USWNT star Tierna Davidson visits Kensington to inspire a new generation of young soccer players

A quiet Saturday morning in Kensington was graced with a bit of soccer stardust.

U.S. Women’s and Gotham FC centerback Tierna Davidson visited the Safe-Hub complex, adjacent to the Scanlon Recreation Center, to help to run a clinic for young girls from across the city.

“It’s such an honor to be asked to do something like this,” she told The Inquirer. “I always love being able to connect with the next generation and inspire, even if it’s not to play soccer. If it is, fantastic, but if it’s even just to be inspired in any other realm of life, that’s something that I strive to do as well.”

Along with a few rounds of drills, Davidson sat down for a Q&A session with the kids. She spoke about her journey in the sport and as a person, including some powerful words about the importance of seeking help when needed along the way.

“I think that’s something that I wish I heard younger, how important it is to ask for help and how it is not something that you should be ashamed of,” she said. “It’s actually something that you should be proud to be able to do, and it requires humility and confidence to do it.”

Those younger days were when she made her senior U.S. Women’s debut while still in college at Stanford. Either of those things would be hard enough on its own.

“For a long time, I thought that I needed to be excellent at everything by myself, and if I had help, then it meant that I wasn’t that good at it,” Davidson said. “And that’s just not how you get good at things. You have to ask people for help, whether it’s an expert in that field, whether you just need kind of some emotional support, whatever it might be. It is the way that you get better at something, it is the way that you get through hard things.”

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Now the 27-year-old centerback’s mantle is full of trophies: the 2017 NCAA championship, the 2019 World Cup (where she was the U.S. squad’s youngest player), last year’s Olympics, and this year’s Concacaf women’s Champions Cup.

The girls in attendance Saturday were drawn to Davidson’s presence, no matter how much experience with soccer they’d had.

“To have her come to Philly, and specifically to Kensington and Safe-Hub, is a really powerful message,” Safe-Hub coach and program development director Samantha Swerdloff said. “It shows the girls in this neighborhood that they matter. … So it was great for them to hear from her about what it takes to be successful, and I really appreciated her reflections on [how] she’s more than just a soccer player.”

Davidson praised the players for being “excited and engaged” and said “it warms my heart to see the group of girls that we have here today be such stewards of the next generation.”

» READ MORE: How Tierna Davidson grew into becoming a USWNT stalwart

The day was also a reminder of something less positive: Davidson isn’t playing right now because of the second torn ACL of her career. She suffered the injury in late March and is making her way through the long rehab process. It was merely a coincidence that she came to town a few days before the U.S. women’s team’s game against Portugal at Subaru Park on Thursday (7 p.m., TNT, Peacock).

She’s one of the few big names on the injured list for the team’s October games. Fans also won’t get to see centerback Naomi Girma or superstar striker Trinity Rodman. But at least Davidson will be in the stands, joining what’s expected to be a slew of legends attending Alex Morgan’s retirement ceremony.

Manager Emma Hayes’ roster has its share of familiar faces, including longtime captain Lindsey Heaps and Rose Lavelle, Davidson’s Gotham FC teammate. There also are many young players whom fans will want to get to know, and Davidson is an expert on one of them: defender Lilly Reale, another Gotham colleague.

The 22-year-old was one of Gotham’s first signings after the NWSL abolished its college draft, allowing college players to be pursued as free agents. Reale was a four-year starter at UCLA and was last year’s Big Ten defender of the year. After turning pro, she converted from centerback to left back.

» READ MORE: Trinity Rodman was set to return to the USWNT in Chester, but an injury will stop her

Davidson praised Reale for doing “an excellent job adapting” to the new role.

“Doing it at a very high level as a rookie in this league is very difficult to do, with the kinds of forwards that you have to be handling,” she said. “She’s really taken it in stride. And on top of that, aside from being an exceptional player, she’s also a great teammate and a fantastic locker-room personality to have.”

As for Davidson’s recovery timeline, she said she hopes to be back on the field, at least in training, by January. That would allow her to travel with Gotham to that month’s inaugural FIFA Women’s Champions Cup final four in London.

Gotham will play the winner of South America’s Copa Libertadores, Brazil’s Corinthians, in the semifinals. The winner would then likely would play England’s Arsenal for the title, with that side of the bracket still to unfold.

“To be able to potentially play an exceptional team, a Champions League winner from Europe, is something that we’d be really excited about — but, of course, we have to take care of business in that semifinal game,” Davidson said. “I think that we have a lot of fantastic, well-experienced international players on our team, but we also have a good group of players that haven’t been in this sort of situation. And I think it’ll be really, really great for the whole team to experience that level of exposure, and pressure, and quality of game.”

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