Soccer (Football)
Inside Olivia Moultrie's journey from soccer prodigy to NWSL standout
From child prodigy to one of the brightest young stars in women's soccer, Olivia Moultrie's relentless drive has helped reshape what's possible for the next generation.
Olivia Moultrie tried two sports as a child, soccer and basketball. One for mom, one for dad, both of whom had played collegiately in their respective sports. Much to dad’s dismay her response to basketball was, “I’m not good with that whole ball-in-your-hands thing.”
But soccer. Soccer immediately drew her in.
Olivia Moultrie, the soccer prodigy turned professional standout
© Nick Carnera / Red Bull Content Pool
I want to be the best soccer player in the world.
“As a little kid, you don’t really know what you’re doing you just kind of know when you like something or you don’t,” Moultrie remembers. “There was this instant connection for me.”
Three years later she was working on a school project and answered a relatively normal question with a far from normal answer. The project was asking the students what they wanted to be when they grew up.
Olivia Moultrie quick facts
- Born: 2005
- Hometown: Wilsonville, Oregon
- Club: Portland Thorns FC
- Position: Midfielder
- Turned professional: 2021
- National Team: United States Youth National Teams
01
A competitive family foundation
Discipline has been key to Olivia Moultrie's development
© Richard Gordon / Red Bull Content Pool
With athletic parents, it may come as no surprise that Moultrie has thrived in competition from as early an age as she can remember.
“I definitely think that foundation of competition is a part of life, I think that has been huge in my whole family” Moultrie said. “My dad encouraged me to focus on what I wanted to be great at, rather than being average at a lot of different things."
She says seeing how hard her parents worked in their jobs and the way they worked to ensure that she had every opportunity to be great herself. For Moultrie, that upbringing led not just to big dreams, but the ability to create a tangible plan on how to turn the dream into reality.
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“I think that has just shaped how I view a lot of things. I’m a very ‘get things done, give me a checklist’ type of person. That’s how I run my life,” Moultrie explained of how that upbringing still impacts her. “Thinking back to how I was raised when I was little, it makes so much sense. They absolutely laid the train tracks for me in that way.”
Moultrie started wholeheartedly chasing her seven-year-old self’s dream by 11 years old, when she started doing hybrid homeschool to help create the space to train with the best team and try to get better. For the girl who always knew what she wanted, it was the dream.
“I loved it,” Moultrie remembers with a smile. “I was literally like, ‘heck yeah, I only have to go to school two times a week, and I can train in the mornings now? This is awesome. For me it was a lot of abnormal things that felt normal, and that I really enjoyed.”
Shortly after, the next step to achieve the dream became obvious. It was time for the Moultries to head to the Pacific Northwest, where a National Women’s Soccer League team had taken notice of the young talent, and wanted to be a part of her story.
02
Rose City move
The Portland Thorns helped launch Olivia Moultrie's next chapter
© Nick Carnera / Red Bull Content Pool
In 2019, at age 13, Moultrie and her family moved to Portland, Oregon, with an offer to join the Portland Thorns FC development program. It was a move made on faith, after talks with the organization and seeing that they envisioned the same thing that Moultrie did for her future: that she would be the best.
“It was based off the fact of what the Portland Thorns, as an organization, believed could happen in terms of rule changes in the league,” Moultrie explained.
At the time, age restrictions on NWSL players were still being worked out, so Moultrie had been considering a move to Europe and training at a live-in academy where there were no age restrictions for young players. But the Thorns organization didn’t want to let one of the country’s top talents escape without seeing what kind of change could be made so she could enter the league at younger than 18.
“The move was based on what the Portland Thorns, as an organization, believed could happen in terms of rule changes in the league,” Moultrie explained of the thought process. “They basically said, ‘if you can take care of being ready to be on the field, we’ll take care of all the other stuff.’”
Just about a year later, Moultrie was ready, but unfortunately the world and the league was not. The COVID-19 pandemic hit, and the league was scrambling to figure out how to even have a season, much less change the rules to accommodate a teenage prodigy.
“I spent the whole year training,” Moultrie remembers. “I trained at the field at my house. That was a godsend.”
03
The fight to turn professional
Olivia Moultrie is proof that ambition can change the game
© Nick Carnera / Red Bull Content Pool
If I’m good enough, I’m old enough.
With that year of training, and the league returning to a relatively normal season, it was time for 15-year-old Moultrie to officially join the club. She was ready on the field, but off the field, the legal headway had not gone as smoothly as the Thorns, or the Moultries, had hoped.
The league rule still stated that a player had to be 18 in order to sign with an NWSL club, so at 15, that still put Moultrie years away from being able to play, despite the club being ready to sign her.
“If I’m good enough, I’m old enough,” was Moultrie’s stance.
Exacerbating the frustration of not being able to sign because of her age was the reality that no such rule existed in Major League Soccer, the men’s version of the NWSL.
“The number one thing that angered me was that why can the men do it and the women can’t,” Moultrie remembered. “There’s nothing limiting me; if I’m good enough, I’m old enough. I was looking at it like I’m ready to play, we have a team that wanted to sign [me]. How do we figure it out?”
For the Moultries, and Olivia in particular, it came down to two options: file an antitrust lawsuit against the league or move to Europe and play there.
04
Changing the rules of the game
In May of 2021, Moultrie and her family filed an antitrust lawsuit against the NWSL. The lawsuit alleged that her career was being irreparably harmed by the NWSL’s age rule and that Moultrie wasn’t seeking to be awarded a roster spot, but rather seeking “removal of an unlawful barrier to her participation.”
Moultrie couldn’t believe this was what all her hard work and commitment had led to.
“At the end of the day I was just like, ‘I am ready now. I’m ready to make a difference and do what I love,’” Moultrie said of her mentality with the lawsuit. “I’m not going to sit here for another three years in the exact same situation until I can play.”
05
Supported from every angle
Olivia Moultrie became one of the youngest NWSL professionals
© Nick Carnera / Red Bull Content Pool
When Moultrie first started training with the Thorns, some of her teammates were decades older. Playing with legends of the game like Christine Sinclair, Tobin Heath, Lindsey Heaps (then Horan) and Becky Sauerbrunn, Moultrie was surrounded by greatness from the moment she stepped into the Thorns clubhouse. And as much as her game preceded her, she still had to find her way in the locker room and earn the respect - and support - of her teammates.
Slowly but surely, Moultrie proved herself an asset to the team with her competitive spirit, dynamic play and the undeniable fact that she could help the club win. So by the time Moultrie was testifying in court to get the right to play, her teammates were right there with her. Sauerbrunn and Heaps submitted pieces to the court advocating for Moultrie to be able to play.
“That meant so much to me,” Moultrie remembers of the players advocating for her. “They helped by saying things like ‘we see her every day, we see what she can do, we want her out there with us.’ I was like, ‘wow’.”
The case was overseen by Judge Karen J Immergut and she ruled in Moultrie’s favor, echoing Moultrie’s own frustration about the illegality of women at the United States’ highest level of soccer being treated differently than the men of the same caliber.
“Defendants have offered no legitimate procompetitive justification for treating young women who want an opportunity to play professional soccer differently than young men,” Immergut said in her decision.
“I think this whole situation has shaped me into exactly who I am today, and I feel like I’m so much better for it,” Moultrie reflects five years later. “It’s fun now to look back and be like, ‘that was insane’, but it’s also so cool that I can say that that’s my story and that it worked.”
06
A story that’s still being written:
Olivia Moultrie's journey is still being written
© Nick Carnera / Red Bull Content Pool
In the five years since, Moultrie has started as a midfielder for the Thorns, she has played in 76 games, scored 23 goals, and helped the Thorns bring home their 2022 Championship, scoring three goals, and adding 14 assists in 14 regular season matches while making eight starts.
She’s also started making an impact on the US Women’s National Team, starting in all three group games for the USA in the FIFA U-20 Women’s World Cup in Costa Rica.
“Discipline has been something that absolutely has gotten me as far as I’ve gotten,” Moultrie asserts. “I feel like there’s a lot of talented people in the world, but [discipline] is what takes talent to another level. I have an obsessive personality and I put that into the best things possible.”
Through it all, it remains her love of the game that continues to drive her, and the unshakeable belief that the best is yet to come.
“I have been able to put all of myself behind this desire to be great, and in this love of the game. I think absolutely that has fueled who I am. I want to take advantage of the finite time I have to [play soccer at this level] as I know when it’s done, it’s done forever. So I want to live every moment. I don’t want to regret anything.”
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