Cadence Ireland Sponsors Fahy Rovers Girls Soccer Team

Some Background - Women@Cadence Ireland Group

Based out of the Galway office of Cadence Ireland, I work as a Sr. Principal Verification Engineer in the Silicon Solutions Group (SSG) business unit. Back in 2023, I became one of the core members of the Ireland wing of our Women@Cadence Global Group, and I’m immensely proud of the work I’ve done as part of this group in the past couple of years. Women@Cadence Ireland supports Cadence Ireland on critical initiatives, such as STEM, Women in Tech (WiT), and professional development. The main goal of this group is to promote women in leadership roles and encourage them in their career journeys. In addition, the group works with young women in schools and universities to guide and encourage them to take up STEM subjects and consider engineering as a career option.. The Women@Cadence Ireland group is involved with organising events under three pillars:

• Workshop to Inspire: Focused skill-development workshops and talks to inspire and motivate
• Active Wellness: Interactions and events aimed at improving mental and physical well-being
• Fun Fridays: Series of sessions where employees connect, collaborate, and explore new hobbies

In one of our sync-up meetings, we were discussing the possibilities to help a charity. It was then I informed the group about my daughter’s soccer team and how I had always thought of getting a sponsorship for it. Charity begins at home!

Development of Girl’s Underage Team in the Club

My eldest child, Sheena, is 12 and plays soccer for our local club, Fahy Rovers. I have two other children, my son, Aran, who is 10, and my daughter, Aoibheann, who is eight years old. Like Sheena, they also play for Fahy Rovers. Being a rural soccer club, it’s only in the last few years that the girls’ teams have been set up and developed.

When Sheena began playing soccer in 2021, she was nine years old. Back then she used to play with the boys, as there was no club team for girls of her age. She played mostly in defence and loved to play hard, unfazed by the boys. The following year, at U-11, they formed a girls’ team and began playing in female-only leagues. All girls playing in the U-11 category were 10 years old or younger. The girls used the old soccer kits borrowed from the boys as they did not have their own. After putting in a lot of hard work, they won the U-11 league in 2022. They also had very good results at the U-12 level, and in 2024, moved into the U-13 premier division. The girls’ persistence and hard work over these years has helped grow the club and attract new female talent. They have been and continue to be true ambassadors for women in sport!

How I Secured the Sponsorship

When I shared the success story of my daughter’s team with the other members of the Women@Cadence Ireland group, they were impressed and suggested that I try setting something up with Benevity, a charity platform we use in Cadence. Unfortunately, sports clubs are not registered charities and can’t receive funding in that way. It got me thinking about alternate ways I could get Cadence to help such a great team. Being one of the few female engineers in the semiconductor domain where a vast majority of colleagues are males, I am a passionate ambassador of gender equality. I know that Cadence supports women and allies, and I believe the current generation of females should have many more opportunities and feel like equal players. Therefore, I was determined to get Cadence to help in some way and sponsor this team. I then contacted Connie O’Shea, one of my colleagues from the Cork office, who had secured a sponsorship for his favorite team, Nemo Rangers, in the past. Connie was a great help and supported me in securing the sponsorship money for the girls’ training tops from the site budget allocated to Community and Social Responsibility.

Thank You, Cadence, for the Lovely Training Tops!

The girls had a very successful year in 2024, reaching the U-12 Shield final, placing second in the U-13 Premier League and winning the U-13 Mayo Cup and U-14 B league. They were delighted to hear that Cadence was sponsoring their training tops. I want to thank Cadence for this thoughtful sponsorship on behalf of all the girls! I’m sure this gesture of appreciation and encouragement from Cadence will push them to train harder in 2025. Needless to say, they’ll look so much more stylish in their new training tops!

Here is a post that we posted on our club’s Facebook page just before Christmas, when we had our awards night.

Some Extra Exciting News

The girls have a very passionate coach, Maureen, who is always pushing for equality and the best opportunities for females in the club. She approached the club and asked why we only had a male Masters team (for members over 30 years of age). So recently, the women’s Masters team was formed. Guess who signed up? That’s right, me! We’ve had our first training session, and I really enjoyed it. We played a challenge against the senior girls and proved that the old ladies still have it in them, beating the younger generation!