The National Women’s Soccer League prides itself on its continuing evolution. That proved true with the elimination of the draft in 2025, but still left lingering questions about how it would change scouting for clubs and opportunities for aspiring professional athletes.

The answer: the NWSL Combine.

Over two weeks in Bradenton, Fla., the NWSL invited top youth and adult prospects for two inaugural combines. Through high performance exercises, scrimmages, drills, interviews, and classroom sessions, NWSL hopefuls hit the pitch, hoping to make an impression, while club scouts evaluated their skills.

The NWSL’s Youth Development Director Karla Thompson led the effort to put on the NWSL Combine, and in the introduction meetings for both she made one thing very clear.

Having fun was encouraged.

“Because of their environment of being elite players, it’s often now a job for them rather than it being fun – even non-elite players. We're losing players out of the game because they're just not having fun anymore,” Thompson said. “Even though you're here as part of a combine, as being identified as a potential pro player, it's still about having fun. Even as a pro player, you’ve got to have fun in the game or you're not going to continue.”

Though it was a high-intensity setting for the adult combine, once the players got their jitters out during the first skill of the event, the energy loosened up.

During the drills, the prospects were split into groups for counter movement jumping, a 40-meter dash, and agility testing. By mid-morning, the sound of cheering overpowered the pop music coming from a portable speaker. As each athlete sprinted their 40 meters, her compatriots were making sure she was supported the entire way.

“It’s been very energetic,” Peyton Parsons, a recent graduate of Texas Tech said. “I feel like all of the girls have been really supportive of each other, but it’s a very intense atmosphere as well.”

Combine coach Ronnie Woodard said the energy was inspiring to be part of.

“These girls have been dreaming about playing in the league,” Woodard said. “Now, the chance that they have to come out here and be in front of all these NWSL scouts in a collective environment, to be able to showcase themselves, it's empowering.”

Violet Rademacher, who is going into her fifth year at the University of Portland, is one of those athletes who got that chance.

“I literally started crying. I was so excited, just seeing all your hard work pay off,” Rademacher said. "It' s such an incredible opportunity to get your name out there.”

That opportunity took a lot of behind-the-scenes work. One of the Combine coaches, Katie Ritchie, said her expectation was that it would be a slow moving train in terms of establishing what this new programming would look like.

She was wrong.

“When Karla brought me in to do this, I thought we were crawling and then we were going to walk, but we were sprinting,” Ritchie said of the inaugural combine. “This has grown so much bigger than what we ever envisioned it was going to be.”

BEHIND KARLA THOMPSON’S NWSL COMBINE STAFF

If Karla Thompson sets her mind on something, she does everything in her power to make it happen. She wanted to be a pilot, so she became one. Thompson served in the Air Force, flying planes for eight years.

When Thompson was coming up through the soccer system, there wasn’t an obvious path to pros. Her work in developing the game and pushing it forward is, in part, designed to help young athletes see what is possible.

“Soccer for me back then was just something to do. It wasn’t something that I aspired to do at a high level,” she said. “If I would have had something like this [Combine], who knows what I would have been.”

With that in mind, Thompson made the intentional decision to make sure the NWSL Combine coaching staff was entirely women – from colleagues to mentees.

“We need to create opportunities for more women. It's very important for young players to understand that there are very good women coaches and there are advantages to being coached by a female,” Thompson said. “We understand physically, mentally, cognitively, emotionally, what the players are going through, which I think can help in their development.”

In addition to Thompson, the NWSL Combine coaching staff included Ronnie Woodard (Elite Club National League and U.S. Soccer), Rochelle Hearns (Bridge City Soccer Academy), Leigh Jakes (Youth Development Director for Atlanta United), and Katie Ritchie (Director of Soccer for Legends FC San Diego).

“She brings people in that are going to do what it takes to get it done. Karla drives standards. She drives excellence,” Ritchie said. ”Her passion for kicking down as many doors for as many people as possible is infectious.”

“She’ll challenge you, but she’ll fight for you,” Leigh Jakes said. “When she reached out, it was a no-brainer to say yes. I know that she is at the heart of building something really beautiful.”

As much as the NWSL Combine was a chance for players from across the country to showcase their skills, it was a chance for up-and-coming coaches like Jakes and Ritchie to show what they can do at the helm. At the same time, the energy the participating players described – one of mutual support and respect – translated across the board.

“Everyone wants each other to win. We've been deconstructing this myth of scarcity. Like only one of us can make it and if you make it, I won’t,” Jakes said. “We want to collaborate. We want to support you, to push you and give feedback. We want to make sure that you have the tools to advocate for yourself.”

The Combine itself wasn’t the only first for some of the participating players.

“I've never had a female coach in my whole life. It's really cool to be introduced to an all female staff because I've always wanted to be coached by a woman,” Parsons said. “I love having this different atmosphere and giving that opportunity to women.”

To pause and recognize how much the environment around women’s sports has changed is to realize that it means just as much for the old guard as it does for future generations.

For a coach like Ronnie Woodard, who has been coaching for decades, the growth of the NWSL, including the Combine, and the overall investment in women’s soccer has changed dramatically since she set out.

“I'll tear up if I really start to think of where we started and where we are now. It's because of people like Karla that believe in the future of women coaching women,” Woodard said.

Ritchie, on the other hand, used soccer as her way out. She bet on herself as a teenager and shipped herself across the world for a chance to play professional soccer. She did it without an agent and without help, but now a path to the pros in the U.S. is something that is clear and viable.

“I have a five-year-old daughter that can actually see that there’s a real opportunity to go make a career out of being a soccer player. I didn’t have that,” Ritchie said, getting emotional. “That's why we're why we're all here. We want to make this the best it could be.”

THE FUTURE OF NWSL COMBINES

The 2025 NWSL Combine is just the beginning. It’s a jumping off point that will almost certainly evolve as time goes on.

For Karla Thompson, that means, in part, broadening the scope of scouting to include smaller schools to find talent that might otherwise be overlooked.

“I hope that we're able to go out and reach into some areas that we’re not identifying players now,” Thompson said. “There are so many young ladies that don't know about the NWSL yet and could aspire to be players, coaches, admins, journalists, anything involved with sports. They just need to see it to believe they can get there.”

Even for some of the coaches, that kind of proof of what was possible would have been life changing.

As a player, Katie Ritchie described herself as a workhorse. She was never going to be Marta, but she would be the teammate sprinting down the field to set up the Martas of the world. Those are the kinds of players – players like her – Ritchie hopes get a chance in the future through the NWSL Combine.

“How many rocks can we turn over to give girls that maybe aren't the flashiest player still this platform to showcase that?” she said. “That is important.”

Further, Thompson said it’s important for the NWSL to identify talent. Like a gardener tending to seeds, the league to ensure the soil is healthy and the fledgling plants are being watered.

“The league has a responsibility to provide options for those kids to get into the sport, to play the sport,” Thompson said. “We'll probably find the next Mia Hamm or Abby Wambach or Trinity Rodman, but then we also find lifelong fans of the sport.”

Regardless of how different the NWSL Combine looks in one year, five years, or 10 years, Coach Ronnie Woodard said a constant would be the sheer elation of seeing young players grow throughout the process.

“Watching the joy on the faces of these girls and watching them gain in bravery as the week goes on, showing that they are fierce, but yet they're collected and that they can be a strong female within our sport,” Woodard said. “They're going to be the future of what young girls are going to look up to.”