‘That could be me.’ Former UK women’s soccer star returns to Kentucky for pro match.
When Arin Wright realized in October 2019 that professional women’s soccer was finally coming to Kentucky, she and her father, Bruce, cried with joy while speaking over the phone.
Wright, who was known as Arin Gilliland during her time with the University of Kentucky soccer program, was pregnant with her son, Grady, when she learned the National Women’s Soccer League was expanding to the Bluegrass State.
She’s a Kentucky native, a graduate of West Jessamine High School in Nicholasville, the recipient of the 2010 Kentucky Miss Soccer award and was a four-year player for the Wildcats from 2011 to 2014.
Wright is also one of several former women’s college soccer players in Kentucky to play professionally in recent years. She was drafted eighth overall by the Chicago Red Stars in 2015 and has played for the club ever since, along with several stints in Australia’s W-League.
But after leaving home to pursue her soccer dreams, Wright will now play a professional soccer match in her home state for the first time.
Racing Louisville, the NWSL expansion team that debuted in April, will play Wright’s Chicago team on Wednesday at Lynn Family Stadium in Louisville.
The match will be part of The Women’s Cup, a first-edition international tournament in Louisville featuring the Chicago Red Stars and Racing Louisville of the NWSL, as well as European clubs FC Bayern Munich of Germany and Paris-Saint Germain of France.
The tournament is set to be a showcase of international soccer and a chance for two NWSL clubs to display their abilities against two of last season’s UEFA Women’s Champions League semifinalists.
But for Wright, a defender, the international event matters because of local ties.
“I worked my entire career to become a professional athlete and I didn’t have the ability to play in front of my family,” Wright explained. “To now have the ability to come home and play in front of them, all the people that have supported me my entire career, where I grew up playing youth ball, where I played college ball, like everything is there for me. I can’t even imagine the emotions I’m going to have when I get on the field in Louisville.”
“I don’t think I’m prepared to feel how I’m going to feel in that game.”
From UK to Chicago to Australia
Across each of her four seasons with the Wildcats, Wright was a standout performer.
She was an SEC All-Freshman Team selection in 2011 and an SEC All-First Team selection in 2012, 2013 and 2014.
Wright earned these accomplishments through trying circumstances.
In 2011, she tore her ACL during her freshman season at UK. In 2012, her mother, Letita, died after battling colon cancer for several years.
Through those personal struggles, Wright continued to be a leader on and off the field for the Wildcats, serving as a team captain in 2014 as Kentucky reached the Sweet 16 of the NCAA Tournament.
Ian Carry, the current head coach of the Kentucky women’s soccer team, was an assistant coach for Wright’s junior and senior seasons and recalled Wright’s leadership qualities as an upperclassman.
“She ticked every box (as) that person who would motivate players to run through brick walls for her and the rest of her teammates,” Carry said. “It was a very good time to be here under her guidance as a player, under her leadership as a player, because you knew every time that she stepped onto the field, she would lead by example. If somebody was having a bad day she had the ability to help them get out of a hole.”
Wright’s final game at Kentucky best summarized her competitive spirit.
In the Sweet 16 of the 2014 NCAA Tournament, Kentucky lost 7-0 to Virginia, the most lopsided result at that stage of the tournament in 11 years.
In the closing minutes of the match, then-Kentucky head coach Jon Lipsitz substituted Wright and the other seniors out of the game, an honorary gesture to allow the crowd to applaud Wright and her teammates for their collegiate contributions, only Wright didn’t initially appreciate the move.
“I was so mad at him,” Wright said. “I was so competitive even though we were down and there’s like a minute left in the game I wanted to play every minute for Kentucky and just give it my all. Every year (at Kentucky) we got better and better and that was such a challenge for me to push farther and farther.”
Growing up, Wright thought playing overseas was the only realistic pathway to a professional soccer career.
Various professional women’s soccer leagues in the United States such as the Women’s United Soccer Association and Women’s Professional Soccer came and went. But by the time Wright finished at Kentucky the NWSL had formed, and Wright jumped at the chance to stay stateside.
During the initial years of the NWSL though, Wright said seasons were only six months long, and in an effort to keep playing through the winter, as well as to experience a new life adventure, Wright took the chance to play in the Australian W-League with the Newcastle Jets during several NWSL offseasons.
For Carry, Wright’s desire to go overseas to keep playing was indicative of the same competitive traits that were on display at Kentucky.
“That’s who she is in a nutshell, that’s why her career in the pros has lasted so long,” Carry said. “She’s very intrinsically motivated, so you know it’s coming from a good place.”
The year after Wright was selected in the NWSL Draft by Chicago, another former UK player — midfielder Courtney Raetzman — was also taken by the Red Stars in the 2016 draft.
This is in addition to other Kentucky women’s soccer alums pursuing professional careers in Australia and Scandinavia in recent years.
Another player from Kentucky, the University of Louisville’s Emina Ekic, joined the NWSL this season after being selected by Racing Louisville in the 2021 NWSL Draft.
While Wright may be a high-profile example, her pathway from Kentucky to women’s professional soccer is not an isolated occurrence.
“Players are coming here with a goal and a mindset of, ‘Well I want to play after college.’ I think everything is set up as a department to help make that happen,” Carry said. “Everything has just evolved over the last couple of years to make that happen, but.... she’s (Arin’s) the first.”
Wright inspires future women’s soccer players in Kentucky
Those in the crowd Wednesday night watching Wright will benefit from something Wright didn’t have growing up: The chance to watch a player from the commonwealth perform on the biggest stage, which is now also in the commonwealth.
The UK men’s and women’s soccer teams play at the Bell Soccer Complex in Lexington, located just 80 miles from Lynn Family Stadium in Louisville, the home of both Racing Louisville in the NWSL and Louisville City in the United Soccer League Championship.
This close proximity was reflected in the way Racing Louisville went about establishing contacts with the UK women’s soccer program, well before playing their first match in April.
“They wanted input, from everything from their logo to the colors that they were going to wear. They reached out to our current players and had Zooms with them and asked them questions,” Carry said. “They wanted the feel of that club to be a home state, Kentucky club. Even though they’re based over (in) the west side of the state, they want it to be all inclusive for everybody.”
From the infrastructure of the training facilities to Lynn Family Stadium itself, both Carry and Wright recognize the significant advancement and investment in women’s soccer in Kentucky that comes as a result of Racing Louisville’s existence, and the exposure it will give to players from Kentucky.
“Everyone aspires to be a professional. Now there are these young girls in the state, (ages) 5 to 11 saying, ‘Oh, Arin is coming back and playing in this showcase,’” Carry said. “She’s going to be a rock star when she comes down with the Chicago Red Stars.”
“When I was younger, little boys had the opportunity to think and have this realistic goal. Like it was a goal for them to play in the NBA, NHL, MLS, whatever it was, it was a goal. (For) some girls my age growing up, there wasn’t an NWSL, the idea of playing professional women’s soccer was a dream,” Wright said.
When Wright returned from her first season playing with Chicago, she would work as a soccer trainer for young girls in the offseason, staying at her dad’s house while doing so.
She stayed in contact with several of them, as they grew to become high school and college players.
“You didn’t have an idol that was from your hometown,” Wright said of her adolescent soccer fandom, adding that U.S. Women’s National Team stars Mia Hamm and Abby Wambach were her soccer inspirations. “To have that for young girls is very influential. To be able to be that for the generations to come is such an honor and I don’t hold that lightly.”
Wright already has lunch and dinner plans for her Kentucky return, and she also plans to stay after The Women’s Cup to attend a family barbecue at her dad’s house.
The chance to play professionally in Kentucky represents the chance for Wright to play in front of family and friends, but also to play in front of her former students, who could potentially become her future teammates.
“I made an impact on their lives and they got to watch me play professionally and know that could be them,” Wright said. “I think that’s just an amazing thing to be from a state and be playing professionally and having all those young girls look at you and say, ‘That could be me.’”
The Women’s Cup
What: Four-team, four-game tournament featuring two NWSL and two European soccer clubs.
When: Aug. 18 and 21
Where: Lynn Family Stadium in Louisville
Wednesday (Aug. 18) matches:
5 p.m.: FC Bayern Munich vs. Paris-Saint Germain
7:30 p.m.: Racing Louisville FC vs. Chicago Red Stars
Saturday (Aug. 21) matches:
3 p.m.: Third-place match
6 p.m.: Championship match
This story was originally published August 13, 2021 at 7:51 AM.
