Sophia Smith, a superstar in the making ready to embrace her role as the go-to goal-scorer for the Portland Thorns, signed a three-year contract through the 2024 season with the Thorns on Monday, the team announced.
The 21-year-old forward’s extension comes less than a week after she scored a hat trick in a preseason game against the U.S. Women’s U-23 national team.
“It’s awesome,” Smith told The Oregonian/OregonLive after the Thorns’ preseason finale, a 1-0 win over Chicago on Friday night, with the deal in the works. “I feel blessed to be able to be here in Portland and sign long term. There’s nowhere else I’d rather be, and this is the best place to play in NWSL and the world. I’m excited and really looking forward to helping this team in any way I can.”
Smith, a relatively new regular on the U.S. senior national team, was the top pick by the Thorns in the 2020 NWSL draft out of Stanford. She was the first player born in the 2000s to make her debut for the USWNT, in November 2020. She had six goals in 16 appearances for the Thorns last season.
“It was important to sign Soph to a long-term contract to show her that we are invested in her and committed to her,” Thorns general manager Karina LeBlanc said in the team’s release. “What she brings to the game on the field is an ability to score goals, but she also adds so much more. It is what she brings to our team culture, the community, who she is as a person, that is what we want from a Thorns player. In looking at the team now, but also into the future keeping her in Portland was a top priority.”
The 5-foot-5 Smith is a creative and talented goal-scorer with a knack for dizzying her defenders and making lighting-quick runs. She said she leans on Thorns and USWNT veterans Christine Sinclair, Becky Sauerbrunn, Meghan Klingenberg and Crystal Dunn for guidance as she comes into her own as a key player for club and country.
“Every vet on this team — Sinc, Becky, Kling, Crystal — I just have the best people to look up to and learn from,” Smith said. “Sinc is the best goal-scorer in the world, so there’s no one else I’d rather learn from on how to be a better forward and player. All of them embrace me with open arms and are willing to help and share their tips. I look to them and try to grow around them.”
When she was “7 or 8,” Smith says, she tried out for her first soccer team. She only did it because it was what her friends were doing at the time, as Smith had ambitions to be a star basketball player (she still stuck with that, too, and was a force on the court in high school).
But Smith fell deeply in love with the game of soccer, and it soon became her entire life.
“I love the game,” Smith said. “I’m always going to give it 110 percent every time I’m on the field, and off the field I’m a very chill, laid-back person, just living life and trying to have fun. I don’t have any, like, hobbies other than soccer, so when I have time off I like to relax and watch movies, go outdoors and hike if I have the energy, and just hang out and chill.”
Inking a deal to stick with the Thorns long-term was an easy choice, Smith said, and she projects to settle into a leadership role in the coming seasons with Portland’s veterans reaching the twilight of their storied careers.
“What’s not to love about Portland?” Smith said. “The fans, there’s no place like it. The ownership, the team, the environment — it’s just a place where I feel like I will get better and be challenged every single day. That’s the environment I want to put myself in to get where I want to be.”
-- Ryan Clarke, rclarke@oregonian.com
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