USA Today Sports | By: Hemal Jhaveri | July 29, 2014

The FIFA Men’s World Cup may have just ended, but qualifying rounds are already underway for the 2015 Women’s World Cup in Canada.

While plenty of teams are vying for the honor of competing, one team has its sights set on history.

No Caribbean team has ever made it to the Women’s World Cup and the Women’s Jamaican Soccer Team is hoping to be the first. But, as all teams know, it takes more than talent, hard work and dedication to make it in international competition.

A team’s ability to finance their way through practices and qualifying rounds can often make the difference in their success on the field.

And that’s the difficult position the Women’s Jamaican Soccer Team, nicknamed the Reggae Girlz, finds themselves in. The Girlz, ranked 4th in their region, have struggled to secure sufficient funding from The Jamaica Football Federation for training or competition purposes. Private sponsors have been scarce as well.

Underfunded but with plenty of potential and talent, the team decided to branch out in their fundraising efforts.

Similar to the Jamaican Men’s Bobsled Team that used PayPal donations and Internet currency Dogecoin to finance their bid for the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, the Women’s Jamaican Soccer Team has turned to crowdfunding and taken their campaign global.

View:

• Canadian Crowdfunding Directory

• Metroland Media to promote community-based crowdfunding at Fuellocal.com

• Canadian sports crowdfunding platform Makeachamp sent six local Olympians to Sochi

With the help of Cedella Marley and the Bob Marley Foundation, the team took their cause to the public with an Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign and the results have been more than they expected.

The campaign has already raised a healthy $22,000, though the Reggae Girlz still need almost $30K more to appropriately cover expenses (like lodging, coaching and food) during the final round of the 2014 CFU Women’s Caribbean Cup in Trinidad and Tobago.

The team’s ambassador Cedella Marley spoke about the challenges facing women’s teams.

“Jamaica can be a very different place,” she added. “Even now, there are people who think that girls shouldn’t be playing sports. Helping the Reggae Girlz is one way to show that girls’ sports are just as important.”

On the field, the team has shown enough talent and drive to make a realistic run in the FIFA Women’s World Cup. They easily defeated St. Lucia 14-0 and the Dominican Republic 7-0 in the first round of the Caribbean Women’s Cup.

The funds they’ve received have also made a huge difference in the athletes state of mind on the field.

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