Twila Kilgore Talks Houston Dash, Olympic Gold and the Commercial Future of Women’s Soccer

I had the pleasure of talking with Twila Kilgore, whose most revealing memory of Olympic gold begins after the competition was over. The medal mattered. So did the years of preparation, the pressure surrounding the U.S. Women’s National Team, and the privilege of representing something larger than herself. Yet when Kilgore describes what gave the achievement its meaning, she does not linger on the podium. She talks about returning home to her husband.

A national-team tournament can temporarily become an athlete or coach’s entire existence. For weeks, the team eats, trains, travels, competes, and celebrates together, while the people who provide unconditional support remain at a distance. Then the event ends abruptly. Win or lose, Kilgore says, “you know you’re never going to be with that exact same team again.” The constant is the life waiting beyond the stadium.

That perspective complicates the standard portrait of an elite coach. Kilgore has built her career in environments organized around results, yet she repeatedly returns to relationships, identity, and the limits of performance as a measure of human worth. Her work demands relentless preparation. Her experience has taught her when preparation must give way to patience.

Now the technical director of the Houston Dash, Kilgore advises club leadership and the coaching staff, helps define the team’s playing identity, and works to align the departments surrounding the players. It is a role that keeps her close to the field while requiring a wider institutional view. Her days can begin with the technical staff at 5:30 in the morning and continue into late-afternoon strategy sessions. “In sports, we never sleep,” she says.

The instinct to work was established early. Kilgore grew up with a twin sister who was both her closest companion and first serious competitor. They began playing soccer at about five. At home, Kilgore watched their mother, a professional dancer, approach the body as an instrument requiring discipline. After an injury and the breakup of the marriage changed the family’s circumstances, her mother moved into other work, including flower design and manual labor. What remained consistent was effort.

Kilgore played through high school, college, and the semi-professional level. When professional opportunities were unavailable during much of her twenties, coaching became more than an alternative. It became the work through which she would learn that her own competitive reflexes could not simply be imposed on other people.

She spent 15 years in college coaching before institutional resistance forced a decision. The program she had helped build was not progressing at the pace she believed it should. Requests involving budgets, scholarships, and broader support repeatedly met with “no.” Eventually, Kilgore supplied one of her own and walked away without an immediate job waiting.

She traveled briefly to Europe, then received the call to join the Houston Dash. Within roughly a year of her arrival, the club won a championship. Within her first month in Houston, she also met the man she would marry. The redirection changed both sides of her life.

A later assignment with the U.S. Under-23 Women’s National Team tested how much she had learned. Asked at short notice to lead a camp that included a match against the senior national team, Kilgore arrived armed with tactical plans and an urge to cover everything. Then she saw that the players and staff were nervous. Earlier in her career, she might have pushed harder. Instead, she abandoned parts of the plan and slowed down.

“You have to meet them where they are,” she says.

The camp went well. Only afterward did Kilgore understand that it had also functioned as an unofficial audition for a position with the senior national team. She would later serve as its interim head coach, guiding the United States to the 2024 CONCACAF W Gold Cup and SheBelieves Cup titles, before returning to an assistant role and helping the team win Olympic gold in Paris. She was also the first American-born woman to earn U.S. Soccer’s Pro License.

There is a useful irony in that progression. The coach who advanced because she knew when to abandon her plan now works in a role devoted to creating clarity and alignment. Kilgore still believes mentality separates elite teams once the physical differences narrow. But mentality, in her account, is not individual hardness. It is the ability to recognize that “you are a collective unit,” to emphasize one another’s strengths, cover one another’s weaknesses, and accept that no person has to be flawless.

The same idea informs her interest in mentoring women coaches, using technology to improve player evaluation, and widening access to soccer. She sees the commercial growth of women’s sports as proof that investment can produce both audience and opportunity. She also rejects the premise that women’s and men’s sports must fight over a fixed amount of attention. “There is room for everyone,” she says.

For all the titles and high-pressure assignments, Kilgore’s advice to young athletes is strikingly resistant to the culture of constant ranking. “Comparison is poison,” she says. Performance is neither as good nor as bad as it first appears. Self-worth has “absolutely nothing” to do with the result. The real discipline is continuing to show up without allowing the scoreboard to decide who you are.

That may be the tension at the center of Kilgore’s career. She has devoted her life to improving performance while learning, over and over, that performance cannot be the whole life. The medal comes home. The tournament ends. The people remain.

Yitzi: Twila, it’s such a delight to meet you. Before we dive in and talk about your amazing work, our readers would love to learn about your personal origin story. Can you share with us a story of your childhood, how you grew up, and particularly the seeds and the genesis of all the amazing work that has come since then?

Twila: Sure. I’m going to tie it a little bit to soccer. To start, I have a twin sister. I’ve shared my whole life with somebody, which is great practice for all sorts of things in life, and she’s my best friend. We both went into soccer when we were about five years old, played in AYSO like most of us do, and I had an immediate partner but also a challenger right away with her. I learned to compete early.

My mom was a professional dancer, so I learned a lot about work ethic and hard work when it comes to our bodies from her. She suffered an injury right about the same time my parents divorced, which put her into a different line of work — a little bit of manual labor and a little bit of art with flower design. I continued to watch just an amazing work ethic in my mother.

I grew up in those circumstances with great examples and went on to play soccer at all sorts of different levels: high school, college, and semi-professionally. Of course, the professional league was folded at the time from when I was 23 to 29 years old, which was tough. Then I went on to coaching, and I’ve been coaching for over 20 years now.

Yitzi: You probably have some incredible stories from your career, and I’m sure it’s nearly impossible to single them out. But can you share two stories that stand out in your mind from your professional life?

Twila: I think winning the Gold Cup was just an incredible moment. Usually, in my past experiences when I’ve been fortunate enough to win, it has only brought a sense of relief. You want so badly to do well for the people you represent and for the players. It is just a sense of relief, but the joy I felt after that particular win — which was very much related to what I knew it meant to everybody else — really stands out to me.

Although this is professional, I’m going to link it to the personal. Returning from the Olympics with a gold medal meant a lot, but it only meant what it did because I was able to return home to my husband and share that experience with him. I think about what that even would have meant without that part of my life to tie it all together, and I don’t know if I would have enjoyed it in the same way.

Yitzi: Wow, that’s such a beautiful thing. I never actually knew that before. I think I’ve interviewed other gold medalists, but the idea that the greatest pleasure of it is sharing it with your loved one — sharing it with your partner more than any of the fame and accolades — is a profound insight. It’s so beautiful. Could you explain why that is? Why is that the greatest part of it?

Twila: One of my learnings from being on a team like the US Women’s National Team is that it’s a little different than club life. Club life is an everyday thing where you see each other every single day. When you’re building a life with the people you’re working with and the players you’re supporting, you’re also doing that alongside and parallel with your family. When you’re away with a team like the Women’s National Team for World Cups and Olympics, you’re gone for an extended period of time and your everyday life revolves entirely around being with those people. You are pretty isolated from the people who love and support you under all circumstances, like your family; it’s just a different environment.

Whether you lose or win, you wake up the next day and it’s all different because you know you’re never going to be with that exact same team again. But the constant is whatever you’ve built in your personal life. Returning home to my husband was incredibly important and an amazing experience — to share that with him and know that even though life was going to change from how it looked for 45 days, I was going to get to be with him and enjoy it. That was really cool.

You see a lot of world-class athletes actually experience depression after long events like the World Cup and Olympics because it’s the culmination of what you’ve poured yourself into for many years. Whether you’ve had a great success or a hard time, it’s just over, and the next day you have to start anew. Having a partner in life to provide that consistency has been such a gift.

Yitzi: There’s a saying that sometimes our mistakes can be our greatest teachers. Do you have a story about a humorous mistake that you made at the beginning of your career and the lesson that you took away from it?

Twila: I make mistakes every day. My whole career is littered with mistakes, and I try to learn from all of them. While I don’t have a specific humorous example to share, I would say that many of the lessons tied to my earlier mistakes came from not having alignment on how to approach a goal before pushing for it.

Athletes are tremendous people who want to be successful, so it’s important to make sure you are aligning to meet that success in the same way and not pushing harder than they are ready for. You have to meet them where they are. A lot of my earlier mistakes were based on really pushing and being hungry, responding as a coach the way I would have responded as a player, which wasn’t the best tactic.

Here is the best example I can give you. When I was working with the Houston Dash in the NWSL, I also had an opportunity to work with our U23 National Team. It was a last-minute ask from the federation. Their U23 head coach, Matt Potter, had taken a job in Kansas City with their professional team, and they needed someone to come in, so I agreed to do it. Shortly after, I found out we were going to compete against the full Women’s National Team. By default, you know you’re playing a team that is supposed to be better than you.

I over-prepared. I was so excited and tactically ready, with all these ideas and a plan for how the week was going to go. But when I got there, I quickly realized that the players and staff were nervous — more nervous than I was competitive in the moment. I had to abandon some of the plans I had and meet them where they were. I remember a distinct moment thinking, “If we don’t cover this in the session, we might not have success later,” but I knew I still needed to slow down and meet them where they were. We ended up having the best camp and the best time. Unbeknownst to me, that was actually an unofficial interview for an assistant position on the full National Team. That is an example of lessons from past mistakes paying off.

Yitzi: There’s a related idea that “no” is not rejection but redirection. Do you have a story like that where you received a “no” for an opportunity or a certain team, but it led to an even better opportunity and greater success?

Twila: Our careers as athletes and coaches — and really, probably everyone’s life — are filled with “nos.” They seem like the worst thing at the time, but you find out later that it was actually for your benefit. For me, I spent 15 years as a college coach. It was actually a “no” that I decided on, but it came after a series of “nos” from other people. The school I was working at didn’t want to progress at the same rate I did. There was a series of “nos” regarding the budget, scholarship amounts, and general opportunities to progress the program, which ultimately led to a “no” from me.

It was sad; it felt like walking away from something I had intentionally built over a long period of time, and I didn’t have immediate next steps. I planned to go to Europe and did go for a short period. While I was there, I got the call to join the Houston Dash.

Tying this back to the beginning of our conversation, that was the start of my career as a professional coach, which was excellent, but I also met my husband within three months of starting the new job. The team had been underperforming in the league, but we won a championship a year after I was hired, and I got married the year after that. Sometimes these “nos” turn into incredible positives professionally and personally. We don’t always know what’s around the corner, but it’s important to hold onto those experiences and use them as encouragement moving forward.

Yitzi: Are you working on any exciting new initiatives or programs right now? We’d love to hear about them, so please feel free to be as elaborate as you’d like.

Twila: My primary role right now is as the technical director for the Houston Dash. A lot of people ask, “What is a technical director?” because, especially on the women’s side, it’s a newer position. It essentially means I’m a strategic advisor and mentor to the coaching staff and club leadership. I help clarify the club’s playing identity, support the coaches in executing that vision while improving their own skills, and support the players in their environment. Like all professional organizations and businesses, many different departments touch the same goals, so I work to ensure we are strategically aligned and that our processes across all departments are integrated.

This work keeps me field-side. I’m with the technical staff from 5:30 in the morning until about 2:00 PM, followed by an overlap until about 5:00 PM working on higher-level, zoomed-out things for the club. In sports, we never sleep, so I’m getting a mix of both worlds right now, which is growing me in different ways.

I’ve also been involved with external projects, like helping Gradient Sports with their proprietary methods for grading in sports. I really enjoy exploring how technology and sport work together. I served as an expert to help them identify the best way to measure individual player output in a game and grade players against each other, which has massive implications for teaching, coaching, scouting, and growing the game in general.

Additionally, it actually just launched while we were on this Zoom, but I am part of the SheChampions Mentorship Program through US Soccer. It’s a great way to stay connected with my home federation, which I love and appreciate deeply. The program is designed to create mentorship opportunities for other women in coaching so we can retain female talent and promote from within.

Yitzi: Amazing. I guess I’d be remiss if I didn’t talk about the World Cup a little bit. Were there any insights, lessons, or stories that stuck with you over this latest round of games?

Twila: My overwhelming message is that it’s just really positive for the game. Hosting a World Cup here in the United States reveals just how many soccer fans we actually have here — people who have already been following the sport both domestically and abroad. It puts it right out there for everybody to see, creating new fans and getting people who previously followed football casually more interested in watching. It has also revealed itself as a fantastic entertainment opportunity for families who might not otherwise watch soccer, showing them they can just go and have a good time regardless of their knowledge of the sport.

It’s also highly financially viable. We are clearly seeing that this can be a great business, which opens up the very real possibility that soccer could become the number one sport in our country for young girls and boys growing up. That is something to be incredibly excited about, and we’re well on our way.

I know there’s a lot of messaging out there claiming this reveals a need for drastic change. Change is good and drives us, but there are also a lot of really good things happening right now that we shouldn’t abandon. Because our country is so large, our unity is our strength, even if it’s hard to come by given the diverse schools of thought on everything, including soccer. We don’t want to lose momentum in the areas where we’ve gained unity in how we do things. Overall, I’m just very excited.

Yitzi: Why do you think things will be better in the United States if soccer became more popular than the NFL?

Twila: I think there’s room for everything. We have a large enough country and enough fans that we don’t necessarily need to compete. But it would be incredibly cool if soccer became number one because more viewers and participants naturally bring more investment. The more investment there is, the more accelerated success we see. This is incredibly clear on the women’s side: if you invest early, you’re going to see success, and you want to stay ahead of that curve. That means a financial commitment to education, building fields, and making those fields accessible to everyone. Making the sport truly accessible requires investment, whether that means dedicating time, redirecting finances, or charging less.

Yitzi: As you just alluded to, women’s sports are truly having a moment. You’re a much bigger expert than I am, but from what I’ve seen, there has never been this much interest in women’s sports, particularly the WNBA. What do you think changed, and what can be done to further encourage that growth?

Twila: I think the number one factor is social media and the ability to showcase the incredible talent of these women. While we may have fewer teams across different professional sports, having games broadcast on basic television stations makes a massive difference. Social media quickly passes along highlights that get people excited to watch early on.

Telling the stories behind these women is also crucial. The audience that follows women’s sports is deeply interested not just in the game itself, but in the personal stories surrounding the athletes, the coaches, and everyone involved — and that spreads like wildfire. Commercial investment has also accelerated the process because people realize it’s a viable business, not a charity. I’m super excited to see this momentum continue. As I mentioned before, we don’t need to compete directly with men’s sports; there is plenty of room for everybody. Would I love to see women’s soccer become number one in our country? Absolutely, but there is room for everyone.

Yitzi: Unbelievable. I have six daughters, thank God, so I feel very invested in a world that offers more opportunities for them.

Twila: It’s incredibly important for both young boys and girls. Sports are a microcosm of life. While I talk a lot about the commercial expansion, we can’t forget that sport is a profound metaphor for life and an amazing vehicle for teaching life lessons. We all need that; I am still learning and growing as a person through sports every day.

Yitzi: I love it so much. I’m curious — and maybe this is obvious — but as an elite athlete, is it true that at the highest levels, success comes down to mental differences rather than physical ones? You can only push the physical machine so far, and everyone’s “machine” is elite at that stage. Is what differentiates a great team or athlete truly the mental aspect?

Twila: I truly believe that’s true. You can clearly see it in individual sports as well. While you occasionally get a physical mismatch, when the playing field is level, it almost always comes down to mentality. In team sports, a huge part of that mentality is recognizing that you are a collective unit. Teams that learn to highlight each other’s strengths and minimize each other’s weaknesses — while genuinely enjoying playing together — are usually the most successful. That’s a massive mental component: knowing you don’t have to be perfect individually, but you do have to work in concert with others.

Yitzi: This brings us to our signature question. Twila, you’ve been blessed with so much success and have surely learned a lot from your experiences. Looking back all the way to the beginning of your career as an athlete, can you share five things you’ve learned over the years that a young athlete starting out today could really benefit from?

Twila: Five things — you’ll have to help me keep track! First, someone once told me that a performance is never as good as it seems, but it’s also never as bad. Understanding that balance keeps you grounded.

Second, comparison is poison. You shouldn’t compare yourself to anyone but your own last performance. Doing this is vital for your mentality and mental health. It’s perfectly fine to borrow ideas from successful people and try to imitate their strengths, but avoid comparing your journey to theirs.

Third, there is incredible power in just showing up every day. I’ve seen many young people predetermine what’s around the corner during a tough stretch and give up, only to miss the exact moment that would have changed their trajectory. The most successful people simply keep showing up and pushing forward, no matter what.

Fourth, our self-worth has absolutely nothing to do with our performance, and the earlier you learn that, the better. Performance is just something we do. A grounded sense of self-worth and identity is what allows you to keep going regardless of your own perceptions or what other people think of you.

Fifth, it’s fine to know where you want to go in the sport — whether that’s the national team, college, or the pros — and you should pursue that fully. However, it shouldn’t be an all-or-nothing proposition. There are so many ways to use your time, energy, and talent to bless and serve the people around you. If you aren’t meant to play at the highest level, it’s completely okay to redirect that energy elsewhere, using the lessons you learned from sports to make a difference in your next endeavor.

I’ve learned so much over time from experience, success, and failure, and you just have to take it all in stride. If there is something in your heart — even if it sounds crazy — just take the next step in front of you. You don’t have to have it all figured out; just keep taking the next best step right ahead of you.

Yitzi: Can you share some of the self-care routines you practice to help your body, mind, and heart thrive?

Twila: Yes. I actually learned this while earning my Pro License through the US Soccer Federation. John McGraw taught me this: I try to get sunlight within a few minutes of waking up every day. It really helps. I couldn’t tell you all the science behind it without looking it up, but I’ve totally bought in after experiencing the benefits. That also ties into spending time in nature whenever I possibly can.

I also read the Bible every day. Starting my day with it gives me a lens to think about something bigger than myself, helps me stay thankful for what I have, and lets me learn from the documented experiences of those who came before us.

Additionally, I try to get eight hours of sleep. Not everyone needs eight hours, but this lady definitely does, so I carve out that time every night. I make sure to exercise daily, which is a big deal for me, and I try to eat within a specific window of the day. Keeping my eating and sleeping routines highly consistent helps keep my body on a rhythm, which is incredibly helpful when traveling all over the world.

Yitzi: Twila, this is our final aspirational question. Because of your incredible work and the platform you’ve built, you are a person of enormous influence. If you could spread an idea or inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea might inspire.

Twila: I would love to inspire real, authentic relationships among the people we interact with daily. We live in such a transactional, fast-paced world — especially in business and sometimes in sports — where the mindset is often, “I’m going to do this just to get that in return.” I truly believe that everybody has something valuable to offer.

It is hard to slow down, but we need to be less transactional and more intentional. We should try to really learn from the people around us, meet them where they are to drive our initiatives together, and be willing to be real and vulnerable in real-life scenarios. I am often asked to speak to large crowds or platforms like this where the message goes out to many people, and while that is important, I believe real change and difference are made in our day-to-day, one-on-one, and small group relationships.

Yitzi: So beautiful. Twila, how can our readers continue to follow your work, and how can they support you moving forward?

Twila: First and foremost, support our sport. Watch the games — watch the women’s game as much as you can. Retweet it, like it, repost it on Instagram, and invest in the women who are investing in it. That would make my heart truly happy.

If you want to follow me personally, I am a pretty private person. I don’t do a lot of external, outward-facing things — or at least not as much as I could — but I do post important life events on my outlets, which include Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn. You can find me under my name, Twila A. Kilgore or Twila Kilgore, depending on the platform. I also do some mid-length writing every once in a while on LinkedIn, sharing little blog posts if you want to get to know how I think.

Yitzi: Amazing. Well, Twila, it’s been an absolute pleasure to meet you. I wish you continued success and good health, and I would love to do this again next year.

Twila: I would love that. Thank you so much for having me.

Yitzi: My pleasure. It was so nice to meet you. Take good care.

Twila: Goodbye.