Equal pay for equal play – a slogan the U.S. Women’s National soccer team spread in their fight to close the gender pay gap.

The Burlington girls’ soccer team was inspired by their idols and their fearless pursuit of equality.

As a result, BHS freshman midfielder Lydia Sheeser spearheaded a #EqualPay campaign for the Seahorses.

Her teammates, equally inspired and motivated, got together to try and think of a way to spread the message and maybe design some shirts.

“We wanted to dress up and maybe do some arts and crafts and make some equal pay t-shirts,” Sheeser explained. “It’ll just be, our team will wear them to school one day and maybe we’ll take some cool pictures and it’ll be fun.”

“Then we realized people were super interested in them and we did more research and found out we could make jerseys and have it be a whole project of ours.”

Sheeser pitched the idea to Change The Story VT, and the organization immediately backed the team and their goal.

The BHS girls’ soccer team designed custom Nike jerseys, and they weren’t the only ones interested in wearing them.

“We just wanted jerseys for our team and then we thought maybe a couple other teams at BHS would like jerseys too,” Maia Vota, a BHS team captain, reflected.

“And then ultimately we just decided we had to open it up to the community because so many people expressed interest.”

That interest resulted in the team selling more than 300 jerseys, and counting, to the community.

“I’m just proud to be their coach,” said Jeff Hayes, the BHS varsity girls’ soccer head coach.

“It’s not only about the wins, it’s about things like this that these girls have accomplished and it’s growing bigger and bigger, and I’m so proud of them.”

The Burlington girls’ soccer team hosts South Burlington for their senior night/equal pay game on Friday, October 18 at 6 p.m. at Burlington High School.

To order an equal pay jersey of your own, click here.