The injury could end the teenager’s hopes of making the Olympic roster
Portland Thorns and U.S. women’s national team midfielder Olivia Moultrie is “week to week” with a knee injury, per a Thorns spokesperson.
Moultrie last played on June 8 against the North Carolina Courage, and has since missed two straight matches for the Thorns. On her X account, the 18-year-old said she also wouldn’t be traveling to Utah for this weekend’s match at the Royals.
She also posted a carousel of photos on Instagram over the weekend, including one of her in a large leg brace.
When contacted by Pro Soccer Wire, a Thorns spokesperson said Moultrie was “week to week,” and added that “it was not a major injury.”
Still, the timing is far from ideal for the teenager’s chances of making the USWNT’s Olympic roster.
Moultrie has been capped four times by the USWNT, most recently in March in the W Gold Cup. The playmaker was called into the roster for the SheBelieves Cup in April, but didn’t see the field in games against Japan and Canada.
The Thorns star was then called up as a training player for a pair of June friendlies against South Korea, meaning she was not eligible to participate in either match.
Given USWNT head coach Emma Hayes will name her 18-player Olympic roster on Wednesday, it appears Moultrie is unlikely to make the squad.
Moultrie is considered one of the rising stars in the USWNT program and at age 18, she is likely to have several major tournaments ahead of her even if she isn’t on the Olympic roster.
The midfielder has three goals and one assist in 12 appearances this season for the Thorns.
The Thorns are guaranteed entertainment these days
If you’re a chaotic neutral and want guaranteed entertainment, your best option right now might be to just watch the next Portland Thorns game.
For the second straight week, Portland found themselves in a bonkers 3-3 draw, this time on the road against the North Carolina Courage. The Thorns trailed three times, but kept coming back thanks to an ability to conjure up spectacular goals from Crystal Dunn — who had a brace — and Olivia Moultrie.
Not to be outdone, the Courage had tremendous strikes of their own, with Kerolin and Victoria Pickett (after scintillating footwork from Olivia Wingate) getting in on the action.
“Still just trying to wrap my head around how we went down three times in the game, but we’ve come back, so [I’m] proud,” said Thorns head coach Mike Norris in his post-game press conference.
That just set the stage for the first of Portland’s many equalizing goals. The Courage stood off of Sophia Smith in space on the left in the 22nd minute, and the U.S. women’s national team star patiently waited for a window to find Dunn (playing her first full 90 minutes since becoming a mom) for a simple finish.
— National Women’s Soccer League (@NWSL) May 6, 2023
The assist is Smith’s fifth in six league matches; no other player in the NWSL has more than two.
Just four minutes later, the Courage offered a perfect response. Kerolin fought through a challenge with Sam Coffey, then unleashed a pinpoint long-range shot that tucked into the bottom corner.
— National Women’s Soccer League (@NWSL) May 6, 2023
Somehow, that wouldn’t end up being the best goal of the night. Early in the second half, the Thorns authored a glorious team goal, winning possession in the Courage’s half and stringing together 30 seconds of possession before an unreal one-touch sequence between Meghan Klingenberg, Morgan Weaver, Christine Sinclair, and Smith pried open NC’s defenses.
Klingberg ended up crossing for Dunn, who guided home her second on the night.
— National Women’s Soccer League (@NWSL) May 7, 2023
“I think that second goal was a collective goal,” said Dunn after the match. “Players were able to penetrate the ball, some layoffs there. Soph obviously had an amazing backheel to Kling that continued her run in. Actually the joke was, [Klingenberg] was actually about to shoot it, but I had yelled, ‘Hey, Kling, you got me in the box!’ and she was able to find me.”
A goal like that can leave any team shook, but the Courage were totally undeterred. Rookie Olivia Wingate continued her impressive start to life in the NWSL, dragging Menges wide before nutmegging the veteran to set up Victoria Pickett — who only just barely got to North Carolina after being traded by NJ/NY Gotham FC — for a clinical 70th minute finish.
What an introduction to Courage Country!
Newcomer Victoria Pickett restores North Carolina's lead, with a sweet set-up from Olivia Wingate. pic.twitter.com/RO7pOCYEFo
— National Women’s Soccer League (@NWSL) May 7, 2023
Somehow the saga continued, with Portland producing yet another brilliant goal. This time, it was just about all one player, with Moultrie — despite challenges from either side — curling home a 24-yard left-footed effort.
As good as the goal was, it came with some added drama, as VAR checked a possible foul from Dunn on Pickett. After a few tense seconds, the goal stood, which may have been why Courage head coach Sean Nahas jokingly started his post-game remarks with a request to not be asked about the refereeing.
🚨Olivia Moultrie banger alert🚨
Thorns tie it for the third time this match… if you're not watching on Paramount+, tune in NOW! pic.twitter.com/WDYw0cxpAR
— National Women’s Soccer League (@NWSL) May 7, 2023
“We knew we were going to need [resilience] coming back as the defending champs,” said Moultrie. “That’s kind of the momentum I was carrying in that moment. And yeah, then it’s just, [Natalia Kuikka] drove in and gave me a great pass, I saw the space and I was like ‘alright, I’m gonna go for it.'”
Given that mental strength, the raw entertainment value and the wildness of Portland’s last two games, and with their outstanding early-season results, it seems like they should be atop any sort of NWSL must-watch list right now.
The USWNT’s future is promising as tomorrow’s stars are already emerging
The U.S. women’s national team has its focus firmly on this summer’s World Cup, but the team’s future is looking good.
While several veterans may be looking at their last tournament this summer in Australia and New Zealand, the USWNT should be able to go from strength to strength based on the depth of young talent coming through.
In particular, NWSL’s recent rule changes allowing players under the age of 18 to sign pro deals will mean better development environments than the U.S. youth scene has ever offered girls before.
Below are some of the USWNT’s best young players. For the purposes of this list, the player must be born in 2002 or later.
What does it take for a teenager to shine in NWSL? We tried to find out
NWSL’s history with truly young players is, thanks to under-supported clubs and a lack of guardrails, a messy one.
As with many situations pertaining to the NWSL during its early years, teams — and the league itself — were unprepared to take on the challenge involved, but also simply lacked a clear plan on how to incorporate players outside of the draft system.
While teams seemed to grasp what it could mean for them on the competitive side — both the Portland Thorns and Washington Spirit moved mountains specifically to be in position to acquire Mallory Swanson, for example — the league was far less prepared for how much the non-soccer side matters.
Swanson’s experience is instructive. Then 19, Swanson, née Pugh, would lead the 2017 Spirit with six goals, but was largely left to her own devices two time zones away from home. Between injuries and little club-level support at a team running on a minor-league financial plan, Swanson’s development path seemed to plateau at a moment when she was largely expected to be U.S. Soccer’s Next Big Thing.
In retrospect, Swanson’s growth being hampered was hardly a surprise given the Spirit’s multipleoff-fieldissues during her time with the club.
Considering the state of the entire league, the series of public missteps, and the multiple investigations involved, it’s safe to say this wasn’t one bad environment. Frankly, it’s not clear that any NWSL club in this time frame was an appropriate environment for a player like Swanson to walk into. The entire league simply was not ready to provide what was required of it.
As Swanson approaches 25 years old, she has reached the level of being one of the best attackers on the planet. Things eventually worked out. However, her path here wasn’t easy, and a major factor was an NWSL club whose on-field ambitions surpassed what their off-field capabilities would actually allow for.
To be sure, there are success stories: Ellie Carpenter’s time with the Thorns — who for all their failings in player safety still had a much more substantial infrastructure than any other NWSL club in that era — became a near-instant starter and is now a fixture for Lyon and Australia.
Back with the Spirit, Trinity Rodman declared for the draft and was immediately one of the NWSL’s best players. The Spirit took some lessons from how they had failed Swanson, having a more robust plan in place to give her a better situation away from the training field. Rodman ended up winning a title and making the NWSL Best XI in 2021, and has broken through with the USWNT over the last year-plus.
Still, with no NWSL rules on how these situations worked, the process is different every time. Swanson’s path to the NWSL was convoluted: the Spirit made multiple trades to obtain the top spot in the Distribution Ranking Order, a mechanism which no longer exists, and she missed the first five games of the season because the league simply didn’t have the wherewithal to come up with a more timely method to get her on a team.
The complications for players just trying to get into the league continued: Olivia Moultrie getting a contract from Portland involved a public pressure campaign and a court case that saw NWSL on one side and one of its clubs (as well as a player who wanted to be in the league) on the other. Even after a judge ruled in Moultrie’s favor, NWSL rules still ended up putting her into an ad hoc discovery process that saw OL Reign acquire her rights before trading them to Portland (for far below market value).
(Photo by Amanda Loman/Getty Images)
The outcome was what the player, her family, and the club wanted. Moultrie has proven her mettle, and even for the defending champions, the 17-year-old gets regular playing time as the team’s attacking midfielder. She’s a serious contributor (three goals and four assists in 17 games last year) for a powerhouse. It’s just that, as with Swanson, she faced plainly unnecessary obstacles that seemed rooted in a lack of preparedness and infrastructure.
Jaedyn Shaw’s path into the league was only slightly less rocky. The Texan, then 17, joined the Spirit in the 2022 preseason and trained with them for months while Washington tried to pursue some backchannel diplomacy aimed at a new method for young players to enter the league.
The campaign didn’t change enough minds, and once again NWSL held a mid-season discovery process to sort the situation out. Sources at the time told Pro Soccer Wire that at least six NWSL clubs submitted bids — Washington and San Diego being the only two ever publicly revealed — and that a weighted lottery placed the Wave atop the discovery list. Another potential star player’s career course was charted by a confusing, opaque method.
In a call with Pro Soccer Wire from San Diego, Shaw took a moment to choose her words before discussing how much of a problem it would have been if she had been denied entry into the league last year.
“It would have been definitely really hard for me,” said Shaw. “I would have been basically with the Spirit for a whole year, and being in that environment, knowing that I can handle it, knowing that I can do it every single day and play at that level, and then just being told no…that definitely would have been hard for me to deal with.”
It’s hard to dispute Shaw’s read on her ability to compete. She scored in her professional debut, and has been a regular starter for a San Diego side that competed for the NWSL Shield last season. In the Wave’s 2023 opener, Shaw scored a splendid goal, while coach Casey Stoney experimented with a formation change designed to make the 18-year-old more of an attacking centerpiece.
With multiple clubs now well-staffed enough to both scout the youth ranks more thoroughly and able to create an infrastructure to truly support teenage players, the situation was only going to repeat itself with more frequency. Shortly after the 2022 season ended, NWSL announced that it had created a new way for young players to join teams. The Under-18 Entry List specified both how young players could end up with a specific team, and installed some common-sense safeguards to prevent teams from choosing short-term competitive needs over a player’s well-being.
For example, the new rules prevent teams from trading or waiving a player before they turn 18 without the consent of both the player and their legal guardian. Under-18 Entry List players can’t be selected in expansion drafts, and their initial contract must run through the season in which they turn 18. If a team wants to make the commitment, the rules oblige them to truly take a longer view, in exchange for removing the bizarre paths to entry players in this age group have had to endure.
So far, the new rules have been applied twice, both for 15-year-old prospects: Washington signed Chloe Ricketts, while the Wave followed shortly thereafter in signing Melanie Barcenas. Both clubs had these players on their radar well before the establishment of the league’s rules, meaning that clubs have essentially been waiting for NWSL rules to catch up.
The time appears to be now, and the league — as it emerges from numerous debacles — has entered a new era.
Resources have changed the game
That era contains a need to balance multiple thoughts: player safety, development, the attention that comes when a younger player signs with a pro team, and the day-to-day process of trying to win games in an endlessly competitive league.
Speaking to Pro Soccer Wire just a couple of weeks before Barcenas signed with the club, Stoney said that when the opportunity to sign Shaw arrived, “as a club, we were like, ‘we need to make it happen,’ because she was such a talented young player.”
What followed was both pursuing the nuts-and-bolts of signing a player, but also showing that they could meet the requirements NWSL said had to be in place: housing for Shaw and her family, “a separate locker room, making sure that every player and every member of staff was qualified for SafeSport to make sure we could bring minors into the environment,” said Stoney. “Making sure we had all the policies and procedures in place, making sure that we were looking after the California law side of things as well.”
(Photo by Tim Nwachukwu/Getty Images)
Shaw said that the team brought her in for meetings with Stoney, club president Jill Ellis, and general manager Molly Downtain to talk through the normal things a player wants to know about when signing with a new club (team philosophy, training ground, etc.) and also go over how things would be for her in specific circumstances.
“It was just what to expect, basically. They didn’t want me to just come here not knowing exactly what’s going on, and just being completely new to this to the area and everything,” said Shaw, who added that the major offseason change for her was limited to moving to a “more permanent” home in San Diego after the team had set up something more short-term last year.
A major difference between San Diego and NWSL teams circa six or seven years ago? Ownership groups that can afford to create a larger club infrastructure. Shaw said that upon arrival, the Wave had everything in place, rather than trying to build the plane while mid-air.
“I think that the Wave have a lot of resources,” said Shaw, listing off the team’s coaching staff, trainers, and a mental well-being coach the club has made available for the entire squad. “I’m comfortable having that relationship with them and being able to express what I need as an athlete, and what I need as a person from them.”
Spirit president of soccer operations Mark Krikorian told Pro Soccer Wire that a club’s commitment when signing such young players has to start with safety, and that teams should be aiming to surpass league rules when they can.
“I think that we’re all committed to protecting [Ricketts], first and foremost, and any other young player that’s here,” said Krikorian. “The league has done a good job in putting together protocols to protect the players, the states all have different rules, laws, and so on to protect [minors], but hopefully we’re going above and beyond those.”
Speaking to reporters before the season kicked off, Spirit midfielder Andi Sullivan said that in her view, Washington is a good place for a player like Ricketts because of both the infrastructure Krikorian, owner Michele Kang, and others have assembled, and because the players themselves are well-tuned towards helping a youngster out as a teammate.
“I do think we have a lot more ability to support her and hopefully that continues to grow, that we would be able to support her and people her age more,” said Sullivan. “I also think — not to toot our own horn — but I think she stepped into the perfect team to do that, because we’re taking good care of her in terms of the team aspect.”
In Washington, that means so many things: light-hearted ribbing during a rondo, a new coaching staff that has prioritized internal standards and culture, player-to-player communication in training and elsewhere, but also continuing education. Krikorian says that Ricketts will continue the same remote education program she was on in Michigan, and that the Spirit have longer-term plans to link up with regional universities to allow young players an avenue to get their degree while playing for Washington.
“I think that they all realize that they can make a positive impact in this young woman’s life, and help her and help to guide her and mentor her,” explained Krikorian. “It’s not their job. Their job is to go out into play and so on, but I do think that they are sensitive women and I do think that they do want what’s best for Chloe and what’s best for the club and they recognize they can be a positive piece of this.”
The soccer side is the easy part
On one front, the game tells the truth: if a young player brings it on the soccer side, getting acclimated tends to go very quickly.
Stoney said that Shaw got “the respect of the group immediately” with what she showed in training. “She shows what she’s capable of, and the players want her on there because they know that she can make a difference.”
With Ricketts, Sullivan and Ashley Sanchez — no strangers to the cauldron that is the USWNT environment — took note of how she’s got confidence and skill, but is also not timid when it comes to challenges.
“I think Chloe stepped in and was like, decking people,” Sullivan said. “I think [it] shows that she’s not afraid of anything. And I think that fearless mindset will carry her a long way.”
“She came in with the energy, she was hitting people immediately,” added Sanchez. “I was respecting it.”
Sullivan noted that Ricketts is “young, but she doesn’t want to be treated like she’s young,” adding that the Michigan native “is very thoughtful. You [can] tell that in conversations with her: she is very considerate of, and aware of, how things work, and she knows herself really well,” all of which help a player who has to handle a new phenomenon: being hugely talented, but also not being her team’s star attraction from day one.
Young players, eager to show their best stuff, can often make a big impact on arrival. Consistency is harder to come by, and those outsized expectations can pose a problem over time. In San Diego, Stoney is quick to caution that no one is expecting Shaw to carry on without any issues or tough patches. “Are there ups and downs for a young player? Yeah. They’re gonna go for a bit of a bumpy road because they’re not always going to be on a trajectory like this,” she said, tracing a diagonal line heading towards the heavens. “That’s not real life. No one does. They go up, and then they might have a little dip, and then they’ll go up again.”
Stoney said that it’s a coach’s job to sort out when a player needs to push through those down moments to build resolve, and when they’re no longer progressing. However, she adds, “[being] honest about what I’m doing and why I’m doing it” is just as vital.
According to Stoney, the vagaries of the U.S. development system — players remaining stars in their club teams and then doing the same collegiately — can deprive those youngsters of the chance to develop resilience. They get to the NWSL level, and it might be the first time in their lives where they’ve not just walked right into a given lineup.
“They’ve played every game, they’ve been a starter, then all of a sudden they step into a professional environment and they might not even be on the [gameday] roster,” said Stoney. “It’s a massive adjustment for them in terms of their mentality and emotional responses to that, and they haven’t built the resilience to be able to cope with it because they’ve never faced it before. So we try and get ahead of it. We know that it’s going to happen. We put on workshops for those players that have come into professional environment for the first time. We look at the challenges they might be facing and we tackle them head on.”
Still, the task Stoney describes is a next-level problem, one that is normal for a functioning and healthy soccer environment. For the NWSL, “functioning” and “healthy” have been qualities to aspire to, rather than the day-to-day truth. The new system of rules and guidelines, combined with major advances at clubs and player-driven demands for raised standards, has finally put the league in a position to answer that kind of challenge.
NWSL’s new Under-18 Entry Mechanism is already being used
The times are definitely changing in the NWSL, and few things make that more clear than the burgeoning youth movement around the league.
The latest move on that front has seen the Washington Spirit signing 15-year-old forward Chloe Ricketts to a three-year contract (the deal includes an option year in 2026). Per the Spirit, Ricketts signed her contract on Thursday aged 15 years and 283 days, making her three days younger than Portland Thorns midfielder Olivia Moultrie was when she signed her first professional contract in 2021.
“We remain very focused on building a roster that can help us succeed now while also investing in the future,” said head coach Mark Parsons in a team release announcing the move. “Chloe has shown great quality with and without the ball and has an incredible intensity in everything she does. The vision and infrastructure of our club make this signing possible, and we are look forward to Chloe developing and becoming an important player and teammate for our team.”
Spirit signs youngest-ever player to NWSL contract!
“The opportunity to join the Washington Spirit on a professional contract is a dream come true,” added Ricketts. “I’m looking forward to continuing my development as a player and individual with the great resources here in the District.”
Ricketts, who hails from Michigan, played for AFC Ann Arbor in the USL W-League in 2022, scoring two goals and adding two assists as one of the two 14-year-olds in the entire pre-professional league. In 2021, she played on an Ann Arbor Tigers boys team that won the Michigan State Cup and on a girls team that went to the ECNL national final.
The Spirit’s initial preseason roster included Ricketts and another teenager, U.S. Under-17 midfielder Melina Rebimbas, as the club has made youth development a clear priority. In 2022, Washington brought USYNT attacker Jaedyn Shaw in during their preseason, keeping the then-17-year-old around to train with the team while hoping for a path to sign her.
NWSL, with no mechanism in place to allow for a youth player to sign without waiting for the next college draft, ruled that Shaw had to go through the league’s discovery process. The San Diego Wave were atop the priority list for that mechanism, and despite overtures from the Spirit — sources told Pro Soccer Wire that Washington offered $250,000 in allocation money, or $150,000 and a first-round draft pick — they opted to offer Shaw a deal.
That proved to be a smart choice, as Shaw scored on her professional debut and has already emerged as a consistent starter for a playoff-caliber team.
NWSL Under-18 Entry Mechanism in action
Ricketts’ signing is far less of an ordeal than previous teenagers have experienced when trying to join a team in the league. Portland tried to move mountains to sign Mallory Swanson in 2016, only for NWSL to leave no avenue to do so. Swanson ended up signing with the league in 2017, ending up with the Spirit via a convoluted distribution ranking order process.
Moultrie, meanwhile, ended up taking the league to court after her attempts to sign with Portland were initially rebuffed by NWSL rules. Even after the league relented, it still required a discovery process akin to the one Shaw went through in 2022, with OL Reign claiming her league rights. The Reign then traded those rights to the Thorns for a third-round pick so Moultrie could play where she’d wanted to all along.
Commissioner Jessica Berman was asked about these stumbling blocks at a press conference before the league’s 2022 championship game, and said that sorting out its policy for players in Ricketts’ situation was a priority.
“Virtually every policy and rule, at the league office, is being reviewed,” said Berman. “We are taking a closer look at everything and figuring out what are the most important things we need to address, and [youth player entry] is definitely one of the areas that we’re focused on, to try to make sure we balance all different interests — and there’s a lot of competing interests — and get the most right for the future of the league.”
Ricketts is the first player to put those changes into practice. NWSL announced a new Under-18 Entry Mechanism in November 2022, detailing what standards had to be met for a team and player to qualify.
Among the requirements are provisions that require teams to offer a guaranteed contract once they place a player on their Under-18 Entry List, and must have the consent of both the player and their parent or legal guardian to do so. Players entering the league this way can’t be waived or traded until after turning 18 unless the player and their guardian have given consent, and are ineligible to be selected in any expansion draft while under 18 years old.
Teams are limited to two players per season between both their Under-18 Entry List and players signed via that mechanism. So for the Spirit, signing Ricketts and having Rebimbas on their list means they are currently maxed out within the parameters of the new process for the 2023 season. Under-18 Entry Mechanism spots cannot be traded, so a team can’t hoard them as with other tradable assets.
Washington’s press release noted that Ricketts “will continue her education virtually throughout the season,” though there are no publicly-stated requirements on that front from the league.
The USWNT U-20s will kick off the World Cup on August 11 against Ghana, before facing the Netherlands on August 14 and Japan on August 17 to close out the group stage. The top two teams in the four-team group will reach the quarterfinals.
“We have a challenging group in Costa Rica and tremendous respect for the three other teams, but we also have a staff and players who embrace challenges and adversity, so we’re really looking forward to seeing how our team grows into this tournament,” said U-20 head coach Tracey Kevins.
The last U-20 Women’s World Cup was held in 2018, as the 2020 edition was cancelled due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
FORWARDS (7): Trinity Byars (Texas); Michelle Cooper (Duke); Simone Jackson (USC), Andrea Kitahata (Stanford), Ally Sentnor (UNC), Jaedyn Shaw (San Diego Wave FC), Alyssa Thompson (Total Futbol Academy)
Jaedyn Shaw, a highly-touted member of the U.S. under-20 national team who has spent a significant portion of 2022 training with the Washington Spirit, will be allowed to sign with an NWSL club without having to go through the College Draft.
However, in a statement Thursday, the league said that Shaw will have to go through the NWSL discovery process, a mechanism that exists for the league to maintain parity, and that has been used as an exemption to its minimum age requirement in the recent past. The discovery process for Shaw will be held on July 7.
Shaw, like Portland Thorns midfielder Olivia Moultrie, would normally have had to wait until the next College Draft after her 18th birthday, which comes in November. With Shaw looking to sign a professional deal quickly, the NWSL cited its ability “to amend its rules in its discretion,” instituting a one-off Discovery Process to sort out what club has league priority to sign the attacker.
“For a variety of reasons, including the fact that Shaw will turn 18 in November 2022 and has already taken the necessary steps to turn professional and forgo her NCAA eligibility, the NWSL has exercised its authority and amended its entry process to allow NWSL teams to select Shaw through the discovery process,” read the league’s statement on the matter.
The statement further said that any team that wants to be involved in the discovery process must spell out its plans in terms of “how they would comply with the safeguarding rules related to minors until Shaw turns 18” in order to participate.
“I have spent the first two months of my tenure as commissioner of the NWSL reviewing all of our policies and procedures to ensure our league is set up for success, now and in the future,” said NWSL Commissioner Jessica Berman in the statement. “This is a special circumstance that I believe requires us to show flexibility in how we execute our policies, and as a practical matter, is part of our ongoing review of our age restriction policy. In the interim, we have determined that our best course of action is to allow Jaedyn Shaw to join the NWSL as part of this discovery process.”
NWSL maintained that its age restriction policy is still intact, with requests for exemptions to it to be “reviewed on a case-by-case basis.”
Shaw, a standout from Texas youth club Solar SC, joined the Spirit in the preseason and trained with the team from early February through at least the end of March. One source with knowledge of how those sessions went told Pro Soccer Wire that she drew at least some comparisons to USWNT star and 2021 NWSL Rookie of the Year Trinity Rodman.
Washington head coach Kris Ward had spoken a handful of times throughout the spring about the club’s ambitions to work with NWSL on a pathway for them to sign Shaw directly, rather than going through a normal player acquisition mechanism.
That was a different prospect than how a situation like this played out the last time a minor pushed to join an NWSL club. Moultrie ended up bringing a suit against the NWSL on anti-trust grounds to push for the chance to play in the league, with the outcome eventually being a discovery process that saw OL Reign acquire Moultrie’s NWSL playing rights and then trade them to Portland. Moultrie has since become a regular part of Portland’s rotation, making 19 appearances in all competitions for the Thorns since signing her contract in June.
Speaking today to reporters, Ward said that even though the push for a different method in these cases didn’t succeed, the Spirit would still be interested in signing Shaw via the discovery process.
“We’ll have to, I guess not adjust the strategy, but roll with the parameters that they have played out, and see if we can work something out,” said Ward. “We obviously think that she’s talented, and we would like for something to work out, but it’s not always that simple. And so, we’re just gonna have to start to have those conversations, now that we have this news, and see what is out there to be able to accomplish.”
The Spirit and NWSL have had their conflicts in the recent past, but Ward said that while these discussions didn’t go the way he’d have preferred, he didn’t feel the league approached Washington’s position in an adversarial manner.
“I don’t think that (NWSL) were difficult, or…obtuse in any way,” said Ward. “It’s their understanding that the landscape is changing and shifting.”
Ward characterized the NWSL’s perspective as wanting “to make sure that the process was carefully thought out, and that it was fair, because American sports is all about equality, or trying to create a level playing field for teams, whether or not that actually exists. It’s not an enviable position to be in for them, to say ‘okay, we’re now having to face this new reality.'”
“I think they just needed to make sure that logistically, legally, process-wise, all that kind of stuff, that they had put together something that was reasonable and allowed for draft order and things like that,” added Ward.
While he couldn’t make direct comparisons to how things played out with Moultrie, Ward felt that the league must prepare a process for more talented youngsters to come to a point where they’re choosing between staying in the NWSL or looking to European clubs.
“Jaedyn is not alone in this situation of being a minor who is looking to play professionally. I know that there’s a handful of kids around the league with different teams,” said Ward. “The day for Jaedyn is obviously here, but the day for those people who are now coming after her, it’s not going to be a 10-year gap. It’s not going to be a 10-month gap. Those players, they’re out there. They’re nearby… How does the league go through and start to create a template for that, so they can address these other situations as they arise? Because, it’s coming.”
The Thorns teenager made history with a 74th-minute goal in Houston
Olivia Moultrie made history on Sunday night by becoming the youngest NWSL goalscorer ever.
The 16-year-old scored the third on the night for the Portland Thorns against the Houston Dash, the first goal in her burgeoning professional career.
Sophia Smith took advantage of a bad turnover from the Dash in their own box and squared the ball for Moultrie, who was left with a simple task for her history-making strike.
Moultrie made headlines when she signed with an agent and landed a deal with Nike at age 13. After training with the Thorns for two years, Moultrie successfully sued the NWSL last year for the right to turn professional.
The NWSL had a rule in place prohibiting any player younger than 18 from playing in the league, but after her legal victory, Moultrie became the youngest player in league history when she signed with the Thorns at age 15.
Earlier this year, Moultrie was the youngest player on the U.S. Under-20 national team squad that won the CONCACAF Women’s U-20 Championship.
