"I'm waking up and getting on I-25 to go to training, which is a highway I would take all the time as a little kid to go play club soccer." That's Lindsey Heaps — USWNT captain, World Cup winner, Champions League winner — describing her daily commute in 2025.
On Saturday, she debuts for Denver Summit FC, an NWSL expansion team that only played its first match in March. The full circle couldn't be more complete if someone scripted it.
Heaps left Golden, Colorado at 18 to sign for Paris Saint-Germain in 2012, becoming the first American woman to skip college and turn professional straight out of high school. She turned down a scholarship to North Carolina — the most decorated program in the sport — and walked away from eligibility she could never reclaim. At the time, the NWSL didn't even exist. The second attempt at a U.S. professional women's league had folded months earlier. The risk was real.
What she built — and what she proved
It took nearly five years before another American woman followed her path. Now Olivia Moultrie, Jaedyn Shaw, Mallory Swanson and others have normalized the teenage-to-pro pipeline in women's soccer. Heaps opened that door. "The one thing that I'm still really proud of, being the first, is that that is an option," she said.
Her career in between? A 2019 World Cup. An Olympic gold medal. An NWSL MVP in 2018. Four years at Olympique Lyonnais — now OL Lyonnes — where she won a UEFA Champions League title and became one of the most reliable midfielders in European women's football. At 31, she is the captain of the United States national team and an almost certain starter at the 2027 Women's World Cup.
She didn't come back to Denver just because it's home. She was clear about that. "I said I don't want to just come here because it's my home. I want to make sure it's right for me, because I still have a lot of goals and dreams in my career, especially with the World Cup coming up next summer."
Head coach Nick Cushing sold her on the vision — a possession-and-transition system, a serious roster build, and a training facility that just opened alongside a temporary stadium debuting this weekend. A permanent ground is planned for 2028. For an expansion side, the infrastructure ambition is real. Denver Summit isn't pretending to be a development project.
What this means for Summit — and for NWSL odds
Cushing was direct about what Heaps brings beyond just quality on the ball: "It should impact and improve the mentality of the group when you put in a winner, the national team captain. It gives us, definitely, an edge." He also noted her tactical flexibility — she can drop deep, operate as a 10, or arrive in the box. For an inconsistent expansion team still finding its identity, that versatility matters as much as the pedigree.
Denver was a city without a major professional women's sports team before Summit launched. Now it has the USWNT captain debuting in a stadium built specifically for this club. The team's results will take time to catch up to the ambition — expansion sides almost always struggle early — but Heaps' arrival gives Summit genuine credibility in the NWSL title picture heading into the second half of the season.
- Heaps was named NWSL MVP in 2018
- She won the UEFA Champions League with OL Lyonnes in her four seasons in France
- She was part of the USWNT squad that won the 2019 World Cup and Olympic gold
- Denver Summit only played their first NWSL match in March 2025
There's also a personal dimension that makes this more than a transfer story. Her parents still live 20 minutes from Summit's ground. Her first soccer coach was her mother, Linda, who picked up a copy of Soccer for Dummies and ran sessions at a local park two minutes from the family home. That same park is still there.
"We take it so seriously because it's technically a job," Heaps said, "but there was one day that you fell in love with this ball and this sport that you play, and you can't let that slip your mind."
The USWNT captain is home. Now she has to prove the expansion side she chose is worth the gamble.
