THE FACEOFF 🤼: Skye Eddy & The Sideline Project 🎙️

Sponsored by

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 8, 2026 · THE FACEOFF · VOL IX

Watch or listen to Episode 3: YouTube · Spotify · Apple Podcasts

Level-Headed and Sometimes Stressed 📣🎙️

This week's FACEOFF 🤼 puts our third guest in the chair. Skye Eddy was born in 1971, the year before Title IX, and has spent every decade since inside the game: a youth All-American out of Reston, Virginia, four years in goal at UMass, a fifth at George Mason, where she was Defensive MVP of the 1993 NCAA Final Four, then the W League with the Philadelphia Freedom and a season in Italy. She came home to coach at the University of Richmond, and then did the thing almost nobody in this sport does. She stopped working on the kids and started working on the adults. Today she's the founder of Soccer Parenting and The Sideline Project, a 15-minute certification for the adults on the sideline, chasing a million certified adults by 2029. Episode 3 of The Coach's Board podcast is thirty-two minutes with her; the links above get you there. Below is the written version: our founder Paul Variano's questions, and Skye's answers trimmed from the tape.

You played in goal at the highest level and coached in college. Why did you switch from coaching kids to coaching their parents?

“It happened pretty naturally. My path down adult education was born out of the idea that I needed help and I needed support. I wasn't showing up correctly for my children, despite my playing background and my coaching background. Being a sports parent to my daughter especially, who was more of a high-potential player, I found it hard to show up for her the way she needed me to. That curiosity led to founding Soccer Parenting and The Sideline Project: if things are hard for me, with my background, then of course they're hard for other parents as well. So instead of ridiculing them, instead of saying parents are a problem, let's flip the script. Let's educate parents, support them, empower them. We believe parents are part of the solution.”

Does playing goalkeeper shape the way you think about all this?

“One of the key things about being a goalkeeper is that you're constantly overcoming mistakes. Anytime a goal is scored on you, it's a mistake or a setback. You're constantly picking the ball out of the net and starting again, reviewing, thinking: what could I have done differently? How can I adjust my communication to my teammates? So I approach life from a sense of resilience. I hear from coaches and club leaders all the time: better you than me, let me buy you a drink for taking that on. That's not really what I believe needs to happen. We need to consider ourselves collaborators. But I'll tell you, this hasn't been easy. Getting leaders in sport aligned that parents are part of the solution, not the problem, has not been an easy path. It's getting easier, thankfully.”

Twenty years ago there was nothing for parents. What exactly are you building with Soccer Parenting and The Sideline Project, and who is it for?

“We believe the vast majority of sports parents are what we call level-headed and sometimes stressed. That's how I'd classify myself as my kids were coming up. I didn't always do the right thing. I wasn't always super calm. It seems like there's a lot at stake, sometimes because of the structures we have in youth sports. Soccer Parenting is a membership site, an education platform for the parents of youth soccer players, around the body, the mind, the game, the coach-club relationship, the next level and actual parenting skills. Over the last two years I've doubled down on what I think is the best introduction to bring coaches and parents together, and that's The Sideline Project: a shared standard for adult behavior in youth sports.

Our aim is a million adults Sideline Project Certified by 2029. It's a large goal, but it's absolutely doable. Not all adults are showing up with the same idea of the best way to support their child. If we can align around that standard, we're creating a culture around our children that feeds the joy, the inspiration, the wanting to keep playing, so they have a path to a healthy adulthood, whatever level they aspire to. We want them to stay healthy, and we want the adults around them to be level-headed.”

You bucket adult behavior into supportive, distracting and hostile. Every parent thinks they're in the first bucket. What does distracting actually sound like from the stands?

“The number one reason for distracting behavior is stress. We feel like the stakes are really high, that this game or this meet really matters, and our stress levels rise. As that happens we start communicating: go to the ball, shoot, pass, telling our child what to do. You're coaching your child, coaching other children in the moment, instead of giving them the gift of learning through trial and error, which is what actually drives long-term growth and skill acquisition.

It's a challenge to identify, because we think we're helping, and in the moment we might be. The ball goes out of bounds, we pick it up quickly, throw it to our child: throw it in quick, it could be a breakaway. They do, the team scores, and we think we had something to do with it. Our child should maybe fail and not get that breakaway. Then later, at a really low-key time, we or the coach say: since you keep getting throw-ins out wide, sometimes look to see if a quick one might lead to a breakaway. In the next game they try it. That's learning, when our child looks up and solves the problem for themselves instead of us solving it for them.

You'd think the number one thing we'd talk about is hostile behavior. We're not. That's usually the irrational parents, or the distracting ones who got caught up in a mob-effect moment. We have other interventions and response plans for that. The 15-minute certification is a call to action for all sports parents, not just the ones who show up repeatedly hostile.”

How are you reaching people: parents directly, coaches, clubs, governing bodies?

“It's broad, and it needs to be to get to a million. We do a lot of direct marketing to parents to buy the certification individually for $9.99 and spend fifteen minutes getting certified. Then there's a free Team Kit for coaches in any sport, with a 10% discount to pass along to parents, a parent-meeting outline, a handout, emails, social messaging, everything a coach needs to make their life easier. And we have club partnerships: clubs bulk-buying the course for their parents, requiring it at registration, and one club requiring every new coach in the organization to take it and download a Team Kit. We're working across all sports, largely in the United States, with a growing presence in Europe and Australia, and the course is available in Spanish.”

Every founder hits a wall. What was yours, and what did it teach you?

“A couple of years ago I started seeking funding for Soccer Parenting. I had my pitch deck and some really good pitches. I felt we were solving a big problem. But what I heard from investors, even the ones who were excited about the space and believed in me, was that the product wasn't right. We weren't charging clubs enough; it wasn't a financial model an investor felt comfortable with. And I get it. I had to take a deep, hard look and ask what could be different. What everyone agrees on is that we want better sideline behavior, and that's actually where Soccer Parenting began. The first course I ever created was The Sideline Project course. Then we built all this other content, and it got more chaotic, more complex. So I went back to the roots. It's essentially the same script with some tweaks, and that shift has happened within the last twelve months.

To be clear, I'm not seeking funding right now. It was a big drain on my time, and we're growing well from small to large. But I took those smart people's advice to heart. I'm tracking things like I never have before, keeping it to a minimum viable product and layering only as we need to. We have 44,000 parents certified as of now. We have a ways to go, but that's a great initial step, and it shows there's alignment from parents around wanting better sidelines for their children.”

What's the biggest thing standing between you and a million by 2029?

“To reach that goal we're going to need the support of large corporations or federations. U.S. Soccer, USA Volleyball, USA Hockey are going to have to come on board and support, encourage, require. USA Hockey does a great job with parent and coach education already. I'm not ready to make those asks yet; I want everything running right, our messaging down and our marketing plan executing first. But that's why the million has been great. It's a story you can tell. I can sit in front of ESPN and talk about it, and it's a story they want to hear. It's big, it's aspirational, and it's what our children need and deserve.”

It's Monday morning and a club director, a coach and a parent are all watching. What's your advice?

“Be curious. As a coach, I've had very difficult situations with irrational parents who really ruined seasons for me. When we're faced with that as coaches and club leaders, be curious about what the parent might be thinking, and don't make large, broad assumptions. Coaches have a tendency to say, well, parents do this and parents do that. And I say: some parents do that. For parents, it's a different curiosity. What stress do you feel about your child's youth sports experience? Is it the car ride, nutrition, a late performer or an early developer? Could education help relieve some of that stress? That's what we believe: education will release the stress in parents, which creates a more joyful, inspirational environment for kids to compete, learn and grow.”

Rapid fire. The phrase every parent should delete from the car ride home?

“It starts with ‘Well, you know…’ and goes from there. Anything where we try to insert our opinion instead of letting our child lead the way. Or anything that's complaining: that ref, that coach, that player. Once I got into asking ‘how do you feel?’ it really worked. Before that I'd tell myself I wasn't going to talk about it, and next thing you know I'm giving a little coaching lecture she definitely didn't want. I could have said one sentence and instead I said thirty.”

The takeaway. Skye's whole thesis fits in four words: level-headed and sometimes stressed. That's most of us, and it's why The Sideline Project isn't built for the parent who gets ejected. It's built for the rest of the bleachers, the ones who think a quick throw-in tip is helping. For coaches and club directors, the move is cheap and immediate: the Team Kit is free, the certification is fifteen minutes and $9.99, and a club can require it at registration. For founders, her story is worth sitting with too. Investors told her the product wasn't right, and instead of arguing she went back to the first course she ever wrote, cut everything else, and started tracking the numbers for real.

Find Skye and The Sideline Project: thesidelineproject.com · Get certified · Free coach Team Kit · Soccer Parenting

Follow The Coach's Board: YouTube · Instagram · X · TikTok · thecoachsboard.com

LOOKING AHEAD ⏭️

Next Thursday we’re skipping the regularly scheduled guest interview to cover NextUp ‘26, LeagueApps’ youth sports industry conference, live from Civic Hall in Union Square on October 14 — operators, founders and league directors in one room talking growth, investment and parent engagement. We’ll report back.

THE FACEOFF 🤼 podcast returns in two weeks with our first in-person guest interview: James Kelly, the former teacher behind LitZone, on building fantasy sports that sneak in the reading, and why a biology teacher decided the biggest problem in his classroom was literacy. Know an operator, founder or coach we should feature? Just hit reply.

I Almost Threw Out My Keurig. It Wasn't Broken.

Every cup from my Keurig started tasting weak, flat, stale — so I unplugged it and stuck it in a closet. Then I learned the dirty secret of grocery store K-Cups: by the time a pod reaches your kitchen, it's usually spent months going from factory to warehouse to truck to shelf. The flavor oils are long gone. Some brands even over-roast to hide it.

The fix wasn't a new machine. It was fresh pods from Angelino's, a family-owned L.A. roastery that roasts, packs, and ships within 3–5 days — straight to your door, from 39¢ a cup. Over 1,000,000 happy customers. 50+ flavors, no subscription required, and 15% off your first order, applied automatically at checkout.

Try 35¢ Pods