The Raising Her Game docuseries is centered around using the University of Texas at Austin women’s soccer as a fulcrum to tell the story of how women’s sports and U.S. soccer evolved concurrently. But it includes segments about the TCU soccer program and Dallas-Fort Worth-based Solar Soccer Club. Camryn Lancaster played for both Solar and TCU before joining the professional ranks with Dallas Trinity FC in the Division I USL Super League.

Rush: We did this documentary called Raising Her Game that I directed and it traces the progress of women’s sports along with soccer in this country and it’s through the lens of the UT (Austin) program, but there’s a lot of angles that involve Camryn, such as the TCU program and the Solar (Soccer Club) program, because a lot of the players, the Longhorn players, played in the same club you did. And so I want to start there. What was it about Solar that enabled them to produce so many players that did go on to play at the university level like you did?

Camryn: I think it’s just Solar always put the players first and it was, like, “How can we develop these players to get to the next level?” and it starts at the practices, so intense practices and just keeping everything at a club level as professional as you can for high schoolers.

Rush: In the docuseries, we met Adrian Solca who coached you. What was, what was he like as a coach?

Camryn: Adrian’s an intense coach but he wants you to be better, so I think it’s good to have an intense coach because it really prepares you for the college level, because college isn’t easy, obviously. So it’s good to get that experience at a club level and then when you move on, it’s really easy to just adjust.

Rush: Camryn’s college experience came at TCU, which, as we learned in the documentary, was at one time not a program. Lexi (Missimo)’s mom talked about how they used to take the uniforms and dump them all out onto the onto the floor and they just picked them up. I feel like it was maybe a little more professional when you were there. What was it about the TCU program that then got you ready to join the professional ranks?

Camryn: I felt super-prepared to move on to the professional from TCU. I think the intensity was always there. Film was a big deal, so we learned. We always watched ourselves on film, so to see how we can improve and yeah, I think just the little things of being 10 minutes early to everything, talking, giving information before you give a pass and it was always a standard that we upheld at TCU and I think it was easy for me, easier for me, to transition because those standards were always held at TCU.

Rush: So Camryn’s current team, Dallas Trinity FC, plays in the USL Super League and before you signed with Dallas Trinity, you were also playing professionally in a different league. Tell me what that league was and the kind of success you had and then how you came to be here?

Camryn: I played with California Storm. It was in this WPSL and it was also in the USLW league, so I played in two leagues. I went out to Sacramento, California and it was really fun. Jamie Levoy, she is the executive director of California Storm. She just always was putting the players first, you know, how can we develop these players to move on, because she wanted us to move on from semi-pro. She wanted us to excel in college. She wanted us to excel in professional and she was always figuring out opportunities, helping us with agents and putting us in two leagues so we had a lot of experience going into the season. Yeah, I mean, it was awesome. We went on to win the WPSL National Championship in 2024, this past summer, so it was really good to play, be able to play all those games and also get coached really well in the summer, too.

Rush: How impressed are you with the landscape that you’re in as a women’s professional soccer player, at all the options you have. How is that neat for someone like you?

Camryn: I think it’s so awesome to see all these leagues. I think when I was younger, I didn’t realize that we had WPSL. We have (the) USLW league now and now we have a women’s professional soccer team in Dallas and it’s so cool to see these girls come out to the Cotton Bowl, which is probably 30 minutes away from everyone just to see something that they can strive to be. Playing in front of your hometown, there’s nothing like it. So yeah, it’s really cool to see all these options that are available for women and everything that is going on around soccer.