How Bryn Langrock Is Revamping the Playbook for Girls Sports in Washington State

Throughout her three years as a marketing professional at the Washington Interscholastic Activities Association (WIAA), Bryn Langrock has afforded student-athletes across the state unprecedented levels of visibility and meaning. In doing so, she’s helped lower a drawbridge of opportunity across moats of gendered expectations in sport, inspiring a whole generation of young women in Washington and beyond. 

“I think we’ve, as a team, found ways to do more than just box scores and photos,” Langrock said of the WIAA marketing department. “In our own lives, when we’re scrolling, what we’re looking for is the best of the best, or who’s winning or who’s losing. But the beauty of high school sports is that it’s not necessarily about that.”

The box scores, the photos, the trends — those aspects of sports and more have made up a huge part of Langrock’s life since she was growing up on Whidbey Island, long before her days on the Oak Harbor High School varsity basketball team. 

Now, she’s able to shine a spotlight on kids in communities not unlike her own.

“Growing up in what felt like a small town — kind of an isolated community — the thought of the world and being a part of trends and what was cool felt so distant,” Langrock said. “And for us [at the WIAA] to be able to shine a spotlight on different communities is really cool.”

Langrock started her journey at the WIAA in August 2022, a few months after graduating with an M.Ed. from the University of Washington’s Intercollegiate Athletic Leadership program. She outgrew her initial administrative position almost immediately, quickly carving out a more involved role in marketing. By the end of year one, she’d been promoted to Marketing Coordinator.

Since then, from state tournament-themed video game covers to Taylor Swift-centered Athlete of the Week posts, Langrock has continued to put young athletes at the heart of the very trends they see on a daily basis. 

”Whatever we can do to combine what is going on in the larger internet ecosystem with what’s going on locally can make kids feel really special and that they’re part of something greater than their community.” Langrock said. “We’ve done a lot to add context to what people are seeing and help them learn more about high school sports in our state, even just from one platform.”

This past fall — over three years and 50 thousand Instagram followers since joining the staff — Langrock stepped into a role as the association’s Director of Marketing. Of course, her progression through the ranks of marketing in an industry often permeated by hegemonic misogyny has been far from a walk through the proverbial ballpark. 

“There’s no right way to show up as a woman in the workplace, or in your sport, in your community,” she said. “I’ve spent a lot of my early professional career dictating my approach to work based on how I think it could best serve someone else.”

“The first thing that ran through my mind was just all the reasons I wasn’t qualified, which is a pretty natural reaction, I think,” she said. “There’s a microscope on young girls, and even women in leadership, women in the workplace, to be perfect. I think we are especially inclined to not want to try something if we’re not sure if we’re gonna be good at it.”

Fortunately, in an act reflective of her professional journey to this point, Langrock accepted the opportunity. In many ways, her experience with sport governance has paralleled that of the student-athletes she’s overseeing. With no narrative rulebook, she represents the courage and tenacity it takes to try out something new, particularly for women working in an industry often dictated by men.

“What I’ve found is, the girls that are going out there, that are trying out girls flag [football] for the first time — they’re starting from scratch,” Langrock said. “I’ve seen the numbers, and 105 schools [participating in flag football] tells me there’s a lot of girls in our state that aren’t scared of trying and failing and then continuing to try.”

Pairing her marketing prowess with her role in governance, Langrock continues to emphasize the importance of girls in sport, promoting the upcoming flag football tournament on various WIAA social media channels. 

She’s opening the eyes of sport fans – young and old, gender-non-discriminant — to the excellence of women’s sports. And that visibility is so important in the struggle for hard-fought legitimacy.

“It’s surprising to see people so shocked by the level of play of what they’re seeing, when fans of women’s sports have been seeing it or experiencing it for a long time,” Langrock said. “It just takes that snowball effect, where people are talking about it, and it’s legitimized.”

Similarly, Langrock hopes her visibility and success at the helm of the first sanctioned girls flag football season can help open doorways for younger women and girls in sport, inspiring them to seek leadership positions of their own.

“Sometimes, I get a little bit of imposter syndrome — I feel like I can’t do this without doing it perfectly, or else it won’t be a success,” she said. “I hope by having a girl in leadership that’s heading [flag football] from our office — but then also by seeing all of the participation locally — it has a positive impact on girls in sport in our state.”

While the journey to get to next weekend’s state tournament has been difficult and stressful at times, Langrock has always been able to draw strength from her purpose — her commitment to her colleagues, the student-athletes she serves, and, perhaps most importantly, herself. 

She encourages women and girls to stay true to themselves, professionally and personally, regardless of the varying degrees of misdirection they may encounter from their male counterparts.

“You belong,” she said. “At the end of the day, you only have to try to serve your own purpose, your ‘why.’ And if the result of that is judgment from others, so be it.”