A conference titled “Women in Soccer: Leadership 1999” will be held July 22-25, 1998, at the University of Georgia in Athens, site of the U.S. women’s gold medal victory. Sponsored by the USASA, the senior division of U.S. Soccer, the conference will be designed to develop leadership skills in women in soccer and help promote the 1999 Women’s World Cup. Modeled on similar all-sport conferences for women developed by the Women’s Sports Foundation and a women’s soccer leadership conference held before World Cup ’94, the conference is the brainchild of women’s soccer advocate Marilyn Childress of Atlanta. Childress is best known for designing the national campaign that helped women’s soccer become a medal sport in the 1996 Atlanta Games. “In 1993, the Women’s Soccer Foundation held a successful leadership conference in Seattle,” said Childress. “We want to build on that foundation and bring women leaders from other sports to help develop our women soccer leaders.” The committee for the conference includes: Marla Messing, president, Women’s World Cup 1999; Linda Grant, a member of FIFA women’s committee; Donna Lopiano, executive director of the Women’s Sports Foundation; Lynn Berling-Manuel, publisher & editor-in-chief of Soccer America; Sylvia M. Hutchinson, an education professor at the University of Georgia; Gail Turbeyville, secretary of USASA’s Region III; Louise Wexlar, chairperson of the NSCAA’s women’s committee; and Ruth Callard, president of Women’s Soccer Foundation. For further information, call (770) 447-5376.