When an ACL injury cut her professional soccer career short, Averie Collins left the sport she loved and made the leap to a tech startup.
But roughly two years later, Collins decided to return to soccer with a business venture of her own, quitting her job and moving back in with her parents as she launched The Lockeroom.
Through The Lockeroom, Collins hopes to build “a community of resources to help athletes” — something she felt was lacking during her playing career — she told the Deseret News.
But in order do that, she’s first addressing another need in the women’s professional soccer sphere: the need for player-centric merchandise.
Here’s how Collins went from a professional soccer player to an entrepreneur — and the roles Utah and a former BYU Cougar played in the journey.
From soccer player to entrepreneur
Collins was a successful two-sport athlete in Bozeman, Montana, when she decided to join the Utah-based La Roca Futbol Club.
She felt like taking that leap during her junior and senior seasons was the only way to accomplish her dream of playing soccer in the Pac-12.
Collins would fly to Salt Lake City or make the six-hour drive to play with La Roca every weekend. She would stay with teammates until she’d head back to Montana.
It paid off. She played for Stanford in college and then Washington State in her fifth year.
“Coming from Montana, a lot of the odds were stacked against me, and I just got really incredibly lucky that my mom and also coaches were huge advocates for me, to put me in situations that enabled me to play at this next level,” she said.
After concluding her collegiate career with WSU’s first-ever Final Four appearance, Collins returned to Utah to train with La Roca during the offseason and await the results of the 2020 NWSL draft.
She was in the drive-thru line of a Utah Starbucks in January 2020 with her mom, who had flown out, when she got the call that she’d been selected in the NWSL draft by the Washington Spirit.
After a shortened tournament-style rookie season due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Collins went into the 2021 season feeling at the top of her game.
But three days before preseason started, she tore her ACL.
“It sounded like a tree snapping, and I knew. We all knew,” she said.
She underwent surgery to repair the ligament and began rehab. But she realized something was still wrong with her knee when she compared herself to a teammate three months behind her in the rehab process.
An MRI revealed a cyclops lesion. She underwent surgery again, and upon completing rehab, she was cleared by the end of the season.
But in the 2022 preseason, the Spirit’s training staff put Collins through new tests, and she failed. They told her she’d have to wait another six months before taking the field again.
She returned in the middle of the Spirit’s playoff run but didn’t play.
“I’d been out now for about two years, and I just felt ready to go be a value somewhere,” Collins said.
She left the NWSL to work as a product manager at Range, a wealth tech company based in Washington, D.C., There, she learned how to run a business.
But Collins didn’t feel satisfied in her role.
“I learned a lot, but I remember I just was continually struggling, feeling like this is not what I was born to do. I have 25 years of experience and pain and lessons from sport. How can I help my community or help other athletes who are going through something similar?” she said.
Collins couldn’t see herself being happy if she stayed at the company.
“What I really wanted to do is help athletes and so, I decided to quit my job, and that’s kind of how The Lockeroom was started,” she said.
Launching The Lockeroom Threads
Women’s sports apparel is in greater demand than ever before as the popularity of women’s sports continues to explode.
In fact, the women’s sports apparel industry has an estimated value of $4 billion annually, according to findings from Klarna.
Front Office Sports reported in July that TOGETHXR’s now iconic “Everyone Watches Women’s Sports” shirts — that have been worn by several celebrities and prominent figures in women’s sports — generated $3 million of revenue in just seven months.

“There’s a huge market, a huge untapped market,” Collins said. “The whole hypothesis I’m building on right now is that fans actually have greater, if not the same, affinity level to players as they do teams. Yet anything out there is always giving money to the teams. There’s nothing actually directly empowering the players, but the players are the bedrock of the game, right?”
The primary way for fans to support and rep their favorite players are through team merchandise.
“We love watching Trinity Rodman because she’s just so electric and personable and emotive on the field. Yet, the people who capitalize on that are the Washington Spirit as they sell a Washington Spirit sweatshirt,” Collins said.
The more Collins researched the lack of player-centered merchandise, the more it “riled me up,” she said.
“These female athletes only have a very slim window to capitalize on this brand that they’ve built, and yet, nobody is helping them right now,” she said. “Maybe in five years, we’ll get there. But what about the players who are investing sweat equity right now?”
Collins' solution is Lockeroom Threads. She’s teaming up with NWSL players to create a line of merchandise designed with players at the center, and from design to production, Collins is doing it all on her own.
The best part? Players who work with The Lockeroom get 50% of the profits. Collins wants money to flow to more than just the teams and the top 1% of players who enjoy higher salaries and more lucrative endorsements.
“I realized, like, ‘Hey, there’s actually no good trendy player-centric gear in the space. Female athletes are not getting paid enough,” she said. “The whole idea of The Lockeroom is to empower these women financially — give them 50/50 split of the profits — and just creating really dope fan gear."
Teaming up with a former BYU Cougar
For her first athlete partnership, Collins turned to a former teammate: Ashley Hatch.
The former BYU Cougar is the Spirit’s all-time leading scorer and is sixth on the NWSL’s all-time scoring list.
“She is an absolute legend in the NWSL. Yet, she’s so underrated,” Collins said.

Hatch’s play and scoring prowess made her a contender to make the U.S. roster for the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup. She was ultimately left off the roster but has since returned to the national team after being invited to the team’s January training camp, as the Deseret News previously reported.
Hatch’s recognition of “the importance of building a brand” stood out to Collins, making her a perfect choice for the first collaboration.
“Ashley is just, like I said, she’s so underrated and deserves this recognition and this extra financial boost that just sadly has not happened yet,” Collins said. “She’s just one of the best teammates I’ve ever had.”
Hatch’s merch came in four options: a t-shirt, crew sweatshirt, a unisex hoodie and a women’s hoodie. The designs feature The Lockeroom Threads logo on the front and Hatch’s No. 33, her iconic goal celebration pose and her NWSL career stats on the back.
“Averie did a good job. She designed those herself, and it was pretty cool when she showed us. We were really excited about it,” Hatch told the Deseret News in January.
Collins realizes that cool merchandise is only “a small part of the problem to solve.”
But it’s “a simple way for us to build capital and start to build community” and give fans the trendy merchandise they’re looking for, she said.
Once Lockeroom has the capital it needs, Collins can turn the company into what she originally envisioned.
“The perfect Lockeroom is building a tight-knit group — community of athletes — and helping them at every stage,” she said.
Collins hopes to help share athletes' stories and provide them with resources she felt were lacking during her playing career, including an annual camp where young female athletes gather to be “coached by the best” and are taught “the mental side of the game, which, in my opinion, is very lacking.”
But until then, The Lockeroom can be the new go-to merchandise destination for NWSL fans.
“Who doesn’t love to start with clothes, right? It’s an easy way to get players involved, and I think fashion and sports already have this cultural relevance that you’re seeing in the (player) walkouts (ahead of games). So, how can the players start to capitalize on that? Because there’s just not enough player first entrepreneurs in the space right now,” Collins said.