Stef Zeh is the founder of Section Z, a nonprofit that takes young female athletes from underserved communities to professional sports games, including Angel City matches. Through attendance at games, plus panels and workshops with successful women who grew up playing sports, Section Z aims to leverage the excitement of live sports to set participants up for success.
Transportation to Angel City games is made possible through the Rolling with Chevy program, which provides transportation to the stadium for community groups, youth sports teams, and families. Rolling with Chevy is Chevy’s contribution to the Angel City 10% Sponsorship Model, where 10% of all sponsorship dollars are reallocated back into the community.
AngelCity.com: What is Section Z all about?
Stef Zeh: Section Z is a nonprofit organization where we take young female athletes from underserved communities to professional sports games. The idea is we leverage the excitement of live sports to set these girls up for success. We're about taking them to the game, showing them that representation, and then we do workshops and panels where we focus on showing these girls that the transferable skills they get being an athlete set them up for life success.
The percentage of young women who will be professional athletes or collegiate athletes, it’s very small, right? But there's so much data that shows that sports provide transferable skills that set them up for success—yet there are so many barriers. We know that girls tend to drop out of sports around age 13-14. So it's about removing those barriers and keeping these girls excited.
ACFC: Talk a little more about the workshops and panels you do.
SZ: We’ll take girls from an underserved community to a game, and they have a pre-game panel experience. I'll moderate a panel with female execs and former athletes, asking how their skills as athletes translate, they’ll share challenges they’ve faced along their career journey, and offer advice to these young female athletes. We also know from research, you can only aspire to be what you see, and these girls might not have met a mechanical engineer or seen what marketing a sports team looks like.
When you think about it, there are so many jobs that exist at a sports stadium, whether it's the person who welded the goalposts, the person who does the contracts for the athletes, the player, the coach, the PR staff, the food vendors. So, if we can take this thing that they really love and that they feel a part of, and use that to show what's really possible, that's the big idea. Our motto is, it's more than a ticket. So they get exposure to the game, but it’s more than that.
ACFC: How do sports contribute to girls’ lifelong success, and how does Section Z factor into that?
SZ: I'm sure you've seen that stat about how 94% of women in the C-suite were athletes. That stat is only so interesting - it’s really just a correlation. Because they only asked women in the C-Suite. This is such a small percentage of the population. It’s less than 4%! What about everyone else? If we can all agree that the things you learn from sports set you up for success, how do we get everyone else moving up?
That's our whole thing, and I’ve experienced the impact sports have firsthand. I'm an entrepreneur who grew up feeling like sports was the only place where I really felt like I belonged, and because I'm an athlete I can be dropped in any situation and have confidence. I've pivoted from being at a high-end clothing line, to hosting a morning radio show that won awards, and I feel that’s all because I was an athlete.
That whole C-suite thing, we kind of flip it on its head, and our pillars for the non-profit are what we call the Sweet C's, which are competence, confidence, and collaboration, because that's really what we’re helping them develop.
ACFC: What inspired you to start Section Z?
SZ: On March 6, 2020, like a week before the world shut down, I was in a bad accident. I was on Catalina Island, and they use golf carts for cars over there. I’d only been there for an hour and a half and I got tossed out of a golf cart and it flipped and landed on my head. I was airlifted out. I had a brain injury and a face laceration. So my experience of COVID was, I was in bed with a brain injury, just wanting my brain to work.
Through that experience, I started thinking about how I’ve done all these really cool things, I’ve traveled the world, but if I wouldn't had been so lucky. What have I done that actually matters? What have I built that’s bigger than me, that’s going to make the world a better place?
Going to sports games was always one of my favorite things to do. I'm a season ticket holder for Angel City—front-row season tickets. I remember being so pumped to go to the first game, and about five minutes in, I had this wave of sadness come over me. I was like, man, what would my life have been like if this existed when I was a kid?
After that, I realized, I don't know if I would have been able to go when I was growing up—so that's the business problem that I want to solve. From there I wound up meeting [Angel City Co-Founder] Julie Uhrman, who was instrumental in building our partnership with Angel City.
The first time I heard Julie talk, she said the best way to support the team is to buy tickets. So, I called Angel City and I said, “I want the biggest group slot you guys have left.” That was for the last game in 2022. I bought 25 tickets and decided to find a school, and a bus, and that was how the first Section Z started. We’ve been at every Angel City home game since.
ACFC: What’s next for Section Z?
SZ: More teams, more leagues, deeper partnerships, with the goal of having a Section Z at every stadium. We are also working on some other really new and exciting things that we’re not ready to announce, but we believe it will leverage the power of sports in a way that hasn't been done.