By The NWSL playmaker tells GOAL why she is feeling positive about the future despite the toughest year of her career to date
Ashley Sanchez doesn’t need much time to think about whether or not the last 12 months have been the most difficult of her career to date. Between seeing no minutes for the United States women’s national team in its historically bad Women’s World Cup last summer, a shock trade from the Washington Spirit to the North Carolina Courage that left her “heartbroken”, and being left off the USWNT roster since October, she’s endured more difficult moments in this past year than ever before.
But when she speaks to GOAL on what has been a very hot summer’s day on the east coast, as the Courage prepares to enter the NWSL’s mid-season break, despite answering that question with a rather quick “definitely”, Sanchez is upbeat. She’s had time to process all that the sport she loves has thrown at her, she’s adjusted her mentality and seen the silver linings.
“I think this last year has been absolutely wild, but I do think that I’ve been very fortunate with injuries and setbacks and different things like that. I haven’t really experienced anything and I think all the greatest players in the world have experienced something like this,” she tells GOAL. “It’s really easy to be like, ‘Poor me’, but I felt like [the trade] was meant to happen and it was just going to be the start of something different.
“I thought that if I just changed my mindset to want to grow and get better and be the best player I can be, that’s pretty much the only option I had, because I already wasn’t with the national team, I just got traded and there’s a lot of things that could have been a downward spiral. But instead, I was like, ‘Well, now the expectations are low, I might as well try my best to create bigger expectations of myself, play the best that I can and just help my team in any way’.”
