DME Academy, Sarasota - LeaderHERship Summit

More Than Soccer: DME Academy Sarasota Hosts LeadHERship Summit for Female Athletes

September 1, 2026

At DME Academy Sarasota, developing female athletes means developing more than soccer players.

It means building confident young women. Leaders. Teammates. Competitors. Students. And eventually, young adults prepared to take what they learn through sports into college, their careers and life.

That was the purpose behind the second DME LeadHERship Summit — a full day dedicated exclusively to our female student-athletes and built around soccer, fitness, leadership, confidence and personal development.

Learning From Women Who Lead

One of the highlights of the day was hearing from keynote speaker Trine Falnes, an accomplished technology executive who has served as CEO of Spond and built her career across media, technology and sports.

Falnes shared a message particularly relevant to young female athletes: challenge yourself, take risks, set ambitious goals and have the courage to pursue them. Her own career has included navigating the challenges women can encounter in leadership while helping build and scale organizations in the sports technology space.

The girls also participated in conversations with an outstanding group of female leaders, including Sydney Gruters, Genesis Hey Krick and Shannon Barrows.

Rather than simply telling our athletes to “be confident,” the goal was to put them in a room with women who have built careers, taken risks, experienced setbacks and continued moving forward.

Leadership is easier to envision when young women can see it sitting directly in front of them.

Connecting the Youth and College Game

We were also fortunate to welcome New College of Florida Head Women’s Soccer Coach Serge Lipovetsky and members of the Mighty Banyans women’s soccer program.

Coach Lipovetsky brings more than two decades of coaching experience across the youth, collegiate and national levels, including NCAA Division I experience before taking over the New College program.

Having college players actively participate in the day gave our younger athletes something especially valuable: access.

They could interact with women who are already living the next stage of the journey — balancing college academics, training, competition, teammates and everything else that comes with being a collegiate student-athlete.

That connection is exactly what we want to continue building at DME.

And the New College program provides a great example of academics and athletics working together. The women’s soccer team recently earned the United Soccer Coaches Team Academic Award after posting a 3.68 team GPA during the 2025–26 academic year.

Compete. Train. Get Uncomfortable.

Of course, this is DME. We weren’t going to spend the entire day sitting in chairs.

Our athletes worked with DME coaches Jared Antista, Chris Solari and Jaden Humbyrd, combining soccer development and competition with the larger leadership message of the day.

Nico and Sofia from Savage Kulture Fitness brought another dimension to the experience through physical challenges designed to push athletes outside their comfort zones.

Savage Kulture’s training philosophy emphasizes physical development alongside mindset, accountability and pushing beyond self-imposed limitations.

That fit perfectly with what we wanted LeadHERship to represent.

Confidence isn’t only something you talk about.

Sometimes you build it by finishing the rep you weren’t sure you could finish. By competing when you’re tired. By speaking in front of your teammates. By meeting someone new. By asking a question. By being willing to fail. And by discovering that you’re capable of more than you thought.

Creating Something Specifically for Our Girls

The growth of the girls game has created incredible opportunities, but simply providing girls with teams isn’t enough.

We want our female athletes to have environments intentionally designed for them.

That means creating opportunities to compete at higher levels, connecting them with college programs, surrounding them with strong female role models, investing in leadership education and helping them understand that their identity and potential extend well beyond the soccer field.

That’s what LeadHERship is about.

It isn’t a soccer clinic with a leadership speech attached to it.

It’s part of a larger commitment to developing the whole female athlete.

We want our girls chasing championships. We want them pursuing college soccer. We want them competing.

But we also want them leaving DME believing they can lead a team, run a company, build something of their own, walk confidently into difficult situations and positively impact the people around them.

Better players. Stronger leaders. Confident young women.

That’s the standard.

Thank You to Our Community

An event like this requires people willing to give their time and experience to the next generation.

A huge thank you to Coach Serge Lipovetsky and the New College of Florida women’s soccer athletes; Trine Falnes; Sydney Gruters; Genesis Hey Krick; Shannon Barrows; Nico and Sofia from Savage Kulture Fitness; and DME coaches Jared Antista, Chris Solari and Jaden Humbyrd for investing in our athletes.

Thank you as well to AJA Productions and Sara Meadows for documenting the experience and giving our athletes professional photos and memories from the day.

Most importantly, thank you to every young woman who showed up willing to participate, compete, listen, learn and challenge herself.

This is only the beginning of what we want LeadHERship to become.