Exploring Life & Business with Melissa Warner & Stephanie Beall of Warner Athletics & Rise 8

Today we’d like to introduce you to Melissa Warner & Stephanie Beall (companies: Warner Athletics & Rise 8)

Hi Melissa Warner, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
I started playing soccer when I was little, like most kids in the 90s I played every sport I could get into, from organized sports to pick up games in my neighborhood. Sports have always had a starring role in my life. I was a goalkeeper at Occidental College in the early 2000s where I fell in love with coaching and teaching and completed my Bachelor’s in psychology. I began my career working with kids with an autism diagnosis doing in-home behavioral therapy (ABA) and competed a Master’s Degree in psychology, but I desperately missed soccer, and after a few years found my way back into coaching.

After I was coaching for a couple years I found that there was a gap in many soccer training modalities I was involved in, and not many coaches were emphasizing the importance of the mental side of sports, so, I decided to start training players on my own with that as my priority. My goal was to create a training environment where athletes could learn about themselves as more than just athletes, take risks, explore different outcomes and become better humans in addition to soccer players. I wanted to become the coach and mentor that I wish I had as a youth athlete.

After a few years of training individual athletes on my own, a wonderful friend and I reconnected over soccer in 2018. Steph “Kramer” Beall – a D1 goalkeeper at USF and Division 1 coach, started coaching with me to help with the player load and we started collaborating to grow this training community into something that had a wider reach to improve players lives on and off the fields. In addition to daily soccer training with a nod to mindset and character building, we created “The Empowerment Project” for girls and launched our first event in 2020.

The idea behind The Empowerment Project was to teach some of the lessons we’ve learned both professionally and through the ‘school of hard knocks’ to kids, things that we wish we knew when we were growing up. Topics like being resilient through failure (because it’s inevitable and temporary if you let it be), cultivating self-awareness, and creating your personal mission statement, working through performance anxiety, simply taking up space instead of always trying to be smaller – things we wish we knew how to handle as we were going through it. Steph and I ran the mindset sessions in the classroom from the curriculum we’ve developed over the years with my background in Psychology and sport, and Steph’s background in Leadership and Recreation and being a D1 athlete; and we also ran the field sessions emphasizing technical development.

For it’s inaugural year we invited a few local business owners, and had wonderful professional athletes and coaches volunteer their time to speak with our group of girls: Anne Kunz, a local Olympian shared her story and our good friend, George Whitfield joined us to chat with the girls about his experience working with NFL quarterbacks. We wanted this week to impact our players on a different level, and we received really great feedback from our small group in it’s first year!

Fast forward a few years and we’re proud to offer our Empowerment Project’s curriculum and camp structure with the collaboration of an amazing group of women on the board of directors of a local non-profit called, Let’s Go South Bay!. With sponsorship by the Alex Morgan Foundation and as a team of adults trying to make kids lives a little better, we’ve been able to offer this camp for free since 2023 to impact over 130 young athletes from the South Bay area of San Diego! And this is just the beginning!

So, for us at Warner Athletics, the day to day offerings are technical soccer training on the fields at Allied Gardens Recreation Center & Encinitas Community Park, where we train 70-100 athletes every week with the help of our amazing professional coaches RD Somerville and Tia Harrison ( and we’re looking to hire more amazing coaches). We also meet with our athletes for 1 on 1 mindset sessions to help with topics such as performance anxiety, confidence on and off the field, learning how to navigate difficult conversations with teammates, parents, and coaches – these conversations, while structured around specific curriculum, allow space our athletes explore any topic that is relevant or important to them as well. In addition to that, we have big plans for future growth and support of the mental side of athletes around the country by hosting more events similar to our ‘Empowerment Project’ – for boys and girls of all ages!

We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
Smooth road? No, however we’ve embraced every challenge that we have faced because it taught us valuable lessons. Starting out, it was relatively easy because it was just me and a handful of soccer players who wanted to work hard and improve. But, over time as our business grew to 6-figures and hundreds of players, we started facing new challenges that any business owner with a psychology background from a liberal arts institution, rather than a business degree, might face. Haha However, I know, through this process the bumps are helping us to be ready for the growth and demands that we will face in the future.

We’ve learned a lot about running a business. We’ve had a lot of fun coaching and building connections with athletes and other coaches. But, I am thankful for the struggles and bumps along way to continue to grow us into the best coaches and mentors for our athletes.

As you know, we’re big fans of Warner Athletics & Rise 8 . For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about the brand?
I think we’ve created a reputation for exclusively training girls and young women, but we train boys and young men too! Steph, Tia and myself were all collegiate goalkeepers – but we also have extensive knowledge in training field players. Coach RD is our exclusive field player coach, he executes high level trainings with all ages and level players as well.

I’m most proud that our athletes stories speak for themselves. Our players are the ones putting in the work – they truly drive the bus on where they want to go and who they want to become, we just provide the framework for them to get there. We do everything we can to support every one of our athletes on their journey, I’m proud of the training environment and community of athletes we have been lucky enough to build and continue to grow.

We’d like your readers to know that we’re constantly evolving our curriculum at Warner Athletics for our technical on-field training and also for our Rise 8 curriculum that guides our mindset sessions. As coaches, we crave knowledge and personal growth for ourselves. This improves our ability to teach what we learn and allow us continue our growth as company so that our impact reaches thousands of athletes at every level.

Last, I’d like to mention that we believe in collaboration. We realize that to be our best and have the biggest impact, collaboration with like minded coaches, brands, and organizations is essential to accomplish what we have set out to. We’re very much open to collaborating with those who are aligned with our goals and values to make future generations of athletes better off than we were.

What sort of changes are you expecting over the next 5-10 years?
There’s been a big push for mental health awareness in sports, I imagine that will continue to grow. I hope that it grows in a meaningful way. There are so many athletes that need support at every level, and not all of them have access to it, for a variety of reasons. I would like to advocate for more focus in coaching education when it comes to building meaningful and trust based relationships between coaches and players, a better understanding of child and youth development from coaching staff, and a greater focus on helping our athletes understand themselves as people first, players second.

There’s also a huge rise in tech in soccer, I’m curious to see how that impacts training in the next 5 to 10 years.

Also, EVERYONE WATCHES WOMEN”S SPORTS. We think that’s a great trend 🙂

Pricing:

• $199/monthly membership : unlimited small group training – groups offered 5x per week
• $35-$70/mindset 1on1 sessions
• individual and group pricing available on our website

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.warnerathletics.com
• Instagram: /warnerathletics
• Facebook: /warnerathletics
• Twitter: /warnerathletix
• Yelp: warnerathletics

Image Credits
Ashley Orellana
Ryan Young
Isa Asnani