Laura Youngson's Journey to Empower Female Athletes with Ida Sports

1. Laura Youngson's Journey to Empower Female Athletes with Ida Sports In the sports field, each move counts and adds value to an athlete's career. Choosing the right athletic apparel and shoes will enhance performance. By wearing the appropriate sports footwear one can improve their biomechanics, stability, and movement which in turn will lead to improved comfortability and help in preventing injuries. In this article, we discuss a woman entrepreneur, Laura Youngson who is a co-founder and CEO of Ida Sports. The company is focused on manufacturing sports footwear for female athletes and primary design for soccer by understanding women’s foot shape, which enables customers to improve their athletic performance. Laura Youngson: Co-founder & CEO Laura Youngson is an Australian women entrepreneur who started a sports footwear brand for women to empower them in their sports careers. The vision behind the start of the company was an incident when Laura took part in the highest altitude soccer game and set a Guinness World Record with the Equal Playing Field Initiative for representing gender inequality in sport, the soccer cleats were very uncomfortable. Then she decided to start a company to solve this problem for women to help them excel in sports. Laura graduated with a Master of Entrepreneurship from the University of Melbourne and an MSc in Physics at Durham University. Initially, she worked as a Senior Policy Advisor at the Department for Business, Innovation, and Skills. Later she was a General Manager at Coral Lodge and worked as a Global Sovereign Wealth Funds Manager at PwC Middle East. Laura was a co-founder and Board Trustee of the Lightyear Foundation, she co-founded Brunswick Aces which is a non-alcoholic botanical spirits drink. Laura is a co-founder of Equal Playing Field, where she organized the world’s highest-altitude football match and set a world record by participating in an all-female team. Laura met he co-founder Ben Sandhu when she was playing indoor Soccer, Ben found potential in the idea of designing aesthetic footwear for women and together they started Ida Sports in the year 2018. They researched for 2 years during which she learned that women are themselves in trouble and injury by wearing men's boots and met physical therapists, podiatrists, coaches, and around 800 female athletes and then designed a soccer cleat that is more comfortable and specially created for women.

2. About Ida Sports Ida Sports is a footwear company that manufactures sports footwear specially for women athletes to empower their sports journey. The company was founded by Laura Youngson along with her co-founder Ben Sandhu in the year 2018 and has its headquarters located in Melbourne, Australia. The core of the company is to manufacture comfortable and high-performance sports footwear for athletes. In the year 2018, Laura and Ben tested their prototypes with professional athletes in the game organized by Equal Playing Field to break the world record for the lowest altitude at the Dead Sea. In the year 2020, Ida launched its first boot, which gained a review of 5 stars from players across the world. Anyone can order the product from the Ida sports website which has a wide range of collections and designs available in all sizes. Need for special Women's Soccer Cleats Women have always taken unisex cleats even after having different feet shape, the three major differences in men's and women's feet are foot shape, Higher arches, and pressure loads. The female foot shape is more triangular whereas in men it is rectangular and women do not have wide feet. The female feet have a slightly higher arch. The pressure factor is also considerable as men and women have different body weights and wearing improper footwear will cause pain. Ida Sports designed 5 different featured women's soccer which address the issues caused due to foot shape. Wider Toe Box, a Narrow heel Cup, More Arch Support, Custom Stud Configuration, and Optimal Traction which help in abiding the risk of pain and injury. The benefits of using Ida Sports footwear are comfort, support, and performance which helps women athletes increase their efficiency and boost their sports career.