Meet the 3 Coloradans on the U.S. Women’s National Soccer Team That’s Competing in the Paris Olympics Right Now

Last week, nearly 600 athletes from the United States descended on Paris to take part in the 2024 Summer Olympics, where they’re squaring off against the world’s toughest competition in search of gold medals and international glory. Many of the highest-profile members of that delegation will not only be representing the U.S., but Colorado.

Of the 16 field players on the U.S. women’s national soccer team (USWNT) roster for the Olympics, three are from the Centennial State: Lindsey Horan, Sophia Smith, and Mallory Swanson. The trio is not only a part of the team, but each player is critical: In the U.S.’s first match of the Olympics—a 3-0 win over Zambia—Swanson scored twice in 70 seconds. Horan added a couple of assists. Smith had an assist of her own and helped set up the other two scores.

In the U.S.’s second match—a 4-1 drubbing of Germany—the Coloradans were again in on each score: Smith scored in the 10th minute, Swanson in the 26th, Smith in the 44th, and Swanson assisted the final goal in the 89th. The victory propelled the U.S. into the quarterfinals, even though the team has a group stage match left on Wednesday against Australia. A win or draw versus the Aussies will seal first place in the group stage for the U.S. (the top two advance).

Unlike their languishing male counterparts, the USWNT has been a symbol of what the country can accomplish in the world’s game, with four Women’s World Cup championships and four Olympic gold medals since 1991. But after a dismal showing at the 2023 Women’s World Cup (where the reigning world champs were knocked out in the Round of 16) and a period of transition that has seen several of the players who’ve became ubiquitous with American soccer left off the Olympic roster, either because of retirement (Megan Rapinoe) or simply not making the squad (Alex Morgan), there was cause for concern heading into Paris.

But if the first two matches are any indicator, it seems the new faces of the USWNT—including constants Horan, Smith, and Swanson—could help the Americans bring home a gold medal for the first time since 2012.

Before the U.S. kicks off against Australia on Wednesday, here’s a closer look at the three Colorado born-and-bred standouts who hope to lead their country and its beloved soccer team into a prosperous new era.

Read More: Meet the 26 Coloradans Competing in the Paris Olympics

Lindsey Horan

• Hometown: Golden
• Position: Midfielder
• Age: 30
• Club team: Olympique Lyonnais (France)

At 30 years old, Horan is the fourth-oldest field player for the USWNT, as clear a sign as any that the Americans are sliding from one generation to another. She enters the Paris Olympics squarely in the prime of her career, coming off a strong 2023-’24 season with her club team, Olympique Lyonnais, which competes in the top league in France (it also makes her one of the few USWNT players who doesn’t play in the domestic National Women’s Soccer League).

In an otherwise disastrous World Cup for her team last year, Horan was a welcome bright spot, a creative playmaker out of the midfield who scored two of the four goals an offensively stunted American team managed across four games before its surprisingly early exit. It’s emblematic of the consistency Horan has displayed since making her national team debut in 2013. She has tallied at least one goal for the USWNT every year since 2015. Among players on the Olympic roster, she has the most career national team appearances (called “caps”), with 150 prior to group stage play. In the 2020 Tokyo Olympics in 2021, she became the 41st player in USWNT history to earn 100 career caps. In 2021, on the heels of a season in which she racked up six goals and five assists, she was named the U.S. Soccer Female Player of the Year.

Once a wunderkind who at just 18 years old inked a deal with Paris Saint-Germain to become the first American female player ever to sign a professional contract out of high school, Horan now stands as a time-tested veteran and team captain who can help usher the USWNT through what has been an occasionally uncomfortable changing of the guard.

“I’ve had to transition away where I’m just like, ‘I’m the captain and I’m a leader on this team and I represent this team,’ ” she said this month to goal.com. “What I say, what I do, so many conversations…if I’m representing this team and I’m a voice for this team—not saying my voice isn’t the same as every single player—but I am an outlet for this team. That was a really cool lesson to me because I always just thought of football.”

Sophia Smith

• Hometown: Windsor
• Position: Forward
• Age: 23
• Club team: Portland Thorns FC

Here comes potential. Smith’s arrival with the USWNT in November 2020 signaled the start of a new chapter for the Americans, as her debut (at 20 years old) marked the first time a player born after the landmark 1999 Women’s World Cup earned a cap for the USWNT. Since then, she’s become the team’s fifth-leading scorer, with 20 goals in 50 career caps before the Olympics began.

During the 2023 World Cup, Smith scored the Americans’ two other goals not netted by Horan, both of which came in a 3-0 win against Vietnam. She travels to Paris buoyed by some strong recent performances, namely scoring both of her team’s goals in regulation against Canada in the finals of the SheBelieves Cup in April, which the USWNT went on to win in penalty kicks (where, naturally, Smith tallied one of the team’s five made shots).

Growing up, her talent was obvious, so much so that her parents would drive her from Windsor to the Denver area so she could compete for Real Colorado, a decorated local youth soccer club. “I remember thinking to myself, If we decide to go to Denver, she better not complain one time about the drive. And she never complained one time,” Smith’s mother, Mollie, said to Colorado Public Radio in 2023 ahead of the World Cup. “There were times when we were stuck in traffic, it took us two and a half hours to get to practice. She never complained. She thanked us probably daily. She was so grateful that I probably would’ve done anything.”

Smith made those sacrifices worthwhile. She was a college star, leading Stanford to an NCAA championship in 2019 before becoming the first overall pick in the NWSL College Draft the following year. In 2022, she scored a club-record 14 goals for the Portland Thorns, who she led to the NWSL championship. That year, at 22 years old, she became the youngest NWSL MVP in the league’s history.

Mallory (Pugh) Swanson

• Hometown: Highlands Ranch
• Position: Forward
• Age: 26
• Club team: Chicago Red Stars

For all the explanations that surrounded the USWNT’s forgettable World Cup title defense last year, few were quite as persuasive as Swanson. It wasn’t because she played poorly; it was because she didn’t play at all, an absence that became painfully apparent as the tournament dragged on.

In April 2023, three months before the start of the World Cup, Swanson tore her left patella tendon in a friendly against Ireland, sidelining her for a full year from national team play. The timing of the injury was particularly cruel, not just because it kept her out of the World Cup, but because of how well she was playing before it occurred. Heading into that fateful Ireland match, Swanson had scored eight goals over her previous six USWNT appearances and registered a career-best six-game streak with at least one goal. Without her, the Americans lacked the explosiveness in the final third of the field and finishing ability around the net that Swanson typically provides.

Greatness has long been expected from Swanson, who previously went by Mallory Pugh before marrying MLB All-Star Dansby Swanson in 2022. She debuted for the USWNT in 2016 at just 17 years old, making her the youngest player for the team in 11 years. After a semester at UCLA, Swanson, like Horan, opted to bypass college to sign with the Washington Spirit of the NWSL, with whom she scored six goals as an 18-year-old rookie. Since then, she hasn’t slowed down much, if at all. Her 34 career goals and 29 career assists for the USWNT are the second-most among players on the Olympic roster behind only Horan—who has 56 more caps.

Since returning from injury, she has shown glimpses of her old form, including a two-goal outing in a 4-0 victory in a June 1 friendly against South Korea in front of a hometown crowd in Commerce City. “After 343 days, 3 surgeries, and an infection that changed my whole perspective on life I realized many things,” she wrote on Instagram after returning for the Chicago Red Stars in March. “Life is a beautiful blessing. Health is a blessing. This game that I love is a blessing. And at the end of it all, I am more thankful to be able to do what I love again.”