It was a familiar sight: Ashley Sanchez running at the left post, controlling a lofted cross, deftly finding a window between defenders and taking a quick shot to the inside of the far post beyond the reach of the goalkeeper. It’s how the North Carolina Courage winger has scored so many of her 19 goals this year. This would be her 20th, tying Temwa Chawinga’s 2024 record for most goals scored in an NWSL season.
But on Saturday against Gotham, it wasn’t meant to be. As Sanchez celebrated with her teammates and fans in the WakeMed Soccer Park stands updated their handmade “Sanchez Goal-O-Meter”, the center referee was summoned to the VAR monitor, and the goal was called off; Sanchez’s teammate Gianna Paul was a touch offside when the play began. No tied game, and no tied record.
I was really upset that we didn’t tie the game up right then and there.” If that 20th goal comes, it’ll have been worth the wait. The same could be said of Sanchez’s season, the seventh of her professional career. She was on the US women’s national team’s 2023 World Cup roster, but didn’t see any playing time in Australia and New Zealand.
Five months after that, after a dynamite four years with the Washington Spirit, she was traded to North Carolina without warning. Now, in the best form of her life, Sanchez, 27, doesn’t think about that turbulent year much. But when I look back at this season I’m like, ‘I guess I had to go through some tough times to get here.’ I always felt like there was a reason that I had to go through them – maybe that was character-building, or not taking things for granted,” she said.
But definitely at the time, I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, this is the worst thing that’s ever happened to me.’” “I’ve always kind of felt like there was something bigger that was going to happen. I just felt like I needed to stay patient and have trust that whatever God was doing in my life was for a reason,” she said. But I was very patient and I controlled what I could, and that was my effort.” The effort has paid off.
Sanchez has already broken at least two records: the most NWSL goals scored in one season by an American, and most goals by a Courage player in one season. For Sanchez, her goal tally has come as a welcome surprise. But someone in Cary, North Carolina, saw it coming.
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