Jaedyn Shaw celebrates with Alyssa Thompson and other USWNT teammates after scoring against Italy in December 2025.
Dec 1, 2025; Fort Lauderdale, Florida, USA; United States forward Jaedyn Shaw (8) celebrates with United States forward Alyssa Thompson (21) and teammates after scoring against Italy during the first half at Chase Stadium. (Photo credit: Sam Navarro | Imagn Images)

Emma Hayes has named the USWNT roster for the upcoming SheBelieves Cup, and it’s the first roster in her tenure that is truly starting to hew, rather than expand, the player pool. “I do think there is a lot more clarity in terms of the squad of players that we are building around for the upcoming year,” she said in a Tuesday press conference. 

The annual tournament, which this year sees the U.S. face Argentina, Canada, and Colombia, is useful not for its inherent value — kids don’t exactly go to sleep dreaming of winning a SheBelieves Cup trophy — but for its format and time of year. It’s a pretty good copy of the group stage of a major tournament: four teams playing round-robin, and being ranked on those performances. (This year, a new rule introduces penalty kicks should regulation end in a tie. Although this is unorthodox for a World Cup or Olympics group stage, it does offer players practice with shootouts, a staple of tournament knockout rounds.) And taking place at the beginning of the year, just before the NWSL season is set to start, gives players both on and off the roster a sense of where they stand heading into the club season. Hayes seems to see it similarly. “We’re classing [the SheBelieves Cup] as a tournament setting,” she said. “This is great preparatory work for World Cup qualifiers.” 

If this roster is starting to dial in on the core group for the year-end World Cup qualifiers, it’s clear that Hayes’ years of experimentation have paid off. The average caps per player on this roster is 30.4, but without Lindsey Heaps (170 caps), Rose Lavelle (116 caps), and Emily Sonnett (113 caps), that number decreases drastically to 17. 

At the press conference, Jim Alexander asked Hayes, “Do you think that maybe some veterans who’ve been sort of penciled in for the last few years as starters could have maybe their roles challenged in a sense, or there could be a young player taking over a certain role? Do you sort of foresee that happening sometime this year?” 

Hayes responded, “I hope so! That’s the whole point. You’ve got to create competition. … As long as players are competing and performing, then everybody — no matter your age, no matter your experience — are all challenging for the jersey, so I expect more competition as a result of the decisions we took last year.” 

Many top contenders are off this roster because of injury or other fitness-related reasons, so this list should not be read into too deeply as a sure harbinger for key rosters to come. But any coach can only choose from the players who are available to them at any moment, whether that moment is the SheBelieves or World Cup, so it’s worthwhile to analyze as a benchmark in the USWNT’s Hayes chapter. 

Each player’s caps and goals, respectively, are noted in parentheses. Within each position, players are organized from most to least caps.

Goalkeepers

Although a clear choice to man the net has not yet emerged, the three chosen for SheBelieves are not a surprise. For much of 2025, it looked like Phallon Tullis-Joyce would be Hayes’s pick, but Claudia Dickey began to be the preferred starter towards the end of the year. If those two now seem like the frontrunners, McGlynn is a logical third option; Hayes was extremely impressed by her in January camp.

Defenders

Hayes suggested that Naomi Girma and Emily Sonnett are her first choices for centerbacks. Those two, along with fullback Emily Fox, have significantly more caps than the other defenders called up. Hayes remarked that she’d like to develop two to four centerbacks to “sit behind” Sonnett and Girma in the player pool. Aside from Jordan Bugg, the 19-year-old who plays with a Girma-esque poise and who Hayes called “a player I see as the future for the team,” those folks in this camp are Kennedy Wesley and Tara Rudd. 

Not called into camp but still jostling for position in that pool are Tierna Davidson, the 2019 World Cup winner and Gotham captain who has been out with an ACL injury, and Emily Sams, who Hayes said has not worked up to 90-minute fitness since moving from Orlando Pride to Angel City in the offseason. Sams was one of three players Hayes tapped as leaders for January’s uber-young camp, alongside Claire Hutton and Trinity Rodman.

As for the fullbacks, Fox and 2025 U.S. Soccer Young Female Player of the Year Lilly Reale appear poised to be Hayes’s preferred pair, but the inclusion of Gisele Thompson and Kate Wiesner is not surprising at all. Those players have steadily earned their place in the player pool. In the press conference, Hayes also posited that Maddie Dahlien, who is listed as a forward on the roster, can also play as a high left back. 

As far as snubs go, fullback/winger Avery Patterson also impressed Hayes in 2025, but, per Hayes, she “hasn’t had a lot of minutes during preseason and for medical reasons, wasn’t quite 100% fit for this camp.” It’s also worth noting that until Crystal Dunn announced her retirement in January, it wouldn’t have been out of the question for the ever-talented and versatile 33-year-old to make a run for a national team return in this position before long, especially if she had started to play more club minutes. 

Midfielders

In the midfield, Hayes is only bringing one player with fewer than 13 caps: Riley Jackson, who made her only USWNT appearance in January. The 20-year-old has come up through the youth national team system, including the U23 team, where coach Heather Dyche apparently told Hayes she was the “standout player.” Hayes says that when she brought her into the senior camp in January, “She impressed me so much.” And she gets bonus points for having played with the young but undeniably top-tier Hutton in the youth system; Hayes says the fact “that they’ve got a consistent relationship there” is a pro to calling her in.

The other seven players are more or less gimmes, as they topped the list of USWNT minutes-played for midfielders in 2025. Hayes added that Sam Coffey, who played more minutes than any national team player last year, is working on her counterattack — rather than sitting back to “protect space” — at both the national team and Manchester City, her new club. 

It’s a pleasant surprise to see Jaedyn Shaw listed as a midfielder rather than a forward, since she’s strongest playing through lines, not in front of them.

Neither Croix Bethune nor Hal Hershfelt, who were both named to Hayes’s 2024 Olympic roster as alternates during their standout rookie seasons, were called up. (In that tournament, Hershfelt didn’t see the field, but Bethune was called in as an injury replacement player and was awarded a gold medal with the rest of the rostered team. Sams was also an injury-replacement player at the Olympics; she did not see the pitch but earned a medal due to being named to two game-day rosters.) Both have dealt with injuries since, and will seek to make their case in the upcoming NWSL season. The former teammates will no longer be playing together, however, as Bethune inked a massive trade from Washington Spirit to Kansas City Current just last week. 

That trade is why Bethune wasn’t called in, according to Hayes. “By the time we had to select the squad, Croix had only trained maybe one or two days since last camp so, according to my performance team, didn’t have enough behind her to be in a competitive place to be able to play three 90 minutes,” she said. That’s different than Hutton’s situation, as Hayes said the new Bay FC player “kept training until she moved and then continued training as well as playing in games with us.”

When Bethune was asked during a February 13 press conference if she had discussed her move to Kansas City with Hayes, she gave an answer that was more vague than other national team players who move clubs typically say. “We’ve had a couple of little conversations about what I wanted to do and some of my aspects of what I want to get out of being professional and my job,” Bethune said. 

Forwards

Perhaps the most congested line, following in a long tradition of USWNTs past, is the attack. In shoo-ins Trinity Rodman, Alyssa Thompson, and Emma Sears, this line has absurd amounts of speed and technical ability. 

There are arguably as many notable players left off the list as those who made it on. They include Sophia Smith and Mal Swanson, who are both still on parental leave. Though they were both present at NWSL Media Day in January, it is unclear when they will return to play. Of Wilson, Hayes said, “It’s right that she’s not part of this squad, however much I want her to be. The reality is that Portland don’t deem her ready.” 

Michelle Cooper is still on Kansas City’s Season-Ending Injury list after sustaining a foot injury at the end of the 2025 season, but should she get healthy before World Cup qualifiers she’ll almost undoubtedly give the wingers named today a run for their money. “I think if Michelle Cooper was fit, Michelle Cooper would have been in the squad,” Hayes said. 

And Catarina Macario’s elision from the roster is not for poor form —she was the USWNT’s top scorer in 2025. Rather, Hayes says she is dealing with a heel injury and has been unavailable for Chelsea, although swirling rumors of a move to San Diego also provide a plausible reason for her to miss this camp.

Those missing players have left room for less experienced upstarts to get another shot in camp. 

Hayes said, “If Cat Macario and Sophia Wilson were fit for selection, they would have been selected as the nines … I feel that we have to develop more nines.” Thus, Jameese Joseph has an opportunity to keep developing as a center striker, a position that both she and Hayes see as her highest potential. Hayes complimented her ability to stretch lines, hold up play, and be clinical in front of the net. Hayes added that Sentnor will be the other nine in this camp.

Dahlien is the other barely-capped player in this line; Hayes cited her aforementioned versatility as a reason to bring her back into camp. 

Missing the cut this time was Yazmeen Ryan, who has racked up 16 appearances under Hayes. She plays with Patterson at the ever-flailing Houston Dash. Though individual performances at the club level can rise above lackluster team results when it comes to national team callups — think Jameese Joseph in 2025, or Savannah DeMelo in 2023 — but in this critical year, these two will want to ride the wave of a buoyed club team rather than swim against the current.

Across all positions, other players who have hovered around the bubble recently but who were not called in are Kerry Abello, Eva Gaetino, Jaelin Howell, Lo’eau Labonta, Sally Menti, Sam Meza, Izzy Rodriguez, and Reilyn Turner. 

Leave a comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *