The scouting report on star soccer forward Alyssa Thompson is that she’s fast. How fast? She ran the 100 meters during her junior year of high school in 11.69 seconds.
That speed helped earn her a spot on the U.S. Women’s National Team, heading for the Women’s World Cup next month in Australia and New Zealand.
The final roster was announced Wednesday, and Thompson, just 18 years old, is on it.
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As Thompson finished up her senior year at Harvard-Westlake School, an independent school in Los Angeles, she decided against going to Stanford University and instead turned pro, signing with Angel City FC of the National Women’s Soccer League. She was the first pick in the NWSL draft.
Her pro career is only 12 games old, but she already has 3 goals and 1 assist.
Pro soccer left no time for high school track this spring, but Jonas Koolsbergen, the track coach at Harvard-Westlake, told Runner’s World that what she achieved in three years of high school track, “with how little training and work she was doing, is somewhere between remarkable and impossible.”
As a junior last spring, she made it to the finals of 100 meters at the California state meet, which Koolsbergen calls the “best state meet in the country.” There, Thompson finished seventh.
Thompson also ran on the 4x100-meter and 4x400-meter relays for Harvard-Westlake.
The 11.69 she ran last season remains the school record, (even though Thompson’s younger sister Gisele runs for the team and has also cracked 12 seconds).
Koolsbergen said everyone in the track program knew where Thompson’s priorities were—soccer was first, second, and third. But every once in a while, he conceded, he’d have a thought about how good she could be if she quit soccer and sprinted all the time.
“Really darn good,” he said. “She was admitted to Stanford. If she woke up one morning and decided she was sick of soccer, could she have gone to Stanford and been a successful Pac-12 sprinter? Absolutely.”
During her junior year, Thompson made it to track practice only one day per week, at the most twice. Koolsbergen’s philosophy: “Not worrying about what we couldn’t do,” he said. “Just making the best of what we could do.”
Her best was darn good.
“Making the California state final in the 100 without really training for the 100? That’s ridiculous,” Koolsbergen said.
Her speed on the soccer pitch, he said, made her a “matchup nightmare” when she played against high school competition. “She still had a lot of speed with the ball,” he said. “She would give little one step fake, that person hesitates for a second—and forget about it.”
Sarah Lorge Butler is a writer and editor living in Eugene, Oregon, and her stories about the sport, its trends, and fascinating individuals have appeared in Runner’s World since 2005. She is the author of two popular fitness books, Run Your Butt Off! and Walk Your Butt Off!
