The power of football to provide hope and an escape from desperate situations is well documented and ought to supersede gender. Marbella “Mar” Ibarra recognised this power and saw no reason for women to lose out on its benefits simply because of their gender. Thus she devoted herself to the development and promotion of women’s football in Mexico, in doing so she became a revered pioneer of the sport. Given the scale of the change that Mar instigated it’s only right to celebrate all that she has accomplished in her life.
Football is a male-dominated environment the world over, especially so in Mexico, and so someone extremely passionate and driven was needed to lead the fight for women’s football; Mar encompassed these traits and so much more. Until fairly recently Mexico did not have a professional women’s football league and this was exactly what Mar set out to change. Mar’s first step towards that goal came in 2013 when she founded Isamar FC, an amateur women’s team based in Tijuana, Baja California. Tijuana, where Mar came to call home, suffers from high levels of violence and, for many, football provides the opportunity to escape from this violence on a daily basis. A year later and after much campaigning, Mar approached a professional men’s club to convert her amateur team into a professional squad as part of the club and was successful. Las Xolas de Tijuana was founded in 2014 as the first professional women’s team in Mexico with Mar as founder and Technical Director. The stage was set for the evolution of women’s football but there was still a lot of work to be done.