It’s halftime of the Washington Spirit’s final regular-season home game, and the Spirit lead the Orlando Pride 2-1.
The game’s result is meaningless. The Spirit have clinched the No. 2 seed in the playoffs and homefield advantage. But more than 17,000 fans are in attendance at Audi Field for the rematch of the 2024 league championship — hoping for a better result than last year’s loss.
Ashley Hatch is in the prime of her career. She sits in the Spirit’s players box — her fuchsia and pink Nikes resting on the seat in front of her — and watches her teammates battle their hated rival. Teammate Trinity Rodman, sidelined with a knee injury, sits nearby.
Hatch hasn’t played for almost five months. But she isn’t injured. She hasn’t been benched or left off the roster, either — though she knows what those feel like.
Instead, Hatch — the franchise’s all-time leading scorer — is pregnant.
Two days before, we sat in the living room of her remote West Virginia farmhouse. Baby gifts from her teammates sit in a large box in the corner. A string of polaroids, including one of her positive pregnancy test, hang in the dining room while several ultrasound images dangle from the side of the fridge.
Ashley Hatch is at peace.
Hatch is an elite soccer player who knows what it’s like to be overlooked. She won an ESPY Award for being her league’s best player, but wasn’t even invited to the award show. She seemed destined to make the U.S. World Cup roster but was left off — an experience that left her “gutted.” She was benched midseason by the Spirit the following year. The devoutly religious Hatch has dreamed of being a mom but feared it would end her playing career.
Hatch, however, has persevered and built a prolific career by remaining true to herself. She re-cemented her role as a starter for the Spirit, put herself back in national team contention and is finally fulfilling her dream of starting a family.
“It’s just kind of a cycle of life,” she said. “You go through something hard, you get through it, and then usually there’s another challenge around the corner. But usually it’s those challenges that make you a better person, teach you lessons, even if you don’t want to be taught.”
Becoming a soccer star
Hatch sprints through a minefield of soccer balls at Inova Performance Complex in Leesburg, Virginia. Her teammates move across the training field for their next drill, kicking balls ahead of them and peppering Hatch’s path.
But Hatch doesn’t join them. For the last few months, she has trained off to the side, usually alone but sometimes with a teammate. Today, new mom Andi Sullivan joined her for warmups and a technical drill to keep Hatch’s shooting prowess sharp. (It still is.)
Hatch finishes her sprints and walks over to where her teammates scrimmage. After, she joins the team huddle that concludes the day’s training and lingers to visit with a teammate before making her way toward the sideline for our second chat in two days.
Dressed in her green Spirit training kit, pink boots (cleats) and signature blue prewrap headband, Hatch leans against the fence. She smiles and holds her Gatorade bottle against her growing baby bump as we discuss her soccer journey.
Hatch began playing soccer when she was 8. It was actually the last sport she was introduced to after growing up playing basketball and softball and even dabbling in tennis.
She felt late to the game. Many of her teammates had started as early as age 4 and long outgrown the days of positionless soccer.
“My concept of soccer was you just run around wherever and kick the ball,” she says. “I didn’t think there was any structure.”
At her first rec league practice, Hatch’s coach put her on the wing and “kept getting mad at me for going other places,” she recalled. She left thinking, “This isn’t fun,” and was ready to give up. But her parents made her honor her commitment and finish out the entire season.
“Thank goodness they didn’t let me quit,” she said.
After four seasons at BYU, where she was a MAC Hermann Trophy Semifinalist and notched 45 goals and 18 assists in 69 games, Hatch was drafted second overall by the North Carolina Courage in the 2017 National Women’s Soccer League draft as BYU’s highest ever draft pick.
Hatch had heard “a lot of horror stories” about professional women’s soccer. At her first national team camp in 2016, she asked several players about life in the NWSL. They all told her it wasn’t glamorous, that it was nothing like college soccer and that “you play the game because you love the game.”
So, Hatch entered the NWSL with “no expectations,” deciding to “take it year by year” for however long the opportunity lasted.
She spent her rookie season in Cary, North Carolina. Her seven goals won her Rookie of the Year.
To supplement her meager income as a rookie, Hatch babysat and held private soccer trainings.
“Obviously, things went well, and I’ve really enjoyed it,” she said. “And the game has grown and I’ve grown.”
In nine seasons, Hatch has scored 59 regular-season goals and is fifth on the NWSL’s all-time regular-season scorers list. She’s now one goal shy of tying Alex Morgan, an American soccer icon, for fourth.
Hatch also won the 2021 NWSL Championship with the Spirit as well as the Golden Boot, the award for the league’s top scorer, with 10 goals in 20 games. She also won the 2022 ESPY for Best NWSL Player the following summer. At the time, the NWSL was so overlooked that Hatch and the other nominees weren’t even invited to the award show.
Last season, Hatch became just the 35th player to appear in 150 matches since the league’s first season in 2013.
“Your value as a person is not attached to whatever you do, and I think that’s something that every athlete kind of wrestles with.”
— Ashley Hatch
The tokens from all those achievements and more currently sit in a black and yellow storage tote in the bonus room of Hatch’s home that will soon be converted into her office, podcast room and sewing room. Hatch has developed a talent for sewing and plans to sew a suit for her baby’s blessing — a special rite in Latter-day Saint culture.
None of this was on Hatch’s radar when she entered professional soccer as a 21-year-old.
Deciding when to start a family
If you drive roughly an hour west of Inova Performance Complex and follow the Virginia State Route 9 through the hills of Virginia into West Virginia, you’ll find a newly built white farmhouse nestled on top of a little hill in the town of Martinsburg at the end of a gravel driveway. The house, the first on its street, overlooks a neighboring orchard, and an American flag hangs from its porch.
Though remote, building their dream home all the way in West Virginia was intentional for Hatch and her husband, Jeff Van Buren. They wanted to raise their family in an environment with plenty of space to roam, work in the garden and find refuge from the busyness of a life in professional sports.
Inside the house, a picture of Jesus Christ hangs in the entryway. Hatch and Van Buren are members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
In their living room across from the fireplace, Hatch and her husband sit inches apart on the couch, never far apart. Van Buren adjusts the pillow behind Hatch, who is nearing the final trimester of her pregnancy.
It’s been just the two of them for most of Hatch’s career. In January 2026, the couple will celebrate both their seventh wedding anniversary and the birth of their first child.
“This dynamic is going to be changed forever,” Van Buren said.
Hatch and Van Buren met at BYU while playing a game of pickup basketball in the Smith Fieldhouse. One of Van Buren’s best friends from high school was dating one of Hatch’s teammates and roommates, and the two thought that Hatch and Van Buren should date.
After the basketball game, Hatch gave Van Buren her number. It took him two months to call her — “dragged my feet a little bit there,” Van Buren confessed.
Hatch, a senior, didn’t know where she’d be playing professionally the next spring and didn’t want a serious relationship, so she and Van Buren remained casual. Van Buren tried his best to hang around and “stay relevant,” according to Hatch.
Van Buren visited her twice in North Carolina for her rookie season and when she went to play for Melbourne City FC in Australia in the offseason, they became even closer, calling and FaceTiming often. It was then that the Courage traded Hatch to the Spirit. She finished the season in Australia, playing in 14 games and winning the W-League Grand Final before heading to her new home with the Spirit.
Once settled in D.C., Hatch and Van Buren’s relationship quickly became serious. They married the following year.
Hatch and Van Buren have always wanted to be parents one day. But when Hatch started her career, she wasn’t sure she’d have a job in soccer to come back to if she left to have a child. Now, pregnant players have more support than ever before, thanks in part to the landmark 2024 CBA negotiations, which Hatch was a part of.
“I think coming into playing professional soccer, I always was of the mindset of like, ‘I’m going to play soccer and then I’m going to be a mom. Like, I don’t think I can do both,’” Hatch said.
Hatch and Van Buren had been “constantly praying” to let God know their desire for a family and for help to know when they should start trying. When they both came to each other separately last year to express “the void” they felt in their home, they knew it was time.
“I did not think I would be playing for nine years, and I feel very lucky that my career has gone the way that it has,” she said. “But I didn’t think that it was a possibility that it would be what it is today. But now we’re at a point where it’s like, I don’t want to be done playing soccer, but I also turned 30 this year and I’m like, ‘I want to start my family.’”
In March, Hatch found out she was pregnant.
Navigating pregnancy as a professional athlete
Six weeks later, Hatch was in Los Angeles with the U.S. women’s national team. It was her second national team camp of the year and second since her last call-up in December 2023, which came just months after her surprise snub from the 2023 World Cup roster.
Leading up to the tournament, she had played in five of the last seven games for the U.S. and looked to be a shoe-in to back up Morgan.
Making the World Cup team was something Hatch dreamed of, telling the Deseret News just two months before that it would be “one of the proudest moments in my career.”
But head coach Vlatko Andonovski left Hatch off the final 23-player roster. While the U.S. uncharacteristically underperformed and suffered its earliest World Cup exit ever, Hatch was at home with the Spirit.
Five days after the roster dropped, she took to Instagram and said she was “heartbroken, devastated, disappointed, gutted, confused, lost.”
“There are a lot of things I don’t know and a lot of pain and disappointment I am still working through but the one thing I do know is I love this game,” she said.
That “difficult” year, as she previously described it to the Deseret News, included the Spirit missing the playoffs and was followed by another year of frustration. In 2024, the former Golden Boot winner and a mainstay in the starting lineup was sent to the bench.
But Hatch kept her head down and worked, clawing her way back into the starting lineup. Hatch scored five goals in the final seven games and helped propel the Spirit to the NWSL Championship.
In spite of those disappointments, Hatch continues playing because, as she said, those disappointments define her.
“Soccer has always been something that’s helped me get through those challenges, even if soccer is a challenge,” she said.
“I feel like knowing that first and foremost, I’m a daughter of God, he’s a child of God, and those things should always be No. 1, no matter if you’re the most successful person in the world or the least successful person in the world.”
— Ashley Hatch
Hatch failed to get a look from the national team all year as the team transitioned to new head coach Emma Hayes and prepared for redemption at the Olympics. That changed this year, when Hatch was invited to the team’s January training camp.
“It was something that wasn’t really on the radar for (me), but when I got the email, I was just really excited for another opportunity to come into this environment,” she told the Deseret News at the time.
There were no games that camp, but whatever Hatch did in training was enough to earn another call-up in April. The camp and a pair of matches against Brazil would give Hatch another chance to impress Hayes. But the camp didn’t go as planned.
Once in Los Angeles, Hatch suffered a miscarriage with her husband on the other side of the country. Hatch confided in the national team doctor, who helped her find an OB-GYN in Los Angeles and offered to help Hatch tell the team or to keep the miscarriage between the two of them.
Hatch opted to not tell anyone on the team, including Hayes. The decision wasn’t made out of fear of being sent home or other repercussions, she said — but of her desire to try “to navigate it all myself.”
“I’d rather just kind of keep it to myself until I’m ready to share that, if I’m ready to share that ever,” she said.
Medically cleared, Hatch played two days later in front of a crowd of over 32,000 fans at SoFi Stadium, the stadium’s first-ever women’s professional sporting event, and earned her 23rd cap for the national team.
The game was also monumental for Hatch. When she subbed in for Catarina Macario in the 84th minute, it marked her first national team minutes in nearly a year and a half, though the special occasion would come in the shadow of her miscarriage.
“It was hard,” Hatch said, “but I feel like soccer has always been my kind of like outlet, and when things are good or bad, I’ve always just enjoyed playing soccer.”
The choice to be available for the game was Hatch’s. Though an emotional game, playing “made me feel a little bit more normal in an awkward, weird situation, and I was just excited too about the opportunity to be there,” she said.
Following the 2-0 victory, Hatch and the team traveled north to San Jose for another match against Brazil.
In San Jose, she was reunited with Van Buren, who had been planning to fly out before the miscarriage. They spent the rest of the week together while Hatch finished the camp. Van Buren attended the second game, though Hayes left Hatch on the bench for the entirety of the game.
“I think Ashley’s proven that like you can go find a lot of success in your way and being true to who you are and not changing who you are to kind of reach those accomplishments.”
— Jeff Van Buren
After camp concluded, they returned to West Virginia. Fortunately for Hatch, the miscarriage wasn’t “super complicated,” and Hatch and Van Buren were able to try getting pregnant again.
The next month, Hatch called to Van Buren from their bathroom. Sensing something in his wife’s voice, he ran in immediately — faster than he had ever responded to her before, according to Hatch. Van Buren’s senses were right. They were pregnant.
To celebrate, they took a selfie with the pregnancy test. The photo now hangs on a string of polaroids in their dining room featuring their favorite moments of the year.
But following their loss just a month prior, the couple was “cautiously excited,” deciding to keep the news to themselves as their “little secret,” Hatch said.
Hatch continued to play and even scored two goals in her last four games while pregnant — both of which she scored in the midst of her worsening morning sickness.
By the time the Spirit hosted the Utah Royals on May 17, Hatch’s morning sickness had intensified and her energy levels had dropped. But she still played and even scored in the 3-3 draw.
Hatch grew sicker and sicker each week, though she continued to show up to training. While it would have been easy to stay home, that’s not the kind of person and athlete Hatch is, according to her husband.
“I think I’m numb to how she operates in her career because I’ve been around her so long, but she kind of just works and does her business quietly,” he said.
Finding support from the USWNT
In May, Hatch received an email from U.S. Soccer, informing her she would be a reserve player for the upcoming national team camp.
Hatch believes every national team call-up is an honor and shouldn’t be turned down. Yet for the first time in her career, Hatch, who still felt quite sick from her pregnancy, was relieved that she wouldn’t have to decide whether she went to camp or not.
But the relief was short-lived. Another player suffered an injury, and Hatch was elevated to the full roster as a replacement.
Torn, Hatch thought she could tough out the morning sickness for a few days at camp, “but I could slowly feel myself feeling a little bit more nauseous and not feeling like myself,” she said.
She decided to request a conversation with Hayes to explain why she’d have to decline the invitation.
Hayes, who was joined by assistant coach Denise Reddy on the call, was “really supportive, like super excited, super happy” for Hatch, according to the forward.
“They were just, ‘We want to support you and help you in whatever way possible,’” Hatch said. “I didn’t feel any sort of guilt or like, ‘OK, well, good luck, you know?’ So it was cool, and the fact that Emma’s a mother herself, I think is also really helpful.”
Van Buren, who eavesdropped from the doorway, described the tone of the conversation as “complete happiness.”
“It was nice to hear them kind of vocalize it like, ‘Oh, you can definitely come back from this and keep playing,’” Hatch said. “I think the narrative in the past, which is also why I was so afraid to have a baby and keep playing, was kind of like, ‘Um, oh well, good luck. Like we’ll see what happens.’”
Returning to soccer
Even while pregnant, Hatch had her hottest ever start to a season, scoring six goals in 10 games, two of which she scored while she battled bouts of morning sickness.
Her last game of the season was May 23 on the road in Seattle, where she scored a goal. She led the Golden Boot race at the time and remained in the top five for much of the season despite her shortened season. The Spirit wrap up their regular season in Utah on Sunday against the Royals.
Hatch wants to be back scoring goals for the Spirit “as soon as physically possible” next season, she said.
“I think that’s a reason why I’ve been so adamant about wanting to just stay as active as possible,” she said. “Not only is it good for pregnancy in general, but I’ve just heard for recovery and return to play, it’s a lot smoother — depending on how your delivery goes — in returning to play."
With the baby due in early January, she hopes to make her return and debut as a new mom around the halfway point of the 2026 season, but she understands “the timeline for everyone is different.”
“It could take eight months. It could take two months. It could take four months. You never know,” she said.
Preparing for parenthood
Following an early August training, the Spirit lined up in front of the goal at the training facility. Blue balloons were hung from one corner — pink from the other. Hatch instructed her teammates to line up on the side that corresponds to their guess of her baby’s gender.
Hatch, who found out the gender before with Van Buren at home, joined her teammates in the center of the goal. Representing “Team Boy,” Rodman stood to Hatch’s right while Tara McKeown of “Team Girl” stood on the left. The three each held a white confetti popper. Hatch then counted down, “Three, two, one.”
Blue confetti shot out of the poppers and Hatch’s teammates swarmed her. Rodman ran away, waving the popper in the air, yelling, “It’s a boy!”
It’s these same teammates, including some of the best women’s players in the world, that Hatch’s son will grow up surrounded by, for which she is grateful.
“I’m really excited to raise a boy in a female sports environment just because I feel like he’s going to have a lot of really cool, strong female role models, which is pretty unique,” she said.
If it’s up to his parents, Baby Van Buren will follow in his mother’s footsteps and play soccer — and adopt a love of golf like his dad. Though they’re excited to welcome a son, Van Buren admitted he had hoped for a girl because “we know the world” of women’s soccer.
“Boy soccer is so different,” he said before laughing.
“I know,” Hatch lamented. “I know nothing about boys soccer and men’s soccer, so that will be fun.”
Van Buren’s arm rests behind Hatch on the couch and he smiles as he shares his excitement to watch his wife become a mother. As an eldest child, Hatch learned early on “how to make sure other people are OK and making sure everyone’s taken care of almost to a fault sometimes,” according to Van Buren.
“I‘m just really excited to see her kind of fill in that mom, the motherly role of her own child,” he said. “I see how she is with our nieces and nephews, and I see how she is with strangers that she’s coaching at a clinic and how she cares for them. So, what is that going to look like for her own child? I’m excited to kind of watch that and witness that.”
The couple has taken notes from their own parents and upbringings that they hope to apply, including their values and religious beliefs as members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
For Hatch, her faith has been something she’s leaned on throughout her career, previously calling her relationship with God “the one thing that I know I can always rely on.”
“We have our own testimonies in our Savior and the gospel ... and now we have to try and help someone else develop their own,” she said.
While Hatch wants her son to learn “the cliche answers of hard work, sacrifice, discipline” from her career, her main hope is he’ll learn something even more important.
“Your value as a person is not attached to whatever you do, and I think that’s something that every athlete kind of wrestles with,” she said. “That’s what I want him to learn is like, just because your mom does this really cool thing or is a professional soccer player, that’s not what makes her value. That’s not what it’s on.”
For Hatch, her value and identity is rooted in her relationship with God and not what she does or accomplishes in her career. She hopes the same can be said of her son’s.
“I feel like knowing that first and foremost, I’m a daughter of God, he’s a child of God, and those things should always be No. 1, no matter if you’re the most successful person in the world or the least successful person in the world,” she said. “I hope that I can kind of live out my career, but also in my life, in a way that he’s able to see that.”
Van Buren has his own hopes for what their son learns from Hatch and her soccer career.
“Ashley won’t say this about herself. But she’s accomplished a lot for being true to who she is,” he said. “She’s been told by people that you need to be more mean, you need to be less nice. You need to do this or do that to go be successful or if, ‘Oh, you’re not on the national team, you’re not successful.’ I think Ashley’s proven that like you can go find a lot of success in your way and being true to who you are and not changing who you are to kind of reach those accomplishments.”
Soccer future
When Hatch returns to the field next year, she’ll begin her 10th NWSL season — and her career is far from over. There are more goals waiting to be scored, more games to be played. She has her sights set on 200 NWSL appearances — a feat only accomplished by six players — and a second championship to be won.
“I feel like winning another championship is something that I always wanted to do and wanted to continue to push for,” she said. “But I feel like with this new kind of perspective and outlook on life, it’s more just continuing to be the best soccer player and mom that I can be and doing that for as long as it makes sense and as long as possible.”
She would love more opportunities with the national team as well, but as she learned two years ago, “there’s a lot of things outside my control,” she said.
“I’ve learned that focusing on the right things usually leads to those accomplishments, but focusing on the accomplishments themselves can often lead to a lot of heartache and disappointment,” she said.
In the meantime, Hatch will continue “focusing on being my best self as a player and as a person,” she said, “and then hoping that that’s enough to open up other opportunities.”
Regardless of what the rest of her career holds, Hatch is at peace. On the verge of motherhood, she’s no longer devoting her time and energy on “things that really don’t matter.” She no longer worries what her coach or teammates might be thinking of her. As a result, she said, “I have a lot more freedom to just be who I want to be and play the way I want to play.”
Her perspective has already shifted as she’s on the verge of motherhood.
“There’s a lot more purpose, and there’s going to be so much more purpose,” she said. “I think, my perspective on a lot of things has already shifted and will probably continue to shift when we actually have a little one here to chase around.”
In two months, that little one will arrive. His first name is yet to be decided. They’re waiting until they lay eyes on their son in case the name they’ve chosen doesn’t feel right, though there is a front-runner. It’s the only name the couple both agreed they liked from the list of baby names Hatch made long ago.
But regardless of his first name, Baby Van Buren will share the same middle name as his grandfathers: “Kay.”
And with his arrival, Hatch will be more than one of the NWSL’s top scorers. She’ll be “Mom.”