KANSAS CITY, Missouri — One thing is undeniably true about the recent and continued influx of talented young players in the National Women’s Soccer League: they would not be in the league right now without Olivia Moultrie.
Moultrie is 18 years old, but is playing in her fourth NWSL season for the Portland Thorns. Her decision to sue the NWSL in 2021 for her right to sign a contract at 15 was the catalyst for the league’s current youth movement, an era in which most clubs now have full-team players under the age of 18 — with several of them already stars.
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“I guess it is cool now, just the amount of signings that are happening because of that,” Moultrie told ESPN. “Obviously that wasn’t the intent going into it, but of course it’s pretty cool to see the game grow that way because that was the intent the whole time: that [if] you’re good enough, you’re old enough.
“There shouldn’t be some number that’s stopping you from going toward [your goal].”
Moultrie made international headlines in 2019 when, at age 13, she decided to forego her college eligibility — she had committed to the University of North Carolina two years earlier — to turn “professional” by signing a contract with Nike (before the NIL era). Moultrie and her family uprooted their lives in southern California to move to Portland, there was a catch: she had nowhere to play professionally, yet.
FIFA laws restricted Moultrie from playing abroad at her age, while the NWSL’s opaque rules ostensibly required all players at the time to be at least 18 years old. Moultrie challenged the NWSL’s claim as an antitrust violation, and the parties settled outside of court within about two months in 2021 after Moultrie won a preliminary injunction. Since then, the NWSL has gradually overhauled its Byzantine rules around players under 18, first allowing only specific exceptions before creating an entry mechanism last year that officially allowed teams to sign two players under age 18. That permissible number of under-18 players on each team doubled to four in 2024.
Today, the NWSL is increasingly full of bright young stars, which is important for the league and the United States women’s national team as each strives to keep up with the evolving global game. Exceptional teenage players have competed on senior teams for years in Europe, to give one example, and the payoff of that was clear for Spain last year in its 2023 World Cup triumph.
Moultrie names Shaw and Thompson as friends from their days together on youth national teams. Moultrie’s record as youngest NWSL signing was broken twice in a month last year — Chloe Ricketts to the Washington Spirit; and Melanie Barcenas to San Diego Wave FC — and while she doesn’t know those players personally, Moultrie recognizes the importance of the NWSL’s new standard.
None of those signings could happen without her legal fight. The NWSL might have changed the rules eventually, but there was no hurry to do so. Moultrie’s case challenged rules that some legal experts felt could compromise the very integrity of the NWSL’s single-entity model.
David Copeland-Smith, who has trained USWNT stars including Alex Morgan and Mallory Swanson through his Beast Mode Soccer business, said Moultrie deserves more credit for being a “trailblazer” in the space. Copeland-Smith started training Moultrie at age 11 after USWNT great Mia Hamm sang Moultrie’s praises. To him, it was clear even at age 11 that Moultrie was more than just a talented player.
“The biggest thing with Olivia is that we haven’t even scratched the surface of her potential,” Copeland-Smith said. “Because she is a player who just wants to improve all the time. And she was like that when she was young; she always wanted exercises that were going to push her. She didn’t just want to go through it. She wanted something that’s going to test her. And I think, being in the NWSL, that was definitely done, because all of a sudden you’re playing against full-grown women and competitors. They don’t care if you’re 16, they’re going to kick the s–t out of you.”
A 13-year-old had never been in the NWSL space before. “It was uncomfortable for everyone when I first got here,” Moultrie said. It was unclear what the plan was, too, since she could not sign a contract. For the first two years, Moultrie trained with the Thorns’ senior team while playing for the academy teams.
In some ways, Moultrie sounds like a typical teenager: the thing that she wanted — to turn pro — couldn’t come fast enough.
