From Donegal to Chicago: sports scientist Kate Keaney making waves in America

A lightbulb experience or a sliding door moment. Call it what you will but Kate Keaney had hers on August 4th, 2019, not long after Mayo had dispatched her Donegal side from the All-Ireland SFC.

The Four Masters’ forward had little time to lick her wounds because she was quickly on a flight to California where the Irish women’s soccer team were getting to bask in the reflected glow of Megan Rapinoe et al as one of the newly crowned world champions’ opponents on their five-game domestic victory tour.

As a sports scientist working for STATSports – the highly-regarded Irish company that provides GPS systems and analysis to teams across the globe - Keaney had already spent a Six Nations campaign with Ireland’s female rugby team and had just started working with their soccer counterparts.

The packed 80,000+ capacity Rose Bowl in Pasadena immediately convinced her that US women’s soccer was where she wanted to go next, and that was even before Kobe Bryant brushed past her on the touchline, five months before his tragic death. The 28-year-old started her dream job last February, as a sports scientist for US Soccer’s female youth teams (covering U15s to U23s), based in ‘Soccer House’ on Chicago’s equivalent of Fifth Avenue. She’s not long back from a month in the Dominican Republic where their U17 girls (her main charges) won their Concacaf tournament to qualify for the 2022 U17 World Cup in India in October.

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Helping young footballers to maximise their talents is a mission close to Keaney’s heart, not least because of the set-backs she personally suffered. She debuted for the Donegal seniors at 15, won an All-Ireland minor medal in 2009, an Intermediate title a year later and picked up three Ulster senior medals. Yet she still suffered dark days. A seemingly innocuous incident in a challenge game in 2015 resulted in such a serious concussion that she had defer her final exams in the University of Limerick and, in 2017, she tore an ACL (cruciate).

She’s the only girl in a sporty family of high achievers. Her brother Luke played football for Donegal until hip injuries prematurely ended his career and Jack (23), studying maths and biology, currently captains UCD in the League of Ireland. Their maternal grandfather Tom ‘Pook’ Dillon was corner-back on Galway’s legendary All-Ireland winners in 1956 and their mother Deirdre and all her sisters were prominent camogie players from Ahascaragh.

“My mum is still incredibly fit, doing triathlons and cycling,” says Keaney. She proved a huge support during Kate’s difficult injuries, as did Mayo star and fellow UL alumna Fiona McHale. Keaney also centrally attributes the Gaelic Player Association’s leadership course (the Jim Madden programme) for imbuing her with the ambition and confidence to make her recent career leap.

But just how did she bag such a prime job? “Everyone asks me that!” she laughs. Once the fire was lit in Pasadena she trawled LinkedIn and US soccer’s own website for job opportunities and applied once one appeared. It was a full two and a half months before she got a first round interview. Several more interviews followed before she was told she’d made a short-list of four and had to make one last half-hour presentation to a trio of US Soccer’s high performance staff, all online. Her very first job was helping out their senior back-room at the 2022 SheBelieves Cup, America’s prestigious annual invitational tournament.

“I flew into Chicago, met with the overall head of performance, picked up my phone and laptop and then flew straight to San Diego,” says Keaney, retracing her path to the job. “My bags were literally left in Soccer House for a month.” She’s well used to living out of a suitcase since. US Soccer doesn’t have a high performance centre. Their offices are in the Windy City but their teams assemble for training camps in multiple and varied locations, all cherry-picked to suit their upcoming match conditions be it at altitude or in severe heat or humidity.

American women’s soccer clearly has more resources but the biggest draw for Keaney was a more central role. “Over here sports scientists are part of a team’s technical staff, much more hands-on. It’s not just collecting and analysing data. I do all the warm-ups and the periodisation plans, I design menus.

“It’s exactly what’s happening in the Premier League or Women’s Super League, in the likes of Arsenal and Chelsea. You’re regarded as an important member of staff. They’re way further ahead at youth level. We’re emulating the senior team in the pathways from U15s upwards, so teaching them a lot about hydration, nutrition, RPE (rates of perceived exertion) and wellness.”

She is one of the new generation of Irish sports scientists spreading their wings, like Eoin Clarkin (head of S&C with Arsenal women), Sean Carmody (doctor at Chelsea FC since 2020) Shane Malone (ex-IRFU and now Dublin GAA) and Ed Slattery (IRFU). Women are still in the minority. “Some of my class (Sport and Exercise Science in UL) went into S&C, others went on to do physio or medicine. There are less practitioners in sports science and females are few and far between.”

Keaney’s direct boss, the head of USA’s Women’s high performance, is female and the two sports scientists assigned to each of their youth programmes (women’s and men’s) are split 50:50 gender-wise, with an Australian man about to become her new colleague.

Terms and conditions abroad are obviously better too. “There are internships in Ireland but you’re expected to work for free initially. It’s getting better but you’d still see jobs looking for three years experience and a masters and the pay is just 20 grand.”

Yet the reality of what she was taking on, in a city where she knew just one person, hit her hard after getting through US immigration in Dublin Airport until she bumped into a friendly face. “I was a mess after leaving my family, half-crying, heading to the bar at 10am to get something to settle me and then I saw Andy Moran and his wife! They were with the Leitrim County Board, I’d never met them before but I just started talking to them and that bit of chat really helped.” The Yanks will surely never take the gaelic footballer out of her.

She shares accommodation with a Kerry woman in Chicago and quickly signed up to local GAA team Aisling Gaels though she admits to not being able to attend a training session just yet. Keaney was home last week for the first time since February and flew out to the Netherlands on Tuesday for a 10-day camp with America’s U15s. Then it’s back to Donegal for another few days before flying to Sweden with their U23s and, from August on, she’ll be in camps with the American U17s.

“Every day I go in I learn something new. My boss Ellie Maybury (US WNT’s head of performance) is phenomenal. She used to have my job, is from Birmingham and took me under her wing immediately. The overall head of high performance (Rick Cost) is Dutch so there’s a few Europeans involved,” she says, acceding that her Donegal lilt still confuses everyone. “You’d miss playing but being part of a team environment means you still get that buzz. I love the fast-paced environment and the fun of being in camp.”

“Every day I go in I learn something new.

Sport science will “always have a new hot topic but the most important thing I’ve learned is that it’s all about the athlete. You can get carried away with so much data but it’s about building relationships with athletes, understanding what makes them tick.

“You just want to make a difference, like when you see a player who might have been struggling with an injury all through camp and then ends up playing. I’m trying to impact these players so that they eventually make it to the (USA) women’s team, that’s the goal. Hopefully Ireland also qualify for the 2023 World Cup and we do well in India. That’d all make me happy now.”