Three Minnesotans make history in new era for women’s soccer

There were zero Minnesotans in the National Women’s Soccer League on Jan. 7. Plenty of Californians and Coloradans everywhere you look.

No Minnesotans.

The next day, there were suddenly three pro players who grew up playing soccer in the Twin Cities — more than there have ever been in the 12-year-old league at any one point in time. More than there have ever been, total.

The trio of former prep soccer stars — Centennial’s Khyah Harper, Edina’s Maddie Dahlien and Orono’s Clare Gagne — all announced their professional contracts on Jan. 8.

In this year’s rookie class, Minnesota has the third-most signees, based on where players graduated high school — behind California’s eight and Florida’s four, and tied with Ohio. It’s a big jump for a state that hasn’t fielded a senior-level U.S. national team player since goalkeeper Briana Scurry, who hung up her cleats (and gloves) in 2008.

“We all knew that Minnesota soccer has been something special, but I think it’s finally really cool to see that it’s being nationally recognized,” Dahlien told the Star Tribune.

The trio has benefitted from recent monumental shifts in the country’s elite women’s soccer league, before they even kick off their first pro seasons on Saturday, March 15.

It’s the American sports success story: dominate in high school, shine at college, get drafted, go pro.

Well, not exactly.

Harper, Gagne and Dahlien all did the first two things, sure.

As a senior at Centennial, Harper was the 2020 Star Tribune Player of the Year. Then, she overcame injuries to lead Minnesota to a Sweet 16 finish last fall. She scored 17 goals as a senior, which was ninth in the nation and good for Big Ten Forward of the Year honors.

Dahlien’s four state titles in track, plus a runner-up finish with Edina soccer, earned her Star Tribune All-Metro Female Athlete of the Year recognition in 2022. She signed with the country’s most decorated college women’s soccer program, the University of North Carolina.

Gagne would join Dahlien at UNC as a grad transfer from Brown. The UNC staff even asked Dahlien to reach out to her fellow Minnesotan when Gagne was considering North Carolina in the transfer portal.

Together, as starters, they knocked Minnesota out of the NCAA tournament en route to lifting the Tar Heels' 23rd national championship trophy in December. It was the program’s first in 12 years, and the Tar Heels were unlikely underdogs with an interim head coach and new-look roster.

“That really drove the motivation and the heart of our team,” Dahlien said. “It just made us a more resilient group. ... Maybe we’d been missing that a little bit.”

All three players were making compelling cases to be eventual picks in a college draft.

But in late September — days after Dahlien helped the U.S. earn a bronze medal in the U20 World Cup in Colombia — the players’ new collective bargaining agreement abolished the draft. It was a first-of-its-kind move for an American sports organization, but it aligned the league with the rest of the world’s top soccer organizations in Europe and beyond.

“For me, personally, and a lot of the girls that are rookies this year, we loved the agency rule, and getting the benefit of picking where you want to go,” Harper said. “With a draft, there’s a lot of players that didn’t like [where they landed] their first year.”

“It’s going to help the longevity [of careers],” she added.

The move is, in part, corrective work to increase player agency. The league recently established a $5 million restitution fund for players impacted by widespread emotional and sexual misconduct by coaches and other club leadership, unearthed in a 2021 investigation.

“The draft really took away the power of the individual players to make decisions that were best for them and find environments that were the best fit for them,” Gagne said.

The players compared navigating this unprecedented change to the college recruiting process, with rookies able to assess how far they wanted to be from home, what kind of coaching they wanted and how they fit into a team’s salary cap.

As a junior at UNC, Dahlien had another year left of NCAA eligibility. But her impact off the bench for the U.S. at the U20 World Cup had caught pro teams' eyes.

“I think it was just the right time for me [to go pro],” Dahlien said. “My goal coming into UNC, and any girl’s dream, is to win a national championship. To do that capped off my UNC experience perfectly.”

“I’m always looking how I can get better, and how I can grow myself, and this is the next challenge in my journey.”

Dahlien was keen to live somewhere new and signed a three-year contract with the Seattle Reign, where two of her World Cup teammates play. The same day her signing was announced, the Edina grad also received a call-up to the U.S. national team’s Futures Camp for promising young players.

Dahlien’s first game, on March 15, will pit her against Harper and her new team, NY/NJ Gotham FC.

Pro teams came calling for Harper, the self-declared “homebody,” in the middle of the Gophers season after seeing her fast start. But she asked her coaches to keep that info under wraps until the end of the year, wanting to focus solely on NCAA competition.

Once she began interviewing clubs, there was one person Harper wanted to be part of the conversation — besides her agent, of course. (All three players are signed with sports agency Wasserman.)

From 2014 to 2018, Gophers associate head coach Maya Hayes played with Sky Blue FC — what Gotham FC was called before a rebrand in 2021. Sky Blue had made headlines for the wrong reasons, like not having working toilets at its training facilities.

That’s a far cry from what drew Harper to the club, like a preseason training trip to Spain and high-quality coaching.

“[Hayes] didn’t get the best when she was there, so she really wanted me to go to a place that believed in me and that I could reach my full potential,“ said Harper, who signed a one-year contract. “Not everybody had it as easy as I did coming into the league. There’s a lot of players that fought for this chance for me.”

No team is a better example of that than the club Gagne signed a one-year deal with: the Kansas City Current. Partially owned by Patrick and Brittany Mahomes, the Current built the world’s first women’s soccer-specific stadium, to the tune of $117 million.

The 48 hours after North Carolina’s championship were “a stressful whirlwind” of conversations for the College Cup Defensive MVP. She also considered playing professionally overseas.

“The support and the opportunity here is just something I couldn’t pass up,” Gagne said.

Dahlien, Gagne and Harper all played their club soccer at Minnesota Thunder Academy in Richfield. The youth club is home to Minnesota’s only Elite Clubs National League program, the highest competition of club soccer for girls in the United States.

Other recent club alum include Izzy Engle, an Edina grad who scored 19 goals for Notre Dame last fall (the most for an NCAA freshman since 2014) and Breck’s Kaitlyn MacBean, who netted 16 goals as a senior at Penn State. Former Edina goalkeeper Bayliss Flynn led the NCAA in save percentage (92.5%) at Montana. Another Gopher, midfielder Sophia Boman, was also invited to preseason training camp with the Current.

MTA’s girls director Danny Storlien said 189 college coaches came to watch the Thunder play at a recent Florida tournament. States like California, Texas, Colorado and Georgia traditionally field powerhouse clubs, with better weather for year-round outdoor play.

“We had two players that started and played the whole game for North Carolina in the national championship game this year, and we had three of the 10 leading scorers in Division I college soccer this year,” Storlien said. “I think people are taking notice.”

Since Harper and Gagne graduated high school in 2020, the NWSL has added five new teams for a total of 130 additional roster spots. Boston and Denver will join the league in 2026, adding 52 more.

For the trio, it’s a point of pride that Minnesotans are filling some of these new slots.

“We loved Minnesota growing up. We still visit it all the time, and we visit MTA, where we basically grew up,” Harper said. “We’re just excited to represent Minnesota at this level and show that Minnesota can be a soccer state if you give us the resources for it.”