I’ve got a story for you.

I’ve got a story for you.It was 2013, the NWSL’s inaugural season. Back then, we were still Seattle Reign FC, playing at the Starfire Sports complex in Tukwila, about 10 miles outside of Seattle. I’d just signed with the team that year to see what the new American women’s professional league was all about. Once, during a game, I noticed an older woman who looked to be in her 70s in the stands, waving a flag for my home country of Wales, something I never expected to see once I left Europe. As the weeks passed, the woman continued to show up at our home games with her Welsh staff. Finally, my curiosity took over and I walked up to her after a match, which wasn’t at all difficult to do; in those days, our game attendance averaged about 750 fans. Her name is Gillian. She’s Welsh, like me, and told me she and her friends had created and played in a walking soccer league at Starfire. They carpooled to our games. Gillian and I exchanged emails, kept in touch, and eventually organized a luncheon with me and her friends, all of whom are in their 60s, 70s, and 80s. It was lovely, and was, in hindsight, my first glimpse into the deep-rooted, resilient world of women’s sport in my new home. People talk about women’s soccer like it has a three-year lifespan, but the truth is, this fuse has been burning for decades. Yes, even in the United States — and I’m not just talking about the glory days of the 1999 Women’s World Cup. As one of just 21 players who’ve been part of the NWSL since its inception, I’ve seen it myself, every thrilling high and devastating low as this league grew and shrunk and morphed, over and over again. And you know what? As challenging as it’s been at times, I wouldn’t change a thing about my experience as a now-OG in this league. It’s always when you’ve been able to bear witness to the full journey that you appreciate the destination that much more.

When Laura Harvey, my head coach then and now, called me with the opportunity to move to Seattle and continue my pro career there, I didn’t think twice. Moving away from home is hard, especially when you’re young, but I’d already done that when I left Wales to play in The Netherlands. That was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done, so relocating to the Pacific Northwest didn’t seem daunting. Besides, I’m the kind of person who prefers to make decisions first and figure out the rest later. In my case, “the rest” meant adjusting to a different culture and style of soccer compared to what I was used to in Europe. Here’s another story, one that Laura and I still joke about to this day: our very first game of the inaugural NWSL season was against the Chicago Red Stars, whose roster was stacked with the likes of Shannon Boxx and Leslie Osbourne. It remains one of the craziest games I’ve ever played. I remember thinking on at least three separate occasions that a player should have been sent off for something they did on field, whether it was a hard, crunching tackle or some other display of physicality unlike anything I’d seen before. By comparison, the Dutch style of soccer, where I’d last played before moving over to the NWSL, was a lot more chill. “I can’t stay here,” I remember telling Laura. It was so intense, and I was shook! “I can’t do that.” The style adjustments weren’t always physical, either, and sometimes the transitions took awhile within the team. Things definitely weren’t rosy at first between me and Keelin “Keke” Winters, who was our No. 6 in those early days. It’s not that we didn’t like each other, but we came from two different cultures and had to figure out how to work together — and quickly. We’d be in training and she’d stop, look at me, and be like, “What are you doing? We don’t do that here.” Meanwhile, I’m looking at her the same way, thinking the same thing about the way she played. We really had to persevere through that. To this day, I still miss playing with her. It’s funny to think about now, because my journey with Keke very much reflected what the NWSL was like as a whole when it began. In 2013, the Reign was a brand new franchise. We weren’t affiliated with a men’s side, and didn’t have anybody or anything else to fall back on for support. Anything we wanted, we had to figure out for ourselves. It was like building a ship as you sailed on it. And learning the ins and outs of how the league operated was an adventure in discovery in and of itself. I remember showing up to practice once and learning that some of my teammates had been traded overnight and were already gone, headed to their new teams. In those days, the league was primarily driven by the US, Mexican, and Canadian national federations, who subsidized the salaries of their national team players competing in the NWSL to supplement the rosters of what was then eight teams in the league: Seattle Reign FC, the Washington Spirit, Kansas City FC, Sky Blue FC, the Chicago Red Stars, the Western New York Flash, the Boston Breakers, and Portland Thorns FC. But nobody fully understood how all of the rules worked, or how trading happened, so you never really knew what you were going to get when you showed up to work. And for me, learning about the draft, a foreign concept for a Welsh player, was an education all its own. But by the end of my first season, I realized that was exactly what I wanted. I felt like I could really grow in the NWSL, and I much preferred that over avoiding anything outside of my comfort zone and risking complacency. I was also learning about myself as a human being, and realized I needed to make the necessary adjustments to my life off the pitch in order to give myself the best shot at success on it. My first year in the NWSL, I lived with a few teammates. I had good relationships with all of them, but I come from a big family of six kids, plus my mum and dad. Our house always buzzed with the company of friends and relatives, and I yearned for the kind of home dynamic I grew up in. My second year, I decided to move out and live with a host family, which worked out a lot better for me — so well, actually, that I still live with them now. As I began to feel more at home, things started to gel on the field as well. I’m fortunate to have been able to work alongside some sensational players throughout my career: Kim “Kimmy” Little coming to Seattle Reign was huge for the club, as well as Elli Reed (now Burris), and of course, superstar players like Megan Rapinoe and Hope Solo. And those were just my teammates! Playing against opponents like Tobin Heath, Lauren Cheney (now Holiday), Alex Morgan, and Carli Lloyd elevated my game in ways I always knew I was capable of, but wasn’t sure I’d be able to get at any other league in the world at that time. From the start, Laura, along with club founders Theresa and Bill Predmore, had articulated a specific vision for our club, from our brand and style of play to the types of players we would recruit. The process was always meant to be a slow build, and I was all in. So I stayed, telling myself I’d give it three years and then reevaluate. Eleven years later (and counting), I’m still here.

It wasn’t necessarily smooth sailing after that first year in a brand-new NWSL. Don’t get me wrong, things had improved significantly in a lot of ways, especially on the pitch; Seattle Reign won back-to-back NWSL Shields in 2014 and 2015, and of course, things always feel better when your team is successful. Gradually, players began to figure out the inner workings of things like trades and allocations, but there was still a lot we didn’t know. But the biggest challenge of all in those early years of the league was financial — at that time, the minimum annual salary was $6,000. The low wage affected us all in different ways, and for me, they weren’t all bad. In order to continue earning a livelihood playing soccer, I (and several other OGs) went overseas during the NWSL’s offseason and played on loan for leagues in Australia, France, Germany, England, and The Netherlands. I feel really lucky to have been able to play, learn, and improve my game on so many different teams around the world, and at such an exciting time. Like the NWSL, leagues in Australia, The Netherlands, and England were just getting off the ground when I played there. It was a lot of fun to see those leagues pop off in their own ways and ascend in their own directions. One of the things I love most about soccer is there’s no one way to play it, and because I’ve had the opportunity to play this game in as many places as I have, I was able to see that up close.

But I know that lifestyle, moving from continent to continent, isn’t for everybody. I look at the current state of the NWSL and women’s soccer globally, and I’m blown away by how drastically things have changed from my earliest playing days. I think about some of the spectacular players I had the privilege of sharing the pitch with, those who’ve since hung up their boots and pursued other passions. We had some real ones back then, let me tell you: Birgit Prinz from Germany, Renate Lingor and Lotta Schelin from Sweden, Caroline Seger and Kelly Smith from England, Louisa Necib Cadamuro and Camille Abily from France — we’re talking some of the best players to grace the women’s game. Those players really held down the fort, in order for us to blossom in the current landscape of women’s soccer globally, but we rarely talk about them anymore. There’s so much history in women’s soccer that’s been buried over the years simply because it wasn’t at the forefront of the media the way it is now. I hope all of those players — not to mention all of my phenomenal teammates on the Welsh national team — get their due flowers one day. I often wonder if those players would still be out on the field, or if they’d have extended their careers a little longer, if things were different back then and these leagues had been more stable. I look at the insane amount of talent coming through the NWSL now and think about what it might have been like to mix different dynamics on a roster for even more generational depth than we have now. It’s exciting to think about, but it also makes me sad that we couldn’t get that back then because we weren’t ready for it. But even with all of that being the case, I have absolutely no regrets, bitterness, or gripes about my own career. It’s wild to reflect on how long I’ve been here and how much I’ve accomplished, which I admittedly don’t do enough. (Thankfully, I have my older brother Gareth, who’s always there to remind me.) At the 2022 NWSL Championship, the league gathered the Original 21, those of us who’ve been part of the league since the very beginning, for a beautiful presentation before the final, complete with custom jackets. It was lovely to be recognized in that way, and if it were up to me, I’d gather every NWSL player from those 2013, 2014, and 2015 days into a big room, pour ‘em a glass of gin, and toast them just to say thank you. They took a $6,000 minimum annual salary and built this league into what it is now, where I’m pretty sure the minimum salary will get to $40,000 very soon.

More than a decade later, I still see Gillian and her friends at our games. But now they carpool not to Starfire Sports, but to Lumen Field, in the heart of Seattle. (I’ve heard the Seattle Seahawks play the other kind of football there as well.) Now, Gillian and her friends watch not Seattle Reign FC, but OL Reign. The last time we got together for our annual luncheon, I brought along Tziarra King, or Z, my fiancée and teammate, who has made everything in my life, including my football but so much more than that, better. I’m thankful to the NWSL, which has given me so much more than soccer. It’s helped me make a life and build who I am. And I’m endlessly grateful to our fans. I know we’ve put them through a lot, having played in three different venues over the course of our club history, but they show up for us every time, and I never take that for granted. New players on our team are fortunate to have different veterans to go to for questions and advice about this league; Lauren Barnes (or “Lu,” as we call her), Pinoe and I are all part of the Original 21. I’m a bit quieter than the other two, so rookies and other new faces normally flock to them for guidance on how to thrive in the league. But whenever anyone asks, here’s what I tell them, from someone who’s borne witness to the growth, contraction, expansion, and endless possibilities for the NWSL: Everyday is a pressure cooker. It can feel, at times, like you won’t have a chance to breathe. If you’re coming onto a team full of veterans and others who’ve been around for awhile, know that you will get your chance. Your career is not made in one training session, or even one game. Enjoy your time, enjoy your life; it’s all a process. Even when things aren’t going your way, always remember that you’re meant to be here. It takes time to build a home. Visit NWSLsoccer.com/Intheirownwords to read more player stories.