Katahyunne Laudanne "Katayoun" Khosrowyar (; born 19 September 1987), commonly known as Kathy or Kat Khosrowyar, is an Iranian-American football coach. She is better known as the former head coach of the Iran U-19 National Women's Football team.
Career
Khosrowyar was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma, to an Iranian father and American mother. She played for a then-highly-ranked club in Oklahoma (Tulsa Soccer Club). Khosrowyar also played varsity soccer, field hockey, and track and field at her private high school Holland Hall. She decided to move to Iran in 2005, during her first visit when she was only 17 years old after accepting to play for Iran. In 2010, Katayoun was nominated by the Asian Football Confederation (The AFC) to participate in Project Future, a coaching program for soccer players under 30. After retiring from playing in 2013, Kat earned a FIFA/AFC 'A' license in 2014, the first Iranian woman to do so. The purpose, she tells Women’s Soccer Coaching, is to “put all my skills, abilities and experience under one umbrella”. It would need to be a sizeable umbrella. Katayoun Khosrowyar has a master's degree in chemical engineering from the University of Birmingham in the United Kingdom and recently completed a second master's degree in Global Affairs at Rice University.
Khosrowyar moved back to the United States in 2019 to become the head coach of OL Reign Academy.
Awards
Khosrowyar has won the 2018 Women's Soccer United Coach Award, awarded to inspirational coaches in women’s soccer based on a public poll. Khosrowyar was also nominated best coach of Asia 2019 alongside Japan's head coach Asako Takakura.
The Middle East and Central Asia
In 2011, she was a part of the 'Let Us Play'campaign led by Prince Ali bin Hussein of Jordan that helped overturn a FIFA hijab ban. FIFA allowed 'head covering for religious reasons for every Muslim female player in the organization’s member countries. This was critical for Iranian female football players to continue to play in FIFA competitions after being banned from playing during the second round of pre-Olympic qualifications.
After the Taliban banned the participation of girls in sports in September 2021, Khosrowyar was part of a group that was formed to help a group of 80 people, composed of 26 members of the Afghani female youth team, to leave the country and pursue soccer careers internationally.