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NWSL original Jess Fishlock takes the spotlight after a career of doing quiet work for Seattle
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- NWSL original Jess Fishlock takes the spotlight after a career of doing quiet work for Seattle
Seattle Reign midfielder Jess Fishlock will wrap her 14th and final regular season in the National Women's Soccer League (NWSL) on Sunday as one of the defining players in American professional soccer. Yet she nearly cut her losses during the inaugural season to go back to the UK — closer to home in Wales, and where she had departed as the 2012 FA Women's Super League (WSL) players' player of the year with Bristol City.
"It was so intense, it was so fast. The tempo of the game was just on another level," Fishlock recalled at her retirement announcement press conference in April. "I remember after that first game, I said to Laura (Harvey, Reign head coach), 'I can't do this. I need to go home.'"
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But Harvey, who has coached Fishlock for more than a decade, convinced her to stay.
It took until June of that first season for the Reign to earn their first win, a 2-1 victory against the Boston Breakers on the road. Fishlock scored the equalizing goal. After a dismal first season, the Reign found their footing and won back-to-back NWSL Shields in 2014 and 2015 and were the key foils in budding rivalries against the Portland Thorns and FC Kansas City that helped grow the NWSL.
For most of Fishlock's 14 years with the Reign, she was part of an established trio of stars with center back Lauren Barnes and forward Megan Rapinoe. She is the last of them to retire, marking the end of an era for not just the Reign, but the NWSL.
When considering Fishlock's legacy, it is more than just being a stalwart for the same team. It is more than all of her awards.
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She was part of another trio, one not as clearly defined but one that has shaped the course of the NWSL largely through their play on the field and as leaders for their respective clubs: Fishlock, Christine Sinclair and Marta — three international players who have ensured the NWSL remains something larger than a USWNT training environment, especially in its early days.
Fishlock never got the national marketing attention the other two received. Sometimes on those early broadcasts, viewers would even be hard pressed to tell if it was Fishlock or Rapinoe on the ball, thanks to their similar haircuts and shoddy live streams.
"Just think, if we got the player of the year from the WSL into our league today, what a splash that would make," Harvey said at Fishlock's retirement press conference. She pointed to Fishlock earning MVP once again, nine years after she had won it in her previous league, then helping the Reign win the Shield again in 2022, making the NWSL Championship in 2023.
Fishlock has been the constant engine through it all, alongside the likes of Kim Little, Keelin Winters, Allie Long and Rose Lavelle.
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"I don't know if we've documented Jess's career, or how big a deal it's been," Harvey said at that event. She was a constant analytical brain at the center of the midfield. Fishlock is the player who still sends Harvey the most videos to analyze. That work behind the scenes has been crucial to her role on the team, but Harvey focused primarily on Fishlock's relationship to other people.
"How she's developed as a leader across all these years, we've had to evolve," Harvey said. "The people that we work with are very different to the people that we worked with back in the day. But it speaks volumes of Jess' evolution off the field on how the young players interact with her.
"She could be their mom, right?" Harvey said. "I'm way closer in age to Jess than 90 percent of the players in our team. So the evolution, to see how well she's respected within the group, how she can interact with them, and how much they respect her opinion is huge."
Shortly after that April press conference, Fishlock suffered an ankle injury in a match against the Utah Royals that forced her off the field on the stretcher in an air cast. Fortunately, there was no fracture, but she only returned to the field for the Reign at the start of August. Two weeks after that, the Reign moved into eighth place in the standings, the final playoff spot, a spot they have largely held since then.
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Fishlock has harnessed her trademark intensity in these final few months of the regular season — her assist to Maddie Mercado against the Chicago Stars on Oct. 18 stands out as one of the more visible moments.
"She's so smart," Mercado said after the match. "I don't think people really understand it unless you've been in the environment with her. Every single person on our team would describe her as extremely smart, she understands the game. She's a great leader."
For Harvey, on that night against Chicago, it was simply that Fishlock knew better than anyone how to win.
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"Her leadership all year, her guiding people in the right moments, and then showing quality when we needed it," she said after the game. "That is what she brings to the team."
It has not been every game where Fishlock has provided that highlight-reel quality, but she has done the thankless work of sprinting to apply pressure or providing the pass three passes before a goal.
Sometimes it was recognized properly, with Player of the Week nods or winning the 2021 NWSL MVP award. It is rare for a midfielder to break through and make people notice them when their play makes them the invisible string tying a team together.
As Fishlock nears her final minutes on the field, there is a whole new wave of international players ready to redefine the potential of the NWSL: Temwa Chawinga and Barbra Banda chief among the influx of talent from across Africa, South America, Asia and Europe.
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More than a decade ago, Fishlock nearly made the decision that the professional game in America was too intense for her. Instead, she found her own intensity and made it her own. That steely glare, the way she pounded the Reign crest on her chest after scoring a goal in the Cascadia rivalry, the work ethic behind the scenes that few saw.
Though her season is not over just yet, the Reign can still advance to the postseason with a win over the Orlando Pride, Sunday is a moment to honor a player who always did the hard work.
Fishlock may not get the attention of some of the other high-profile retirees from the past few years in the NWSL, but she has left her mark.
This article originally appeared in The Athletic .
Wales, Seattle Reign, NWSL, Women's Soccer
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