Could this KC NWSL newcomer be the women’s pro soccer league’s next rookie of the year?

Heart racing and legs shaking, Victoria Pickett stood with her toes on the halfway line and stared across the field.

Thousands of Portland Thorns fans around her were screaming ahead of kickoff for the return of the National Women’s Soccer League. In black jerseys a few feet away stood Women’s World Cup winner Meghan Klingenberg and star midfielder Rocky Rodriguez. At the far end of the field stood World Cup-winning goalkeeper Adrianna Franch.

“I was like, this is so scary,” Pickett admitted.

Kansas City NWSL’s 14th-overall pick in the 2021 NWSL Draft isn’t shy to admit that she was physically shaking heading into her first professional game.

No one but Pickett and her teammates could tell.

A little over an hour later, the 24-year-old Canadian midfielder flicked a ball in the Portland box that allowed teammate Amy Rodriguez to knock it past Franch for the first goal in KC NWSL’s history.

Less than a month later, against the OL Reign, Pickett made a crucial interception in the midfield, shrugged off Reign forward Tziarra King effortlessly, and played an inside diagonal pass to set up Mallory Weber for the opener.

The rookie has picked up two assists in 288 minutes of action to begin life in the NWSL and is quietly sneaking into the Rookie of the Year conversation.

“It’s definitely cool to be in the running, but it’s also something that I’ve placed myself into as well,” Pickett told The Star. “I just have this goal of wanting to be the best that I can be for my team.”

For a couple of years, it looked like Pickett might never get the chance to go toe-to-toe with players she’d previously only watched on TV.

Unforeseen adversity

Receiving the ball along the line for the Wisconsin Badgers, Pickett took a good touch and began to mount an attack down the wing. It was the spring of her junior year at Wisconsin, and she was happy to be back on the field and getting match-fit ahead of her crucial senior year.

She’d enjoyed a stellar junior season and was named a semifinalist for the MAC Hermann Trophy, given to the best player in college soccer. She had gained the recognition she needed to fulfill her goals of becoming a pro.

Then, during a game, an opposing player came hurtling into a tackle that carried through her left leg.

“I remember seeing the girl who had hit me pop up and walk away,” she recalled, “and for this split-second, I was like, ‘How is she walking away right now and I’m still on the ground with this searing pain?’”

Looking down at her leg, Pickett saw a kneecap now facing outward to the left. She’d torn all four ligaments in her left kneecap — ACL, MCL, PCL and LCL — as well as her lateral meniscus, and also suffered a bone-impact fracture and dislocated kneecap.

“I thought it was truly the end of my career,” she said.

She immediately underwent surgery. Two days later got to see her knee for the first time since the injury. And that knee was thicker than her calf.

“Two days after surgery and I unraveled it, the surgeon was like, ‘It looks so good!’ I’m like, ‘You can’t tell me that looks good!” she laughed.

She finds it humorous now, but the three months in the immediate aftermath of the injury were dark ones for Pickett. She didn’t want to talk to anyone about the injury and bottled up her emotions and frustration.

She eventually opened up to her mother, Vanda, who is a stage 4 breast cancer survivor.

But even that took a lot for the then-22-year-old. She felt ashamed of complaining about her knee injury to her mother, who she’d never once heard complain about her cancer and chemotherapy.

“People are put in a lot of different situations,” Vanda would tell her, “and to say that one is worse than the other, that’s not fair. It’s just how you define the situation that does matter.”

Those words got Victoria back on track. She has the advice “Define the situation” tattooed on her arm to remind her of her mother’s words and the mindset that helped pull her out of that dark space.

“Talking to her a lot let me have this more growth mentality which helped a lot,” Pickett said. “I just want to live by that and put my best foot forward.”

New home in KC

Pickett didn’t play a single minute of her senior season at Wisconsin. By the time the NWSL Draft came around, she hadn’t played a competitive game in almost two years.

“What coach would want to bet on me?” Pickett thought to herself. “No one’s going to pick me up, if I were a coach, I wouldn’t pick me up.”

The day before the draft, she received a call from KC coach Huw Williams.

“Would you be interested if we pick you up?” Williams asked.

Pickett’s answer isn’t hard to guess: Yes.

Inside, however, Pickett suspected that Williams, like any other coach in the NWSL, had been making similar calls all day to college players all around the country.

So when her name was called in the second round of the draft on Jan. 13, she couldn’t help but freak out.

“I was not expecting this,” Pickett said. “My family, they’re sweet, they were like, ‘We always knew!’ and I was like, ‘Well I didn’t!’ It was definitely cool.”

It’s been a whirlwind since. Just a month later she received a call from Williams telling her to expect a call from Canadian Women’s National Team coach Bev Priestman ahead of the 2021 SheBelieves Cup.

Although she didn’t make the team’s final 23-player roster, having the chance to train with the national team was a massive step for Pickett.

“Getting drafted and then getting the senior call-up,” Pickett said, “it felt like everything was being made up for those two years that I missed, being injured.”

Williams and her teammates have been entirely complimentary about the midfielder since her arrival in KC. Williams said he “loves Victoria Pickett” after KC’s game against Houston on April 26, and Canadian teammate Desiree Scott has described her as, “Magic on the ball.”

After four games at the pro level, Pickett is no longer physically shaking as she steps on the field. But she still gets nervous and has been using breathing techniques to help prepare for games.

She will continue to play a major role here now, either in the midfield or on the wing, where she was used a couple of times during the Challenge Cup.

She has tough competition across the league for Rookie of the Year: The Washington Spirit’s Trinity Rodman is off to a flying start, while NJ/NY Gotham’s Brianna Pinto entered the season favored to win the award.

“I think it’s a huge honor (to be mentioned),” Pickett said. “Even though I’m probably a lot older than all of them, it’s nice to be considered just as good as them.

“I really do just want Kansas City to do well, and I think (it’s a), ‘If I’m doing well, the team is doing well’-type of deal. It’s pretty cool, though.”

This story was originally published May 12, 2021 at 7:43 PM with the headline "Could this KC NWSL newcomer be the women’s pro soccer league’s next rookie of the year?."