Lindsey Huie was an accomplished youth soccer player.

The Southern California native – a CIF Defensive Player of the Year – was understandably excited to get called into a national team U-18 camp, after a player there was injured.

“This is my chance,” she thought. “It’s everything I’ve always worked for.”

But the camp was nothing like she’d imagined. Veterans and newcomers were separated. “We were the B squad,” Huie says. “We never mixed.”

After two weeks, she had her first meeting with the head coach. He was blunt. “You’re not good enough to play at this level,” he said.

“It was the best day of my life,” Huie says now. “I didn’t cry. I just thought, ‘How can he see that? He never saw me touch a ball.’”

That experience fueled her career. She won two College Cups (2002 & 2005) with the University of Portland, where she majored in psychology. When she got a call to a U-21 national camp, she had a completely different mindset. She spoke with the coaches every day. She made sure they saw her as “running all over the field, like a wild animal.”

She made that U-21 squad, which won two Nordic Cups. She earned a full national team cap in 2005, at the Algarve Cup.

Huie retired that year, wanting to go out on her terms and on top. At the time, she says, women felt “pressured to choose between playing and being moms. I had sacrificed so much already. I worried that if I kept playing, the game would gobble me up.”

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