SALT LAKE CITY — Over the course of six years from 2006 through 2011, the Alta Hawks girls soccer team had the most successful run in Utah history, winning five state championships in the highest classification in the Beehive State.
Looking back, it certainly helped that two of the squad’s most important players during the run now are professionals in the top league in America, the National Women’s Soccer League.
From 2006 through 2009, Kealia Ohai became not just the best player in the state, but one of the best in the entire country and earned a scholarship from perennial national power North Carolina. Murphy came on the scene in 2008 and in her senior year, broke Ohai’s school record for goals in a season (which was broken in 2016 by Brecken Mozingo) before a standout career at BYU, during which the Cougars were ranked as high as No. 3 in the country.
Given their difference in age, Ohai and Murphy — now surnamed Watt and Vasconcelos, respectively — were in different social circles and therefore weren’t the best of friends, but this year, in what was going to be a big season for both individually before the coronavirus pandemic threw things out of whack — albeit for different reasons — they have reunited in the professional ranks with the Chicago Red Stars.
For Watt, 2020 was all about a fresh start. Taken with the second pick in the 2014 NWSL draft by the Houston Dash, she spent six seasons there, never making the playoffs and never quite living up to the high expectations placed on her, even if she maintained the reputation of being a top goal-scoring threat.
Last offseason, despite preparing to get married to longtime boyfriend JJ Watt of the Houston Texans, she asked to be traded and was sent to the Red Stars, a regular title contender, but a club that had to figure out a way of moving on after Sam Kerr, arguably the best goal scorer in the world, left for Europe.
“My goal is to become the very best player I can possibly be, and I feel like in order for that to happen, I need a new environment,” she said in a video she posted on Twitter Jan. 6, the day the trade was completed.
For Vasconcelos, who was drafted 11th overall by Chicago in 2017, this year was going to mark the second major comeback she’s made in her still young professional career. Just days after getting drafted, she learned that she was pregnant, and she missed the 2017 campaign.
She came back in 2018, but said she never quite felt like her usual self on the field. In 2019, however, she got off to a good start. Through 10 games, she had made 10 appearances, scoring two goals and tallying three assists in limited minutes.
But on July 11, in the 11th game of the season, against Sky Blue FC, she tore her left ACL (she had torn her right one in college), sidelining her for the rest of the season.
Despite the setback, she said that like after she gave birth, there was never a question that she’d try to make another comeback this season.
“I think having the small season that I had before I got injured, it just kind of gave me a glimpse into, ‘Oh, I can play and I can hang with everyone,’ and so for me, I just wanted to keep trying,” she said.
“It’s been a journey for sure, this tournament. We’ve learned a lot. We’ve been through a lot of ups and downs and so we’re excited (for the quarterfinals). I think everybody feels good and we’re ready to score some goals.” — Kealia Watt
Of course, the pandemic altered the course of so many plans for 2020, and this year’s NWSL season has been reduced to the monthlong Challenge Cup, which has reached the quarterfinal phase, where the Red Stars are set to face Washington-based OL Reign on Saturday at Zions Bank Stadium in Herriman.
A great deal of attention during the tournament has been on Watt given her desire for a new beginning and the task of replacing Kerr. So far the adjustment has been slow-going, as Chicago has scored just two goals, neither of which came from Watt.
“It’s been a journey for sure, this tournament,” Watt said. “We’ve learned a lot. We’ve been through a lot of ups and downs and so we’re excited (for the quarterfinals). I think everybody feels good and we’re ready to score some goals.”
For Vasconcelos, who is back in Utah with her husband Pedro and daughter Scarlett (moms were provided their own lodging separate from team lodging), the tournament has been used as a chance to ease back into play, as she has appeared in all four of the Red Stars’ games thus far but played just 54 minutes.
“I think the first couple games I felt a little anxious just because of the short preparation of preseason coming off of an injury and then going into a tournament style. I was apprehensive about getting injured again, but I finally feel like, at least this week especially, I’m finally starting to settle in a little better.” — Michele Vasconcelos
“I think the first couple games I felt a little anxious just because of the short preparation of preseason coming off of an injury and then going into a tournament style,” she said. “I was apprehensive about getting injured again, but I finally feel like, at least this week especially, I’m finally starting to settle in a little better.”
Although 2020 has been weird and the pair don’t necessarily have many memories together from their Alta days, Watt and Vasconcelos said they have looked back on playing for the winningest coach in state history, Lee Mitchell, during the most successful period of time a single school has ever had.
“We always laugh,” Watt said. “We loved our time at Alta. We laugh so hard because we just love coach. We miss him so much.”
Added Vasconcelos: “It’s been fun having (Watt with the Red Stars). We’ll just reminisce every now and then about coach Mitchell and being at Alta and just laugh. The good memories.”