Jill Ellis’s first job coaching women’s soccer was as an assistant coach at a college — for $6,000 a year. Ellis eventually landed at UCLA (1999–2010), coaching the Bruins to eight NCAA Women’s College Cups. In 2014, U.S. Soccer announced that she had been appointed head coach, and she would go on to lead the U.S. Women’s National Team (USWNT) to the Women’s World Cup in 2015, for which she would be honored as FIFA World Coach of the Year for Women’s Football. In 2019, the USWNT again won World Cup under Ellis — these back-to-back wins making Ellis the first manager in history to win two Women’s World Cup titles. In another one for the record books, Ellis has coached more games — 125 — for the women’s national team than anyone in history.
Ellis grew up in Portsmouth, England, the daughter of John Ellis, a famous soccer coach and visionary promoter of the sport. There was no organized soccer for girls in the 1970s in the U.K., but nevertheless Ellis developed a deep love for the sport. As she told Soccer America’s Mike Woitalla, “I loved playing in the schoolyard. I played with the boys. I played with my brother [Paul] and his friends.… Every break in school we’d play on the playground. We played in the backyard with a tennis ball.” Shortly before turning 16, Ellis moved with her family to the United States. She began working at her father’s Soccer Academy in Northern Virginia — and the rest is history.
“I truly think if I had stayed in England, I’m not sure I would be coaching,” she reflected in the Los Angeles Times, shortly before the U.S. and England squared off in the 2019 Women’s World Cup semifinal. “So what America gave me was kind of a dream and the opportunity and ability to follow that path, which I really had never dreamed about. I just feel very fortunate to be here.”
Ellis stepped down as head coach of the USWNT in 2019, the winningest coach in U.S. soccer history. In a statement, she said, “The timing is right to move on and the program is positioned to remain at the pinnacle of women’s soccer. Change is something I have always embraced in my life and for me and my family this is the right moment.” She is now president of one of the newer teams in the National Women’s Soccer League, the Diego Wave Fútbol Club.
