Jill Ellis, Winnipeg, Canada, June 12, 2015. (Kevin C. Cox/Getty Images)
With a World Cup to her credit, the 48-year-old coach of the U.S. women’s team just signed a new multiyear contract. Terms were not disclosed, but it’s believed that the contract will keep her in the job at least through the 2019 World Cup in France, and possibly through the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo.
Here are five oddities, curiosities or (possibly) interesting facts about the first U.S. coach to win a World Cup since 1999:
1.
Her lifetime record as head coach of the U.S. team is 29-2-9. That includes two stints as interim head coach: One in 2012, after Pia Sundhage left and before Tom Sermanni started; and one in 2014, after Sermanni was fired and before Ellis got the top job permanently.
2.
She grew up in Cowplain, a village near Portsmouth on the southern coast of England.
3.
Her father John and her brother Paul were soccer coaches. Her father once coached the national team of Trinidad and Tobago.
4.
She lived in Singapore for two years while her father helped established a national soccer program there.
5.
An athletic child, she ran track but never played organized soccer until her family moved to the United States in 1981, when she was 15. In those days, the English didn’t consider football to be at all “ladylike,” so girls’ teams and leagues were nonexistent.
Two Women Having Tea, Frank H. Desch (1873-1934)