Another sad case.
And that is after she was dropped from the National Team for a while.
Mallory was called up too soon, at age 17. She showed great promise and fell into the trap of excessive expectations. She then turned pro right after high school. Again, she showed great promise, but at that age, she wasn’t the water walker people were expecting. I think it all got to her. She lost her spot on the national team, got traded in the NWSL and got a fresh start.
In retrospect, she’s a classic case of a kid who got too much, too fast. She should have spent at least a couple of years in college, growing up, maturing physically, and toughening up her game.
The good news is that she regrouped, refocused on her game, and then broke out as the rising superstar whose potential everyone had sensed from the outset. It probably helped that She and Dabney Swanson got married; while I don’t obsess over the private lives of athletes, who deserve to be left alone if they want to keep their private lives private, she was obviously a young woman in her early 20s living in a fishbowl and trying to deal with a long distance relationship. That’s all done.
She had everything squared away and was brilliant on the field. Again, this was shaping up to be HER World Cup. Then the injury — a non-contact injury, by the way.
Andie Sullivan also came up very young and had established herself as a lock in midfield for the next decade. Then ACL tears knocked her out of two consecutive World Cups. She’s finally healthy this year, and I hope she has a great tournament. She will probably age out by the next World Cup, so she is a sentimental favorite. Injuries are cruel.