'You name it, I did it': One of Louisville's new residents is a World Cup champion

LOUISVILLE, Ky. — One of Louisville's new residents in 2022 is a record-holding soccer player and proud mother who will aim to lift Racing Louisville to new heights in the club's second season.

Oh, and she is a World Cup winner, in addition to having a few other championships on her resume.

Jess McDonald, 33, joined Racing as part of a December deal involving numerous National Women's Soccer League clubs and players.

The Phoenix native is a striker who won three NWSL titles with the North Carolina Courage and Western New York Flash since 2016. (The Courage began in 2017 after rebranding and relocating from New York.)

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McDonald is well-traveled, having also played in Chicago, Seattle, Portland and Houston as well as in Australia and Germany since turning pro in 2010.

Her 27 assists during her domestic career put her first in NWSL history, and her 51 goals are good for fourth on the all-time NWSL list.

McDonald also has represented her country as part of the U.S. Women's National Team, scoring four goals across nearly 20 caps and being on the team that won the 2019 World Cup in France.

Before turning pro, she shined for Phoenix College at the junior college level and earned national JuCo player of the year accolades before transferring to the University of North Carolina, where she helped the Tar Heels win two national titles.

It's not been easy all the time for McDonald, however, with a serious knee injury in 2012 occurring the same year she gave birth to her son, Jeremiah.

McDonald previously shared how, to make ends meet, she once worked 10-hour shifts at an Amazon factory and coached a youth team while raising Jeremiah and training with her pro club, a reminder of the still-existing pay disparities between women and their male counterparts in soccer and other sports and industries.

Jeremiah is now 9 years old and "pumped" to be in Louisville, his mother said, and McDonald is now focused on getting settled in Louisville and helping Racing improve on its inaugural season.

She spoke recently with The Courier Journal about her move to Louisville and background. Some responses have been lightly edited and condensed.

What are a few goals you have for the upcoming year and season, both professional and personal?

McDonald: "Hopefully just bringing my leadership presence and making a difference for my teammates because I know they're all young, and just trying to help them with the experience within the NWSL and kind of bring them out of their own shells and push them to a point they didn't think that they had within them.

"That's sort of the leadership presence I want to bring onto the field and obviously just doing the best I can day in and day out, training and in games, of course. Trying to help everybody sort of have a winning mentality because I know it's not an easy thing to do, especially as a pro, dealing with pressure.

"Any and everything that I could do to help with making a difference within our community, especially for being a mom, you know, I really have a really soft spot in my heart for for kids. And so I just want to be here to help make a difference within our community, especially for the youth."

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Could you share a bit about your childhood and growing up and playing different sports?

McDonald: "I think I grew up at some of the best times in history, because we didn't have to rely so much on technology the way that kids do nowadays. I grew up with all boys. (Editor's note: McDonald has an older brother, Brandon, who was also a professional soccer player before retiring, and several male cousins she also referred to as her "big brothers.") And we grew up in a competitive environment in general. We were always outside playing street hockey, basketball at the park, football, you name it. We did it with all of our friends in the neighborhood, and our curfew was literally soon as the lights went out on the street, and so those were the best times that I grew up in.

"And I think growing up with boys, it truly helped transition my competitiveness into obviously what I'm doing now. But I think being that underdog, being the only girl in the family, having a sort of chip on my shoulder, it's helped me cope with pressure nowadays.

"You want to talk about sports that I played growing up, I mean, you name it, I did it. From softball to volleyball, I was even quarterback on a football team one year. Basketball was my primary sport growing up until I was about 20 years old, believe it or not. (Editor's note: McDonald was a championship-winning athlete in track and field (she also set several track records), basketball and soccer at Cactus High School in Glendale, Arizona.)

"I played soccer, basketball and ran track in high school and in junior college at PC (Phoenix College). I was like the first athlete to ever play three sports at Phoenix College and really had to make a decision what sport I wanted to focus on after PC, but you know, I was already committed to the University of North Carolina for soccer and had the chance to walk on to the basketball team and the track team wanted me, but I totally just focused on soccer because I realized that soccer was bringing me so much more opportunity ... just being able to dabble into the youth national team stuff is what sort of made my decision a little easier, just to continue to play soccer.

"Being that underdog having to always prove myself, it was kind of a no-brainer what I was going to do with my life in the future, to be honest."

Do you have any favorite career moments or achievements up to this point?

"From NCAA champion to a pro champion to World Cup champion, so I'd say those are my three."

How do you hope the NWSL continues to change and better support its players following a tumultuous season involving, among other issues, the misconduct of coaches?

McDonald: "Pay, first and foremost. Saying no to racism. (The league) needs to protect us as players, listen to us, help us when we need it. More support for the moms (and) better support for the moms really. I mean, I could go on for days really on the things that kind of need to be tweaked, so I'm just hoping and praying 2022 brings a lot of that change for this season and then moving forward.

"We're getting a little bit for child care. We have a little bit of a stipend, which is a start or a little bit of a change. But, I mean, child care is so damn expensive, and (the stipend) is just not enough. If they can fully cover child care, great. Pay for our kids' planes (to matches), great. Pay for us to have our own hotel rooms with our kids and not having us room with our teammates who don't have children when we have our kids with us. That's huge."

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What are you and your family looking forward to about life in Louisville?

McDonald: "We'll be staying (in Louisville) full time. I have no choice. My kid's in fourth grade. Offseason, he'll be in fifth grade. Lord, help me. Oh my gosh, it's hitting me right now. I'm just looking forward to the family environment that Louisville brings, which I'm like super-stoked about.

"Just showing my son different and new experiences because I feel like that's the most educational part about life, not just school, but experiences, from traveling to learning about areas where we traveled to, so we'll be learning about Kentucky in general and its history. And I know Muhammad Ali ... I'm excited to learn a little bit more about that and go to his museum so I could show my son the differences of Black history from the world's greatest boxer and the things he went through as a Black man in the United States and how things are nowadays for my son, so it's going to bring some true history into his life.

"He's going to be able to sort of see it with his own eyes. sort of see the real deal with a real story for Muhammad Ali and the history behind it all, and I'm excited for him to learn more about that a little more so in depth.

"I'll probably never get into bourbon. It's not really my thing. Just continuing to get to know the whole family environment and kind of seeing what they have for kids out there, I'm looking forward to that as a mom."

Reach Billy Kobin at bkobin@courierjournal.com.

This article originally appeared on Louisville Courier Journal: Racing Louisville forward Jess McDonald, son excited to be in new city