Koskinen Stadium is the home of Duke University women’s soccer, one of the preeminent programs in the sport. It was also going to be where one of the most heralded prep players in the country was going to play her college soccer — until her path quickly changed.
Two years ago, one powerhouse school after another — North Carolina, Florida State, Santa Clara — was recruiting Riley Jackson. The midfielder from Roswell, Ga., was the Gatorade national high school player of the year as a sophomore. She co-captained the U.S. Under-17 team that captured the Concacaf title in 2022, winning the Golden Ball as the tournament’s best player. And more recently, she was a mainstay on the bronze medal-winning U.S. team in the Under-20 World Cup last fall.
At 17 years old, Jackson showed superb technical skills, a preternatural football IQ and a sense of time and space that made her a passer with few equals. Her abilities caught the eye of North Carolina Courage head coach Sean Nahas, who was on the U.S. coaching staff when he saw Jackson at a youth national camp and began to track her development. Nahas took over as head coach of the Courage in 2022 and invited her to train with the team in the summer.
Riley Jackson (second from the right) helped the U.S. capture bronze at the Under-20 World Cup. (Hector Vivas / Getty Images)
The initial invite did not technically put her commitment to Duke in danger. However, the Courage invited her back in the summer of 2023 for more training, and by the time that session was finished, she had started to rethink her plan.
“Every time I stepped on the field (with the Courage), it was an amazing experience,” Jackson told The Athletic. “I got better. I got pushed. I had fun.”
Despite the potential value of a degree from an esteemed university such as Duke, Jackson was confident in her dream to play professional soccer — she didn’t want to play for anyone else. Jackson talked to her parents. Knowing that if she waited for her draft year, 2024, she could be selected by any club in the league, Jackson opted to enter the NWSL via the league’s under-18 mechanism, which was put in place in 2021 after the Portland Thorns’ Olivia Moultrie, then 15, successfully sued the league to be able to play.
On July 28, 2023, Jackson signed a guaranteed, multi-year contract to be a professional midfielder for North Carolina, playing at WakeMed Soccer Park just 22 miles away from Koskinen Stadium.
“It was the hardest decision of my life, but I have no regrets,” Jackson said. “The life I am living is my dream life. And you can always go to school and can always get your education. The opportunity was one I couldn’t pass up. You can’t play soccer your whole life. I really wanted to grasp the opportunity and live in the moment.”
She’s not the only one.
The world of intercollegiate athletics has undergone a dizzying array of changes in recent years, and women’s soccer has not been immune.
Perhaps the most far-reaching issue facing college soccer programs is the growing number of elite young players who are either opting to bypass college and go straight to the NWSL, such as Jackson, or who are going to college but leaving after a year or two.
Angel City’s Savy King and San Diego Wave’s Trinity Armstrong left college (both the University of North Carolina) after their freshman seasons. So did Kansas City Current’s Mary Long, who departed Duke to sign with the club owned by her parents, Chris and Angie, and Katie Scott, 17, whose Penn State career lasted 11 games, all of them played after she helped the U.S. win bronze in the Under-17 World Cup last fall.
“It’s changing so much,” Scott told The Athletic. “There’s a shift happening in the game … (with) the trend of younger athletes having more options to shape their careers.”
Like Jackson, Scott said it was a very difficult decision, even more so because she has a three-generation family history with Penn State. She has two brothers there now, and her parents were both Penn State athletes in soccer and gymnastics. Still, Scott isn’t looking back.
“I want to play at the highest level and I’m in a good spot to do just that,” she said.
A total of 13 youth players have made the jump from club soccer to the NWSL since 2024, including 14-year-old Mckenna Whitham, who signed with Gotham FC last summer and became the youngest player to step on an NWSL field when she made her debut shortly after turning 14. Another 12 players turned pro after leaving college early in the same period.
At under-14 and under-15 Elite Clubs National League (ECNL) showcases last fall, Dominick Bucci, director of girls coaching for MatchFit Academy, a premier youth club based in New Jersey, was surprised to see not just college coaches, but virtually every NWSL team, in attendance.
“That opened my eyes,” Bucci said. “This is crazy. This is at a whole different level now.”
To appreciate how quickly this has changed, consider that Mallory Swanson was the first player to skip college to join the league in 2017. (Lindsey Heaps, Swanson’s fellow Coloradan, turned pro out of high school in 2012, but there was no women’s league in the U.S. Heaps signed a six-year deal with French club Paris Saint-Germain.) Moultrie, Trinity Rodman and Jaedyn Shaw followed suit, as did Melanie Barcenas, Alex Pfeiffer, Chloe Ricketts and others.
Mallory Swanson became the first player to forgo college soccer to join NWSL in 2017. (Scott Winters / Getty Images)
Until 2021, Tierna Davidson, a Gotham and U.S. women’s national team center back, was the only player in NWSL history to leave college before her eligibility was up. Now, she has company all over the league.
Launched in 2013, NWSL spent its early years just trying to survive — something neither of its predecessors, the WUSA and WPS, managed to do. Its minimum salary at the outset, $6,000, was less than you could make working at many minimum wage jobs, and playing and training conditions were not much better. Randy Waldrum, now the coach of the University of Pittsburgh’s women’s soccer team, was the first coach of the Houston Dash in 2014. He can barely recognize what the league has become.
“Exposure and visibility in the pro game are at their highest level ever,” Waldrum said. “With the new collective bargaining agreement and salaries increasing, young players who want to go pro are seeing that it is a viable option.”
The NWSL’s youth movement would not be happening if the league were not flourishing in ways that could not have been unimaginable just five years ago. Attendance, viewership, salaries and the quality of stadiums and training environments are steadily rising.
The NWSL has grown from its early days of poor playing conditions and low salaries. (Peter G. Aiken / USA TODAY Sports)
When Michele Kang purchased the Washington Spirit for a then-record $35 million in March 2022 — amid an abuse scandal that rocked the league — the widely held opinion was that she had drastically overpaid. Last September, Willow Bay and her husband, Disney CEO Bob Iger, bought Angel City FC for $250 million. Last month, Denver became the league’s 16th team, with a bid of $110 million, and USWNT star Naomi Girma departed San Diego for Chelsea, thanks to a record $1.1 million transfer fee.
Players are now being paid a liveable wage. The new collective bargaining agreement (CBA), sealed at the end of last year, set the league minimum for 2025 at $48,000. That’s a 220 percent increase from the 2017 minimum of $15,000 and a 700 percent increase from the $6,000 minimum in 2013. It used to be that players leaving elite DI (the top tier of the college system) programs for the pros would often find facilities, training conditions and staffing levels that were worse, not better, and that is no longer the case.
The CBA also brought another factor: the abolition of the draft. Under the old system, players had no say in their destination — a concern Jackson took into consideration before joining North Carolina. Now, every potential rookie is eligible for free agency in the NWSL. But players aren’t just sticking stateside.
“In Europe, you see a lot of girls playing pro from such young ages,” Jackson said. “It’s really great that it’s starting to become a trend in America.”
But is this change in the best interests of players’ long-term development?
“There is this appetite to jump and leave,” said Lori Walker-Hock, who has coached the Ohio State women’s team for 28 years. “The challenge we have is social media. Everybody wants to throw up (a post) and say, ‘Hey, my daughter is a pro!’”
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Walker-Hock and a half-dozen other prominent women’s college soccer coaches The Athletic spoke to are concerned that the rush to turn pro may hurt as many players as it helps. All agreed that going straight to the pros makes sense for the top one percent of players, the generational talents such as Rodman.
For others? They aren’t convinced.
“There are a lot of top-quality universities that prepare players for the next level,” said Emma Thomson, a Courage assistant coach who previously worked at the collegiate level. “Some players need that, not just from a footballing standpoint, but holistically as a human being, getting away from their parents, cooking their own meals, being away from home. For some players, that’s more important than jumping into a professional environment.”
Brian Pensky at Florida State (FSU) has presided over one of the sport’s most dominant programs, with four national championships since 2014. Pensky lost one of his top recruits when then-17-year-old Jordyn Bugg signed to play for the Seattle Reign last summer, but he was heartened by the decision of three top FSU upperclassmen — Heather Gilchrist, Jordynn Dudley and Mimi Van Zanten — to return to Tallahassee.
Not every player chooses to go pro before their eligibility is up. (Bob Donnan / USA TODAY Sports)
“Staying in school doesn’t get attention. What gets attention is the kids who leave. Maybe we should’ve done a press release about Heather, Jordynn and Mimi deciding to stay.” Pensky said, pointing out that staying for their full careers worked out nicely for Emily Sams and Jenna Nighswonger, former FSU stars now on the USWNT.
Gilchrist, a defender, who will play this fall as a grad student, said she “definitely had some soul-searching moments” as she saw a procession of players head off to the NWSL. Ultimately, she returned because she loves FSU and didn’t want her career to end with the stunning second-round loss to Vanderbilt in last fall’s NCAA tournament.
“You have to commit to a decision,” Gilchrist said.
Pensky said his biggest concern is for the players who leave too soon.
“Are they ready to deal with how hard it is? That’s what scares me the most,” he said. “It’s a massive risk to turn pro at 15. If you go early and you are not ready, you are risking your career.”
Gotham general manager (GM) Yael Averbuch West, who signed Whitham at 13, strongly believes that “the onus is on clubs to make sure if you see a player on a professional trajectory, you are bringing them in at the right time.” Clubs need to provide a healthy training environment and a stable developmental pathway.
“There are new challenges for clubs to navigate,” Averbuch West said. “Just because it’s available doesn’t mean it’s the right time for everybody. The way you start your professional career is so critical, not just in terms of minutes, but the support you give them.”
Haley Carter, the GM of the reigning NWSL champions, Orlando Pride, is an ardent believer that good college programs provide an invaluable learning experience, allowing athletes to grow as players and people, to learn how to cope with adversity and get something that is often not available to the 16- and 17-year-olds who come into the league: playing time.
Of the players who entered the league out of high school last season, only three — Angel City’s Gisele Thompson and Kennedy Fuller and Kansas City’s Claire Hutton – consistently played meaningful minutes.
Gisele Thompson was one of the only young players to play regularly last year. (Troy Wayrynen / Imagn Images)
“I don’t understand the pressure being put on athletes and their parents (to turn pro),” Carter said. “You have to run your own race. The real focus of the development of young players has to be match minutes. If you can’t get those match minutes, there’s not a lot of opportunity to get better. If we can’t offer a true developmental path for a young player, then we’re not going to make the investment. It all comes down to meaningful match minutes.”
Erica Dambach has been at the helm of Penn State for 18 years, building a program that won the 2015 national championship and has been to the last two Elite Eights. Two of her former players, Kerry Abello and Cori Dyke, were starters on the Pride’s title-winning team last fall.
While she still loves the opportunity to forge close relationships with her players and to create a high-achieving culture, Dambach says that’s more challenging than ever to do because of the transfer portal that no longer requires players to sit out a year after switching schools; fundraising challenges; and navigating the murky waters of NIL ever since the NCAA permitted athletes to profit from their ‘name, image and likeness’ almost four years ago. The latter makes her student-athletes, effectively, professionals.
“In some ways, it’s been wonderful to see these young women get rewarded for their time and energy and hard work, beyond all the other positives involved,” Dambach said. “But it also has moved the needle to where this is professional athletics, and that can take you away from personal development.”
This April, another potentially seismic change could come with the final approval of the landmark antitrust settlement in which the NCAA and the Power 4 conferences agreed to pay $2.78 billion, seemingly clearing the way for athletes to share in millions of dollars of revenue. The settlement also calls for eliminating scholarship limits and capping soccer rosters at 28.
Santa Clara head coach Jerry Smith has no dispute with college players getting paid but is steadfastly old-school in his belief that staying in school and getting a degree is the way to go for all but the most gifted athletes. In his 38th year of coaching women’s soccer at Santa Clara, Smith has won two national titles, been to 12 College Cups and coached dozens of future pros and USWNT players, among them Brandi Chastain (now his wife), Aly Wagner and Julie Ertz.
“We went from overregulating college sports to the Wild, Wild West overnight,” Smith said. “It’s made it really difficult for everybody. It’s absolutely impossible to predict what women’s college soccer will look like in five years.”
However impossible it might be, the expanding youth class headed into the 2025 NWSL season paints a transformational picture.
Not long ago, Jackson was imagining life as a D1 athlete at Duke’s Koskinen Stadium, threading through balls to All-American striker and potential teammate Michelle Cooper. Instead, she reconsidered her commitment. Meanwhile, Cooper left Duke halfway through her four years, and Kansas City selected her second overall in the 2023 draft.
Both players took momentous steps in their soccer journeys, a snapshot of a sport in the throes of change. Neither player has looked back. On April 26, at WakeMed Soccer Park, they take the field opposite one another as professionals when the Courage hosts Kansas City.
“Throughout life, you are always going to question, ‘What if I did this? What if I did that?’” Cooper told The Athletic. “It would’ve been a dream to finish out my years at Duke with the girls in my class — but I wanted to taste bigger things, and that’s exactly what I did.”
(Top photo: Getty Images; Illustration: Will Tullos / The Athletic)
