The footballer aims to create Saudi Arabia’s first official women’s team, writes May Rostom.

It wasn’t too long ago that Saudi women were not allowed to enter sports stadiums, let alone participate in sport.

As a 12-year-old, Saja Kamal recalls having to disguise herself as a boy in order to watch her footballing idol play in her city.

“I remember my favourite Saudi player at the time, Yaser AlQahtani, was playing in Dammam and I desperately wanted to go watch the game with my brothers and dad,” she says. “My father snuck me into the stadium after putting my hair up in a bun under my cap and dressing me in baggy clothes.”

Her parents’ support led to her realising her dream of becoming a footballer, and now 29, Kamal is an advocate for females participating in sport in Saudi Arabia. The new reforms in the Kingdom are certainly encouraging.

EARLY BEGINNINGS

While Kamal was fortunate enough to grow up in a liberal household, practising football as a little girl cost her parents social acceptance.

“My story started in Saudi when I was 4 and my dad registered me to the Saudi Aramco Soccer Association on a private compound in the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia. Women in Saudi don’t play football, especially not in public,” she says. “As a young footballer, I was the only Saudi girl who committed to football until I graduated from high school. My father, being a Saudi man and an employee of the compound I grew up in, was the only local who enrolled his daughter to play with all the international defendants and got criticised – even jokingly – by other Saudi men.”

Growing up in a culture where little girls were not encouraged to play sports was very troubling for a rebellious soul like Kamal. Trying to understand the rhetoric behind them was not an easy task and took a lot of determination from the youngster to fight for her goals.

“I just had to see the logic and be convinced by something in order to follow it. Not being allowed to practice football at school or university, or in public, or even not being able to access stadiums or join a gym, just didn’t make sense to me. I wasn’t going to just sit there and take it. My passion was football and I wanted to practice it, and I did.”

With no football teams on school grounds, Kamal practised her hobby at a camp in her free time. Being so good at the sport, the rising star was chosen to represent Saudi Arabia abroad in tournaments like the Schwan's USA Cup in Minnesota.

 “Playing internationally helped me meet some of my idols and other epic players from around the world,” she enthuses. “However, despite representing Saudi Arabia in over six countries and playing for 12+ years, we were never officially an actual national team.”

GAME CHANGER

When it was time for Kamal and her sister to go to high school, her father sent them both to Bahrain. Through that move, Kamal joined the Arsenal Soccer School and became a right-forward.

“We travelled for two hours daily to attend high school in another country, but, because of that, I received a stronger education in English and graduated from high school as a full International Baccalaureate student, thus skipping the foundation year of university, before flying to Boston to obtain my bachelor’s, master, and PMP (project management qualification), simultaneously.”

Kamal’s studies didn’t come in the way of her love for the sport. She played for Northeastern University’s women’s team while in college, before moving back to Saudi Arabia to coach the women’s team at Al Fursan Football Club.

At present, she is based in Dubai, where she works as a senior government consultant, but also coaches women’s teams in her spare time.

GOAL

Kamal recently joined Equal Playing Field, an NGO focused on empowering women to participate in sports. Kamal and 30 other football pros broke the world record for playing the highest altitude football match in history on top of Mount Kilimanjaro. A few months later, the group aimed to set a new record for the lowest altitude game, at the Dead Sea, Jordan.

“Casually entering the same stadiums I snuck into as a kid, inspired me to push forward and build an official Saudi national women’s team,” she says. “Joining Equal Playing Field was fuelled by those changes and resulted in my determination to break Guinness World Records.”

We have a feeling it won’t be last time she’s broken a record and made history.