Olivia Moultrie, 13, becomes the youngest girls soccer player to go pro: 'I was born for this'
“My dream is that I want to be the best soccer player ever. Period,” Olivia Moultrie said in Nike video.
At just 13 years old, the soccer prodigy is well on her way to do just that.
At seven years old, Olivia Moultrie started intensive soccer training at a local soccer academy, later switching to home school in order to free up more time for practice. By age 11, the California native accepted a full scholarship at the University of North Carolina becoming the youngest girl soccer player to publicly do so.
Now 13, the soccer phenom is going pro. On Monday, Moultrie announced that she had signed a deal with Wasserman Media, a sports agency that represents athletes in the NBA, NFL, NHL soccer and more. She also signed a multi-year endorsement deal with Nike.
Although the terms of her contract with the iconic sports brand are unknown, Moultrie has previously been featured in Nike campaigns. Moultrie made a brief cameo at the end of Nike’s newest “Dream Crazier” ad that premiered at the 2019 Academy Awards alongside acclaimed female athletes like Simone Biles, Chloe Kim and Serena Williams. Additionally, Nike produced an entire video feature on the young soccer player as a part of their “Just Do It” campaign in 2018.
“I want to be known as a great player, not just for a girl, but a great footballer,” Moultrie told Nike, expressing admiration for prolific athletes like Serena Williams and Christiano Ronaldo. “It should always just be about the soccer— not about whether you’re a girl or a boy, it’s about whether you can play.”
Many individuals online expressed surprise at the news on account of her age. However, Olivia’s father K.C. Moultrie had hinted in an interview with the New York Times a year ago at the possibility of his daughter going pro. “I think if you’re truly, truly elite, if your goal is to be a world-class player and a pro and, in Olivia’s case, to be the best player in the world, there’s no way it’s better to play college than it is to play full time.”
Last year, Moultrie participated in several training camps with some of Europe’s major clubs including Olympique Lyon, Paris St.-Germain in France, and Bayern Munich in Germany. Her new agent at Wasserman Spencer Wadsworth explains further that “it’s just a shift in women’s sports.”
“You see it more and more now where women’s soccer is catching up to the men’s side, and there’s more opportunities for them,” Wadsworth told the New York Times.
Although declining to disclose the terms of Moultrie’s deal with Nike, Wadsworth did reveal that Moultrie’s deal with the sports brand is “worth more financially than a four-year scholarship at a top university, generally valued at $300,000.”
While Olivia’s trajectory of foregoing her college athletics eligibility is an outlier in the girls’ soccer world, this is not the case in men’s pro soccer. Fourteen-year-old Freddy Adu famously signed with D.C. United in 2004. More recently, 15-year-old Leo Torres joined USL’s San Antonio FC earlier this month.
Because of current FIFA and National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL) rules barring female players under the age of 18, Moultrie has some years before she can sign with a professional league in Europe or in the U.S. However, the Oregonian reports that she will be moving from her hometown of Santa Clarita, Calif. to become a developmental player with the Portland Thorns FC, a women’s professional soccer team.
Some individuals have expressed concern that going pro at a young age may result in the soccer phenom “burning out” or being “over-hyped.” However, for those who have followed Moultrie’s prodigious career, the move came as no surprise.
“When I started treating every day like an opportunity and training to be a professional, I really fell in love with the process of trying to become great,” Moultrie told Urban Pitch in 2017. “The truth is I’ve wanted to be a pro and the best for as long as I can remember and that is my number one goal. I feel like I was born for this.”
“And,” Moutrie added. “I love being able to prove people wrong.”
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