Girls Academy Partners with PhotoShelter to Scale Storytelling

The Girls Academy (GA) is the premier youth development soccer league in the United States, dedicated to empowering young women ages 13 to 18. With 11 conferences spanning the country and over 20,000 athletes, the league is now partnering with PhotoShelter to transform how it captures, manages, and shares the stories of its players and teams.

A mission beyond the pitch

Girls Academy prides itself on being a platform for female leadership. Outside of Marketing Director Eric SanInocencio, the league is entirely female-run by a team of former collegiate and professional players and coaches.

Eric told us, “The care, the knowledge, the connection, and the love for the game is pretty strong within our unit.”

Driven by a passion for the sport and a commitment to female empowerment , GA needed a new approach to scale their marketing content and make a bigger impact.

The challenge: Disconnected content and untapped potential

With events and matches taking place nationwide, the GA team faced a significant hurdle: their best content was scattered across Google Drives, SharePoint, and freelancers’ hard drives.

Currently, the team only uses about ten percent of the content they shoot for social media, while the rest remains untouched. To fix this, they needed a reliable DAM and distribution platform that could serve the league, the teams, and the athletes.

“I think searchability and having all of our content in one place was a big opportunity for us,” Eric explained. “We have such great history… but we really don’t have a capability right now to go back and say, ‘Okay, this former GA player was amazing today, but look when she was 13 or 14, playing with us.'”

“There are so many stories here, it’s almost overwhelming. We have around 20,000 athletes that play in Girls Academy and I wish I could tell wonderful stories about every single one of them. So now we’re figuring out how we can use this wonderful technology to allow them to do that.”

Eric SanInocencio, Marketing Director, Girls Academy

How PhotoShelter will power the Girls Academy workflow

Having previously used PhotoShelter with other organizations, Eric knew the platform could support a league of this size. Built-in content sharing made the decision even easier.

“We vetted three or four different companies,” Eric said. “But PhotoShelter had both [DAM and distribution] in one. It just made it so seamless and such an easy transition for us to make.”

Now, with an automated workflow, GA will use PhotoShelter AI to identify and tag athletes and team logos to seamlessly deliver content to clubs, players, and partners without manual searching.

With this process in place, highlighting the many stories in their community will be simple and scalable. Girls Academy will be able to get content into the hands of 20,000 athletes, giving them the tools they need to build their own brands.

“I look at PhotoShelter as the hub for our content experience. Our content is really a great recruiting tool, and it positions Girls Academy as a place to not only play on an elite level, but a place we can help you tell your story.”

Eric SanInocencio, Marketing Director, Girls Academy

“We’re proud to support Girls Academy’s meaningful mission and usher in a new chapter for the league,” said PhotoShelter CEO Andrew Fingerman. “Together, we’ll help elevate these young athletes by making it easier to deliver their stories to communities around the country.”

“The Girls Academy was founded on a belief that young women deserve platforms that elevate not only their performance, but their voices, their journeys, and their impact beyond the field,” said Patricia Hughes, Commissioner at Girls Academy. “This partnership with PhotoShelter represents a groundbreaking step forward in youth sports, allowing us to amplify athlete storytelling in ways that have never been done at this level. Together, we are creating opportunities for our players to be seen, heard, and celebrated, while empowering them to take ownership of their narratives and inspire communities across the country.”

Founded in 2005, PhotoShelter is a leading digital asset management (DAM) platform for marketers and creatives. Our AI-driven solution simplifies content collection, organization, and distribution. Trusted by global brands like the NFL, MLB, Purdue University, and Wendy’s, we securely manage over 6.7+ billion assets and support nearly 100 million annual downloads.