Lauren Holiday is a player well-known not only for her outstanding achievements on the pitch, but her long history of service off of it. It’s fitting then that the National Women’s Soccer League will rename its yearly player service award, formerly the Nationwide Community Impact Award, to the Lauren Holiday Impact Award.
It’s an honor that doesn’t sit lightly with Holiday, even amongst her litany of trophies for club and country. “It makes me feel a lot of gratitude for what I was able to create in the amount of time that I was in the NWSL,” she said in a call from her home.
The award, which has been presented in partnership with Nationwide since 2021 will “now prominently focus on and celebrate the community involvement of individual player nominees,” according to the league. NWSL will announce the finalists in the coming months with one winner receiving $30,000 for a charitable organization of their choice.
Every club’s community partner will receive a $5,000 donation from the league and Nationwide.
The decision to rename NWSL’s service award was virtually unanimous; players who were asked for input on the decision repeatedly brought up Holiday as their top recommendation.
Holiday spoke with The Athletic the day after husband Jrue helped the Boston Celtics win their first NBA conference finals games against the Indiana Pacers, throwing down 28 points in their 133-128 win. Jrue Holiday has spoken previously about sometimes receiving halftime texts from Lauren to psych him up, particularly if it looks like he’s struggling.
“I do, do that,” she said with a laugh. “Sometimes I feel like he just needs a reminder. It’s never to critique him in a bad way. But just like, ‘Hey, I see you.’” If anyone is qualified to send someone a halftime pump-up message, it’s World Cup winner, two-time Olympic gold medalist, two-time national champion, 2013 NWSL MVP Lauren Holiday.
And yet for all her accolades on the field, the near-unanimous consent to rename a service award for Holiday signals her enormous contributions off of it, the quintessential exemplar of people perhaps forgetting what you said, but always remembering how you made them feel.
“When they first told me, it’s like almost you don’t know how to react to that,” Holiday said. She was shifting in her seat, visibly uncomfortable. “It’s just never been about that for me. I’ve never really cared if anything was named after me, or even if my name was known. I only cared about being a good teammate.”
