Okamoto ’07 Finds Success in Soccer Beyond the Pitch

As a student at CC, Dr. Katlin Okamoto ’07 was the prime example of a CC student-athlete. She was a leading member of the Women’s Soccer team, serving as captain her senior year, and majored in Biology and minored in Asian Studies. She was also a member of the Student Athlete Advisory Committee, serving as Secretary and Co-President respectively in her final two years, and participated in multiple campus activities and Intramural sports. When she graduated, she wasn’t exactly sure what she wanted to do, but she knew sports, and soccer specifically, would be involved.

“I knew I was still interested in sport and it all looped back to my own experience as a young person growing up in Taos, NM. My interaction with the sport over time was pretty unique,” says Okamoto. “I always thought I’d be back in kinesiology. That was sort of my path. But I ended up in a social work program that had an embedded youth work program.”

After graduating from CC, Okamoto worked with Soccer Without Borders, working in Zambia and Nicaragua. After returning to the States, she became the Assistant Coach at Amherst, the Assistant Coach at University of Maine, and then coached with the U.S. Olympic Development Program and the Salvo Soccer Club before becoming the Director of the Girls Academy with the club. During this time, Okamoto earned her master’s in Exercise and Sports Studies and her PhD in Social Work, focusing on youth work and sport.

“I’ve always kind of found myself sitting in both of those worlds – sport and studies. I love academia, but I dislike when you’re not taking those ideas to the real world and trying to apply them,” says Okamoto. “We need to move back and forth between those spaces. I would say CC is part of what really embedded that school of thought for me. It invited you to go one step further than what already exists and ask some other questions. Why can’t we just try? Or why can’t we do this a little bit differently? That’s allowed me to do some really cool stuff in the soccer space.”

In 2022, Okamoto started working for the U.S. Soccer Foundation, a non-profit that provides underserved communities access to innovative play spaces and evidence-based soccer programs that instill hope, foster well-being, and help youth achieve their fullest potential. Okamoto serves as the organization’s Senior Director of Training, Education, and Evaluation.

“Young people have valuable things to add to community. So how do we create more spaces where they have agency and grow into healthy contributing adults but also have some say and power in what their life is as a young person,” says Okamoto. “My intersection was merging that into the sports space and thinking about how we create this access. Sports is this unwieldy ecosystem in the U.S. There’s tons of money in it and particularly soccer tends to be a suburban, white, upper-middle-class sport. It costs a lot of money to play through those structures, and it’s also highly dictated by what adults think is best.”

“I love academia, but I dislike when you’re not taking those ideas to the real world and trying to apply them. We need to move back and forth between those spaces. I would say CC is part of what really embedded that school of thought for me. It invited you to go one step further than what already exists and ask some other questions. Why can’t we just try? Or why can’t we do this a little bit differently? That’s allowed me to do some really cool stuff in the soccer space.”

Dr. Katlin Okamoto ’07

In her current role, Okamoto works to provide all youth access to sports, specifically helping the adults in these programs be the best coaches for their kids. She has worked on multiple initiatives, supporting local, regional, and national programs to serve coaches working with athletes at all levels. One of these initiatives even had her teaming up with Manny Marez, another former CC Soccer player, delivering trainings across the country.

“Coach-Mentor Training is really about how we equip adults with skills to build healthy relationships with kids,” Okamoto says. “We actually train more non-soccer coaches than we do soccer coaches. We work across sports and levels – competitive coaches, recreational coaches, parents who have just been told they’re going to be a coach, etc. As humans, we revert to our own experiences – the way in which we were coached as kids. This program gives people that space to learn other ways… If we train more coaches in the ecosystem to just work better with kids, more kids will enjoy the sport and will continue to play. That leads to kids getting the good things that we say come out of sports when there’s a good environment, like life skills and healthy mental and physical wellness.”

Okamoto was raised in the world of sport and brings her knowledge of its benefits to the work she does. She also notes that her time at CC, on the Block Plan and as a student-athlete, helped her find success in her job and life.

“The Block Plan forces you to push the limits of your capacity. If you are really focused and dialed in and get to spend time on a particular subject or project, you realize how much you can produce in that period of time,” she says. “And then, the routines that you build as an athlete, there was a regimentation to that… When I left school, obviously the sport was a structure that went away in terms of playing. But in moments when things have gotten more difficult, I feel like it’s easier to fall back into providing myself with that structure. I know in moments when there’s a lot happening or I’m having a tough time, I need to make sure I find that structure again. I think the ability to put yourself in a routine comes from having played college athletics. There’s also a level of self-awareness that comes with playing at that level that really helps in the work I do.”

The U.S. Soccer Foundation was formed as the legacy foundation for the Men’s World Cup that was hosted in the States in 1994. At that time, soccer was not a prevalent sport in the States and the organization was charged with growing the game in the country. Their mission was focused on providing access to the game through both programs and play spaces in underserved communities. They set the lofty goal of serving over a million kids in a year by the next time the World Cup came to the U.S. in 2026. In 2024, they reached that goal.

In recognition of all her work supporting this goal and her service to the sport of soccer, Okamoto received the 2024 Letter of Commendation from United Soccer Coaches. This award recognizes her special contributions to the sport and the association. Okamoto experienced a full-circle moment at the award ceremony where a fellow awardee, the organization’s winner of the Mike Berticelli Award for excellence in coaching education, was Erik Oman, Okamoto’s first coach at CC.