher or a family member.’ Beyond the sport, just relating to them about their lives. I think that’s really important, that they feel comfortable.” 

Coach Destiny can speak from her own experience about the difference it makes, as a female athlete, to have a female coach. She has had many male coaches in her years of playing basketball through high school and college, but her female coaches made the biggest impact.  When her first female basketball coach began working with her in high school, Destiny found that “it was really cool to have that female perspective. Men can try to relate all they want, but it’s not the same.” She was also impressed by her commitment to the athletes. “She was a mom, she had two young kids, but she would still come and coach us…Now I look back and I think ‘Oh my gosh, that’s a lot of serious dedication.’”  

That serious dedication is something Coach Nancy and Coach Gaby know about too, as mothers who coach. Both women got into coaching by way of their own children, and both embrace their role as Mom to bring another dimension to their coaching.  

Coach Gaby began coaching in Hawthorne three years ago when she enrolled her son, Matthew, in Dodgers RBI. Matthew is neurodivergent, and Coach Gaby was determined to try something different that would allow her son to practice social and emotional skills. “Not just ABA [Applied Behavioral Analysis], not just Occupational Therapy where it’s just one-on-one…I wanted my child to experience something different, to be part of something, and to feel included. I’m really big on inclusiveness, and I think it helped him a lot.” Coach Gaby also thought that if Matthew showed signs of growth on a sports team, other families with neurodivergent kids should know that sports did not have to be off-limits—that, in fact, sports could be another tool to help their children gain the skills they need. Indeed, Gaby saw Matthew grow over that first year, learning team-building and social skills; she kept him enrolled, and she kept coaching. “I was able to include his differences and talk about them amongst the team. The kids were really receptive, they were very supportive, which is really nice to see at such a young age.”

Creating an inclusive, welcoming community and providing kids with a safe, fun environment are some of Coach Gaby’s top priorities. Particularly following the height of Covid-19 and quarantine, Gaby wanted to make sure her young athletes had a safe place to run, play, and demonstrate their own skills while learning from others. “We’re here to have a good time; this is your safe place, this is where you can be you, whether you know how to play baseball or not. We’ll get there.”

Coach Gaby has also realized in her time on the field that “[coaches] are not just there for the kids, we’re there for the families as well.” She extends her caring attention to the adults in her athletes’ lives, many of whom seek her out for conversation, and she recognizes that “You just never know what people are going through…I’m just glad to be there, to listen and support. I try to help.” 

Compassionate community-mindedness is also Coach Nancy’s driving force. She, too, got into coaching through her two sons, starting out as the designated Team Mom before moving into her current role as coach at Darby Park and Rogers Park in Inglewood, where this past year she managed to coach four teams. “There was a need in the community. The kids didn’t have an opportunity to play and I said ‘No, there has to be a way.’ So we made it possible.” 

During her time as Team Mom, Coach Nancy observed many different coaches and their methods of working with kids; some of those methods she disagreed with, finding they scared, shamed, or put inordinate pressure on the kids. She also noticed the lack of women coaches, and the outdated attitudes some male coaches had when she stepped in with a suggestion, or questioned how a coach was handling his athletes. A coach once told her that as a woman, she didn’t know anything about coaching. “That triggered me. I was like, ‘Wait a minute. Because I’m a woman I know what I’m doing. I see what you don’t see because I have that ‘mother feeling’…I see the child that’s scared, that you put on second base but would rather go to [the] outfield, but you don’t see that. And then that child never came back, because he was afraid.’” 

As a coach, Nancy is most concerned with the wellbeing of her young athletes, and remaining alert to their emotional needs and safety. “It’s the mom in me. I’m responsible for these kids, I want to make sure they’re all safe, I want to make sure they all go home safely, I want to make sure they all had fun. Who can I support? What can I do? Who needs me? And who needs me as a Mom more than a Coach, because I’m looking for who is sad, who is anxious, who is not having a good day, who is not their normal self.” Having experienced her own hardships growing up, Nancy is deeply aware of what a difference one person can make in a child’s life. “I didn’t have that one caring adult, so to me it’s important to be a caring adult to these young kids…I want them to know: someone cares, you are important in the world.” 

Coach Nancy credits some of her immense compassion to the Up2Us Sports SBYD training she received, which she finds has made a big impact on her life, even beyond her role as coach. “These [Up2Us Sports] trainings I’ve taken to heart and applied everywhere. I feel I’m a different person now; I’m more compassionate, more loving, more understanding...I used to drive, and if someone cut me off I’d get angry. But after the trainings I’d think, ‘He must be having a hard day,’ or ‘He hasn’t gotten over a trauma yet,’ or ‘He’s upset.’ That’s what I try to instill in my children now. All the trainings that I received, I teach my children.”

Although they each bring unique gifts and perspectives to the kids they serve, Coaches Nancy, Gaby, and Destiny all have in common a trauma-informed approach and the skills gained from Up2Us Sports’ SBYD curriculum, as well as the distinction of being award-winning coach-mentors. All three women are helping to break barriers and prove that great female coaches can change the game for good. 

Nancy (3 service terms - 2019-2021), Gaby (2 service terms - 2020-2021) and Destiny (1 service term - 2021) have served as Up2Us Sports Coaches with Dodgers RBI thanks to support from The Los Angeles Dodgers Foundation.

Up2Us Sports will be recruiting coaches for the LADF Dodgers RBI program starting in November 2021. Check back soon to find out more and apply. 

Up2Us Sports is focused on increasing opportunities for women to coach, building the capacity of girls sports programs, and leveling the playing field for girls with their She Changes the Game initiative. This initiative is proudly supported by adidas and their She Breaks Barriers initiative. To learn more, visit www.up2ussports.org/she-changes-the-game.