Lindsey Heaps remembers the day she made the decision to no longer have a pre-match ritual.
The U.S. women’s national team star couldn’t imagine going to a match without wearing the same pair of tattered red slip-on slides. Over time Heaps (né Horan) described them as “so disgusting,” she could barely believe they still functioned.
One day, it all became too much. Before a Portland Thorns match, Heaps looked down at the red slides, holes and all, and said to herself, “This cannot be a thing.” She no longer wanted to rely on superstition, did not want to blame them if she had a bad game or panic if she forgot them. After all, a star’s ability to compete could not be tied to disintegrating footwear.
“I had to put a kibosh on any type of routine,” she says.
This is how Heaps has approached her soccer career. The Golden, Colo., native takes stock of what she needs and wants, what works and what doesn’t, and puts it all together to forge her own path. Like returning home to become the face of Denver’s NWSL expansion franchise, 14 years after making the controversial decision to skip college and turn pro right out of high school in a reported six-figure deal with France’s Paris Saint-Germain.
“It’s weird to reflect back because I think every player has their own journey,” Heaps says. “Mine was very, very unique because it was jumping overseas at 18. It does make me proud because I think it shows there is another route to achieve what you want, where you can challenge yourself in a different way.”
Constantly challenging herself has been a pillar of her career. After scoring 46 goals in 58 league matches for PSG, Heaps spent six years with the Portland Thorns, becoming a U.S. women’s soccer star by winning the 2017 NWSL title and 2018 NWSL MVP. The midfielder followed that with a high-profile move to women’s soccer powerhouse Lyon, where she established herself as one of the top players in the world with five straight league titles and a Champions League trophy.
Add that to the hardware she’s accumulated with USWNT—the 2019 FIFA Women’s World Cup title, a gold medal at the 2024 Paris Olympics, 2021 U.S. Soccer Female Player of the Year—and it’s clear that success follows Heaps wherever she goes.
Now back in the NWSL, the 32-year-old sees this opportunity with the Denver Summit not as a final chapter, but as another challenge in a career full of them.
“You never know what happens and how your body does, but hopefully I’m playing as long as possible,” she says. “I don’t feel like this is an end. I actually think it’s an incredible challenge for me, and puts me in a really good spot to prepare for a World Cup roster and hopefully make the squad.”
At the time, Heaps’s decision to forgo a full ride to the University of North Carolina and turn pro was risky, especially for USWNT hopefuls. You go to college, you turn pro; that was the USWNT way. But Heaps didn’t have her sights on textbooks and exams. When she was a child, eyes glued to European soccer, she always knew she had to take her own path forward.
“As much as my parents tried to get me to be really passionate about school and learning, I just did not care. I cared so much about getting better at soccer, watching soccer and watching professionals overseas,” Heaps says. “Don’t get me wrong, I could have gone to university and graduated if I really put my mind to it. I know I would have, but my mind was on soccer.”
But it wasn’t easy. As Heaps navigated such an unprecedented decision, everyone she knew, and many she didn’t, weighed in.
“I don’t actually talk about this a lot, but I got a lot of backlash,” Heaps says. “I would get so angry at someone telling me it was a stupid decision, and ultimately I made the decision, and even though it wasn’t about [the critics], I wanted to prove them wrong. This has been a dream of mine ever since I started watching Barcelona on my parents’ TV.”
She then adds with a smirk: “In a weird way, all those people that gave their really lovely opinions, it helped me, so thank you.”
That first big decision has been a hallmark of Heaps’s entire career. To friends and teammates who knew her then and now, the hindsight makes it clear the type of person she is.
“She blazes her own trail,” says Kelley O’Hara, a USWNT legend and Heaps’s former teammate. “She was the first player to skip college and go straight to professional, not even in the States, but in Europe, and she made a name for herself in that way.”
The decision also turned out to be a groundbreaking moment in U.S. women’s soccer history with current USWNT stars Mallory Swanson, Sophia Wilson and Olivia Moultrie following in Heaps’s footsteps, skipping college to go pro (with some, like Moultrie, doing so before completing high school).
“You need to be cognizant that each individual is different,” Heaps says. “Just because you have the next best thing coming through the ranks as a 14-year-old doesn’t mean she doesn’t want to go to college, so I will always say to anyone who asks me: People need to figure it out for themselves and create their support systems.”
Denver Summit co-owner Jordan Angeli, a former professional women’s soccer player, first met Heaps when the future USWNT captain was a teenager. Angeli still remembers when a young Heaps trained with pros during the offseason at Wheat Ridge High School. Something about her was just different.
“All the rest of us were just watching her play amongst us, even the way she moved was different,” Angeli recalls. “Everything about her has always been uniquely Lindsey. Even though she’s younger than me, I’ve looked up to her in so many ways because she has been able to be really bold in what she believes about herself.”
Now, as Heaps once again transitions back to the NWSL after success in France, she’s forging her own path—as is her way. Biding her time, Heaps was holdng out for something she did not even know was possible: an NWSL team in her hometown.
HEAPS IS COMING HOME. 💚 pic.twitter.com/uMpkjLmxYj
— Denver Summit FC (@denversummitfc) January 12, 2026
“Jordan Angeli presented to me a while back that this was a possibility,” Heaps says. “I’ve been waiting years to hear that Denver was getting an NWSL team, but [I thought] it was all talk, and I didn’t really think it was realistic.”
But things quickly got serious. The summer before the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup, Angeli met Heaps at a cafe in downtown Denver and popped the big news: Angeli had joined For Denver FC (FDFC), a grassroots group that would bring an NWSL team to Colorado. It was happening, and Angeli wanted Heaps to be a part of the story.
“The original conversation I had with Lindsey is that we wanted her to be involved in FDFC, maybe even be a team owner since she wasn’t playing [in the NWSL],” Angeli says. “We realized that wouldn’t work out since she still had the opportunity to play in the NWSL, but we still asked if she was willing to support this venture.”
Angeli remembers it clearly: sitting outside at the cafe with Heaps, her now-husband Tyler and their dog, dreaming together about bringing professional women’s soccer to the place they love.
“I won’t ever forget that,” Angeli says.
And once the possibility of coming back to play for Denver was presented to Heaps, it was full steam ahead.
“As soon as [the bid went through], it just kind of hit me, Do I go play?” Heaps recalls thinking. “I have to play for them. It’s my hometown, it’s where I grew up playing. Colorado means everything to me.”
Lindsey Heaps loves Denver and Denver loves Lindsey Heaps 🥹 pic.twitter.com/FVYfQlzKnZ
— National Women’s Soccer League (@NWSL) July 4, 2026
“It’s so special for her because she gets to return to the league and play at home,” O’Hara says. “Obviously, she had an incredible run at Portland, and I know how much Portland means to her, but for her to return and be able to play in front of friends and family, the people who knew her before and have cheered her on for so long. As a player, that’s so special.”
The decision was not without risks. Heaps, the captain of the USWNT, still fights for her place on the roster just like every other player, and league play constitutes a large part of that consideration. With the World Cup in less than a year, every moment counts. But just like with going to PSG out of high school or ditching her pre-match ritual, Heaps was ready to take the risk.
“She tells the story about when she first got to PSG, she didn’t have anything, didn’t know how to ask for anything, she was so scared, and just had to figure it all out,” Angeli says. “She’s always had this drive to be the best player she can be, and she’s made her decisions in order to do that—and that’s why I think her decision to come to Denver was so bold. It’s the year before a World Cup, and you just don’t know with an expansion team.”
Sitting in Denver in the days before her first Summit match, hands cupped around her double espresso over ice with a splash of oat milk, Heaps was still taking it all in.
“It’s always weird when you come in midseason, but I’ve done it before, I did it at Lyon, so it’s just getting the lay of the land, figuring out how people operate and getting to know individuals,” Heaps says.
In coming back, Heaps also returns to a very different NWSL than the one she left five years ago. Since then, investment in the league has grown exponentially. Everything from the field to the facilities has only gotten better, making it easy for a top player like Heaps to thrive.
“You also see more investment in top coaches, not just cycling through coaches,” Heaps says. “Like [Denver Summit manager] Nick Cushing, this is a top coach who has been in the MLS, he’s coached women in the top league in England, is well-known. That is big-time for this league to pull a coach like that.”
With high-caliber coaches comes higher caliber of play. The NWSL has often been lauded for its parity and has long been home to top American talent, but now the league is attracting elite talent from around the world. But would Heaps call the NWSL the most competitive league in the world?
“Honestly, yeah,” she says.
In France, it was often a foregone conclusion that Lyon would win the league. In England’s WSL, she saw more of a discrepancy between the very top and the very bottom.
“I really would compare the WSL and NWSL for the most competitive, but they’re also just different,” she adds.
In returning to Denver, Heaps takes up her mantle as the captain of her club, in addition to her captaincy of the USWNT.
“It’s the biggest honor to be on the national team, but then to be captaining the national team,” Heaps says. “If you look at all the captains there were prior, and filling in for them, it’s a huge task. I’m so grateful for it, and it’s shaped me in a different way.”
Heaps credits USWNT manager Emma Hayes with helping shape her leadership style, and the pair has consequently forged a tight-knit relationship. When Hayes first came in, Heaps told her that the job as captain was to make sure no one sees her stress, even though Heaps describes Hayes as the “least-stressed coach out there.”
“We had to develop a very trusting, open relationship really quickly because we had an Olympics in two months, so Emma and I had to learn our ways of coaching and captaining really quickly,” Heaps says.
Heaps Banger Alert 🚨
— U.S. Women's National Soccer Team (@USWNT) March 1, 2026
USWNT x @VW pic.twitter.com/0WNIoRq6Gw
As the USWNT captain, Heaps stands on the shoulders of giants. In Alex Morgan, Carli Lloyd and Becky Sauerbrunn, she had plenty of examples on how to be a leader—not to mention her favorite players growing up were Megan Rapinoe and Tobin Heath. But most importantly, Heaps has learned how to make her captaincy and career her own.
“I knew I was never going to be the same player as them, so I thought, what can I take from them as players to help me in my game, but also become my self, my own best self, and that’s kind of how I learned my way of captaining,” Heaps says. “I was always going to be different than a Carli, or an Alex or a Becky.”
To this day, Heaps says she particularly relies on two-time World Cup winner Sauerbrunn for advice. “It can be a lonely place sometimes, but in a good way, that’s how it is,” Heaps says about the USWNT captaincy. “I appreciate so many things [Sauerbrunn] had to go through and now that I know what that is like, it’s crazy.”
Heaps’s leadership mettle will be put to the test both as Denver’s new captain and at next year’s World Cup in Brazil. After the USWNT exited the 2023 World Cup in the round of 16, heightened pressure permeates next summer’s tournament. The U.S. will be looking to add a fifth star to its crest, re-cementing the program’s place as the top team in the world. But first, Heaps is eyeing success for her hometown club after making her debut last month.
“What [club owner Rob Cohen] has put into place with all the people around, with the staff, these players, everything that they've done thus far, that’s like a massive challenge for me to come in and be the leader I am and help them propel even further. It is so special to me, especially being my hometown.”
With less than half of the NWSL season remaining and Denver one point out of a playoff berth, Heaps is locked in. She knows what she needs and what she doesn’t to get the job done. No pre-match ritual, no red slides. She doesn’t need them. She just needs to keep forging her own path, like she has always done.
“I know I’ve won a lot,” Heaps says. “I know there’s trophies, there’s medals, or whatever. But I will never be content. I will always want more and [want to] do everything possible to make this a winning club.”
