Colorado’s trailblazers
Horan, Pugh handle return to state with national team like the pros they are
Lindsey Horan and Mallory Pugh had the same big question in front of them, albeit five years apart: Is turning professional worth the risk of passing on a college scholarship?
It’s a question both said yes to, and it’s also a question that — before the U.S. Women’s National Team duo acted on it — had never been considered before. Horan and Pugh are the only female players in U.S. Soccer history to bypass college to turn professional, and their boldness has opened the door for other big-dreaming, cleat-wearing girls.
“It’s a huge decision, and now it’s kind of out there where it’s a thought,” Horan said. “And other young female players who are maybe thinking about making the jump can look and see that we’ve done it, and they can see that we’re in a good place and it’s worked out for us.”
Horan is a 2012 Golden High School graduate who elected to sign with Paris Saint-Germain out of high school, while Pugh, a 2016 Mountain Vista graduate, redshirted during her freshman season at UCLA before deciding to turn professional and sign with the National Women’s Soccer League’s Washington Spirit three weeks later.
The Coloradans are back home for a friendly against New Zealand on Friday at Dick’s Sporting Goods Park as the
USWNT continues to finetune its side ahead of the 2019 World Cup. And the match gives Horan and Pugh a chance to soak in an environment where both of their youth clubs — Colorado Rush and Real Colorado, respectively — will be out in full force to support their homegrown stars.
“My youth club bought out a whole section, which is the coolest thing in the world,” Horan said. “They’ve done everything for my development, and I give all the credit in the world to them and how much they influenced me and motivated me to be where I am today.”
While in town, hitting up local favorites such as Little Man Ice Cream are on the off-the-field to-do list for the pair, who have grown close since Pugh was called up to the national team in January 2016 and, at 18, became the second-youngest Olympian in USWNT history in Rio de Janeiro later that year. (Cindy Parlow was the youngest in 1996.)
Pugh talked extensively with Horan before making the decision to leave UCLA, which she said wasn’t motivated by money. Under the new collective bargaining agreement ratified by the USWNT Players Association and U.S. Soccer in April — and because U.S. Soccer underwrites salaries for national team players competing in the NWSL — Pugh is estimated to make anywhere from $200,000 to $300,000 in annual salary, not including endorsement deals such as the one she signed with Nike in May.
“For me, I got the right amount of experience that I needed (at UCLA),” Pugh said. “Leaving was an emotional decision for me, just because I do have so many close friends on UCLA. Not much of it was motivated by (the financial piece). It was more about what I could do to put myself in a good environment to grow as a player and as a person, too.”
Horan describes Pugh as a little sister — “I’m so proud of the way she handled everything at such a young age,” she gushed — and said the way Pugh burst onto the international stage when she became the youngest American to net an Olympic goal is in large part a credit to the phenom’s relaxed mind-set on the pitch.
“Mal is someone who doesn’t think a lot,” Horan said. “Coming from my past experiences, I’ve been the player who used to worry all the time, and I’d get so nervous and frantic when I was young. My gosh, she comes into her first national team game (in January 2016), scores, and I don’t see nerves at all — she’s just going out and having fun and playing, and for a young player to do that at such a high level is incredible.”
And when Horan and Pugh take the pitch for Friday’s 8 p.m. match as trailblazers, they’ll do so with the hopes that their risktaking was just one catalyst for a quickly morphing women’s soccer world in which development academy programs have spawned for girls, and the USWNT continues its push for a pay structure that is equitable to that of the men’s.
“Women’s soccer is booming right now, and it’s really cool to see something like the (development academies) come in and mimic what the boys side is doing,” Pugh said. “Hopefully that momentum continues to grow the sport.”