The NWSL’s top rookie scorer this year is from Voorhees

MONTCLAIR, N.J. — The NWSL’s scoring chart this season has many names familiar to women’s soccer fans, even if they aren’t well-known in Philadelphia.

Esther González, of Gotham FC and Spain’s World Cup champions, leads the way. So does Temwa Chawinga, in her second year starring for first-place-by-a-mile Kansas City. Chicago’s Ludmila is a marquee newcomer, and Orlando’s Barbra Banda is another stalwart.

Then comes a name that flips the script. Few people leaguewide knew of Riley Tiernan before this year, but they did know her in her native Voorhees. Now they all know her, thanks to eight goals for Angel City FC that make her the top rookie scorer.

With seven games to go, Tiernan is three goals away from tying the league record for a first-year pro. Her next chance to add to the tally is Saturday at the North Carolina Courage (11:30 a.m., CBS3).

The 22-year-old starred at Rutgers and Eastern Regional High School and is the younger sister of former Sky Blue FC (Gotham’s old name) midfielder Madison Richard (née Tiernan). But Tiernan’s journey was quite different because she turned pro in the first year that the NWSL no longer had a college draft.

That greatly changed the process of scouting players. And though it achieved the desired goal to give players more choice of where to start their careers, that doesn’t mean it was easy for those players to navigate.

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“It definitely made it a little bit more difficult,” Tiernan said. “I just wanted to get a chance of some sort to be able to try out. My agent reached out to, I think, pretty much all the teams in the league, and I got a trialist invitation from Angel City and a trialist invitation from Gotham.”

Things were complicated further by Angel City having an interim coaching staff at the time and a sporting director in Mark Parsons, who was just getting started. So the club’s technical director, Mark Wilson, did the scouting and convinced Tiernan to head west.

“I felt in my heart like Angel City was the place that I wanted to go to and take the chance,” Tiernan said. “I spent my whole life in Jersey, and I went to college close to home, so it was really nice for my family to be able to come to everything and stuff like that. But another part of me wanted to take a leap and kind of step out of my comfort zone because I think that’s where you grow as a person and a player.”

Tiernan also got guidance from her sister, a fellow Rutgers alumna who’s now on the Scarlet Knights’ coaching staff.

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“She kept telling me to stay home hungry and to keep working and to not ever give up or settle for anything,” Tiernan said. “During that time of need when I was a little bit stressed out and kind of felt like I had no options, she was definitely my voice of reason and allowed me to still want to be a better person.”

The younger sibling knows she has it a lot better than her sister did, from salaries to stadiums to practice facilities. Richard played for Sky Blue at Yurcak Field, Rutgers’ soccer stadium, which had just 5,000 bleacher seats and no showers in the locker rooms.

Tiernan plays her games at Los Angeles’ BMO Stadium, an ultramodern, 22,000-seat venue next to the famed Coliseum in the city’s center, and Angel City averages over 16,000 fans per game. (The club averaged around 19,000 in each of its three previous years.)

“The league has gotten a lot better for player care and stuff like that,” she said. “Just being really appreciative of the nice facilities and stuff like that is really important, just knowing her experience compared to mine.”

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And she said of those crowds: “I’ve been here for, what, six or seven months, and it’s still shocking every time I step out onto the field — it doesn’t even feel real.”

Richard was not Tiernan’s only soccer role model growing up. Two others she named weren’t surprising: Rutgers’ most famous South Jersey native, Carli Lloyd, and all-world superstar Lionel Messi.

A third also was instructive. Sam Kerr is best known now for her feats with English club Chelsea and Australia’s national team. But in 2017, she was teammates with Richard on Sky Blue and seized headlines with a then-record-setting 17-goal season.

“She’s in a similar position that I am, so watching her was really good for learning,” Tiernan said of Kerr.

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Tiernan’s role with Angel City likely will expand over the rest of this season because the club just sold young U.S. national team star Alyssa Thompson to Chelsea. The deal sparked an uproar among fans, but Thompson wanted it and got her wish. Sunday’s game, a 3-1 loss to Gotham, was the first since she left, and the team entered the weekend three points out of the last playoff spot.

“I think the same mission stands,” Tiernan said. “As a team, we want to win games, and we’re finally starting to get results toward the time where it’s really important. So, yeah, I think my role is to just continue to do as much as I can for my team and step into that role, whatever it is — if it’s setting my teammates [up] for a goal, or scoring the goal myself.”

About 40 of her friends and family were expected to be in attendance Sunday, including Richard, plus the entire current Rutgers team. And if things keep going this well, this might not be their only chance to see her on the East Coast this fall.

The U.S. women’s national team will play in Chester in October, and Tiernan has twice been invited to under-23 squads this year. Though she barely played for U.S. youth teams in the past, she has caught the current coaching staff’s eye.

“It’s a very different style there, so just absorbing as much information as I can — to try to add so many different levels to my game, to just continue to make me a more dynamic player — I think is really important,” she said. “That’s everything I’ve worked for since I was a little girl, so I think it would mean everything to be able to get that opportunity. … To be able to actually live it out would be surreal.”