I'm Pinching Myself: Natalie Means on Rookies, Marta, and What's Coming for Denver Summit FC

The Georgetown grad turned NWSL starter sat down mid-season break to talk about her first start, standing next to a legend, and why the expansion team narrative is officially dead.

Denver, Colorado — On May 16th, Natalie Means was supposed to be walking across a stage in Washington, D.C. to collect her Georgetown degree.

Instead, she was starting at left winger for Denver Summit FC in front of a sold-out home crowd, with her best friend — playing for the opposing Orlando Pride — in the stands with both their families watching.

Denver won 3-1. It was her favorite game of the season.

Being Where Your Feet Are

Means graduated with a degree in political science and a minor in sociology. She did it while becoming a professional soccer player. Both at the same time.

Missing the official ceremony was bittersweet, she admits. But she didn't spend much time dwelling on it.

"I'm trying to be where my feet are," she said. "And I felt like I'm right where I'm supposed to be."

That mindset — present, process-driven, unbothered by circumstance — has defined her first half of a rookie season. Means came into Denver's inaugural campaign knowing Nick Cushing wanted her as an attack-minded left fullback. She trained there for months. Then she got subbed into games as a left winger. Then she earned three straight starts in that role. Then she generated 7 shots and 0.83 expected goals in 294 minutes of regular season play.

The position on the team sheet keeps shifting. The production doesn't.

That First Start

Getting into the starting eleven under Cushing isn't a conversation — it's a puzzle. He mixes groups in training constantly. There's no clear first-team versus bench split. Means described the week leading into the Houston game as a slow accumulation of signals: the shape of a positional drill here, a comment from an assistant coach there.

"Could I be starting? I don't know," she said. "It could just be because the teams are mixed up in practice."

Then Houston. A rain delay. An hour in the locker room longer than anyone wanted. And then kickoff.

"Once I got my first touch on the ball, it felt no different than when I sub in at the seventieth minute," she said. "It's the same people I've practiced with. Same coaches. It's just minute zero versus minute seventy."

Denver won 4-1. Means was composed, dangerous, and very clearly not a player still figuring out the professional game.

The Marta Moment

Four games later, she started again at home against Orlando. Second half kickoff. Marta had come on at halftime for the Pride and lined up right next to her on the flank.

"I kinda had a moment where I was just like, whoa," Means said. "I'm super proud of myself to be on the field at the same time as her. She has no idea who I am, which is totally fine. I just am so grateful for the opportunity to be taking the field next to someone like her."

That's the kind of sentence that doesn't land unless you actually mean it. Means meant it.

Better Than the Record Says

Denver sits at 15 points heading into the break. Mid-table. Playoff window — but only just.

Means doesn't accept that number as an honest reflection of this team.

"We definitely feel like we should be sitting higher in the rankings," she said, pointing to a run of games — Utah, Seattle, Boston, San Diego — where the expected goals favored Denver and the points didn't follow. "Those are the games we still look back on and hope at the end of the season it's not the difference between making playoffs or not."

The data backs her up. Over Denver's recent stretch, the team's xG against has dropped to below 1.0 per game. Teams aren't creating clean chances. Abby Smith isn't being asked to make miracle saves. The press is sharper, the recovery runs are there, and the defensive structure has tightened into something that looks genuinely hard to play against.

"It's a real fortress for teams to come into," Means said of home games. "Our fans and the altitude — those are elements you can't replicate."

The expansion team label? Gone.

"We've forgotten we're an expansion team at this point," she said. "We want to make playoffs and go further than that. That's our expectation."

What's Coming

New training facility. More home games. And Lindsey Heaps arriving from Lyon mid-July.

The locker room energy around that last one is hard to overstate.

"I'm pinching myself that my first season gets to be played with someone like Lindsey Heaps," Means said.

For a rookie who came in ready to do whatever the team needed — fullback, winger, utility knife, whatever Cushing asked — that sentiment says everything about where this team is headed. She didn't come to Denver to survive an expansion year. None of them did.

The second two-thirds of this season is about to get very interesting.

Listen to the full conversation with Natalie Means on The 5280 Pitch, available on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. Subscribe at 5280pitch.com.