Denver Summit FC Signs Ryan, Sheehan & Yamamoto

Kate Hanson: Welcome back to the 5280 pitch Women's Stockard Altitude. I'm Kate Hansen and obviously we're in another bonus episode. I didn't plan on doing two episodes a week guys, but here we are. So I was fully prepared to not do two episodes this week. And then Denver Summit went ahead and blew up the whole roster twice in like 24 hours. So yeah, we're doing a bonus episode. Three signings week into the inaugural season, and I need to talk about all of them because honestly, each ⁓ matters for a different reason. And together, ⁓ this is a statement, a big one. So we're gonna be talking about Yazmeen Ryan, Delanie Sheehan, and Yuzuki Yamamoto. All right, let's go. So let's start with... the Ryan and Sheehan trade because that one landed like a bomb. Now, I am gonna say, I did hear rumblings of this on a Reddit thread earlier in the week and then it came to fruition. ⁓ So ⁓ Denver Summit acquired Yazmeen Ryan and midfielder Delanie Sheehan from the Houston Dash in a blockbuster move one week into the 2026 NWSL season. And yes, folks, the Denver Summit haven't even played a home game yet. And here's what I keep coming back to. Other clubs showed interest and approached the dash to sign both Ryan and Sheehan, but the players preferred to come to Denver. They wanted to be here, right here. And for a first year expansion club still trying to... prove that they belong and what their identity is. That's huge. So who are we actually getting? We'll start with Yazmeen Ryan first. Ryan was drafted sixth overall by the Portland Thorns in the 2021 NWSL draft and has won two NWSL championships, one with Portland in 2022 and one with Gotham in 2023. She's 27 years old. She's been in big moments. She knows what it takes. And the stats back it up too. So after 49 matches, nine goals, eight assists at Gotham, Ryan moved to Houston in a transfer worth up to almost quarter of a million dollars, $480,000 and was the Dash's top offensive performer last year in 2025, the team in both goals and assists. She also made her US Women's National Team debut in October of 2024 and has notched two goals in 16 caps under Emma Hayes. So this is a great signing that's coming into Denver in just a week. I don't think she's not gonna, for anybody who's asking, we're not gonna see her in the game against the Pride ⁓ later on today. We will see her in upcoming games. Hopefully we see her take the pitch when the Denver Summit open against the Washington Spirit at mile high, but I'm gonna get ahead of myself. So the type of player that Ryan is, and I think that this gets undersold. She is relentlessly versatile. She can play wide, she can play off a striker, she can drop into midfield channels and create from deep. She is not locked into one role, which means that Nick Cushing has options, real options. He can use her to stretch defenses wide, he can use her as a second striker running in behind, or he can use her as a connecting piece between midfield and attack. That flexibility is so rare and genuinely level. She's also, and I'm saying this as a compliment, a bit of a chaos agent in the best possible way. She doesn't need things to be perfectly organized to make something happen. She can improvise, she can find a pocket of space and a tight game and manufacture something from nothing. And for a team that's going to face a lot of organized defenses this season, teams that will sit back and try to frustrate Denver, that is exactly the type of profile that you want in your attack. And honestly, she has been through the process of joining a new team. Mid-build before Portland, Gotham, Houston, she knows how to integrate quickly, earn trust, and contribute while a group is still finding itself. That experience is so important for an expansion side. Now Delanie Sheehan, Ryan is a headline name, I get it, but Sheehan might actually be the signing that changes how this team functions day to day. Sheehan was drafted 33 overall by Gotham in 2021. She won a NWSL championship with them in 23 and developed into one of the most reliable midfielders in this league. Now, during the 2025 season, Sheehan led the Houston Dash with 28 key passes while appearing in every single match. Yes, all 26 matches and totaling over 2000 minutes. Yep, folks, that's every single game. That's your engine room right there. So now we have not just one iron woman in Kayleigh Kurtz. We got another one in Delanie Sheehan. She is the type of player who shows up on the stat sheet don't make headlines. Key passes, ⁓ ball recoveries, contributions in the middle. ⁓ She is connective tissue. She's the player that makes everyone's job easier. Think about what that means in practical terms here. When you have a midfielder who's consistent, who plays every minute, who presses intelligently, who recycles the ball quickly and moves it through to the forwards effectively, your whole team benefits. Your forwards get better services, your defenders get more protection, your shape stays tighter. The team just functions better. It's hard to quantify, but you absolutely feel it when it's missing. And I think we all saw that we were missing that piece. when we were faced against FC last week. We were missing that ⁓ presence, the one that could help us connect the ball. Now, again, we're not going to harp too much on last week. We only had 10 players. What's done is done. Let's talk about the good thing and how the summit has set up their midfield so far. They have some genuinely good pieces, ⁓ they've needed someone. who can control the tempo, who can grind through a difficult 10 minutes in the middle of a match without the team losing its structure. Sheehan is that player. She's been doing it at the highest level for five years now. And the Summit will inherit both players existing contracts. Ryan is signed through 2027 while Sheehan runs through 2026 with a mutual option for 2027. You're probably saying, okay, well, what did we pay? to get these two. What was the transfer fee? $800,000 in intra-league transfer funds, 200,000 in expansion allocation money, with up to 100,000 in additional conditionals, plus a sell-on fee. Houston also sent 150,000 in regular allocation money back to Denver, making it net around 850,000 total, guaranteed for both players. That's a lot of money. Is it worth it? Yeah, I think it is worth it because you're not just buying two players, you're buying championship pedigree, US women's national team credibility and roster depth all in one move. For a club that plays its home opener in eight days, that's huge. Now let's talk about Yuzuki Yamamoto because this one... I wasn't, I was surprised about it. It caught me a little, and it was announced first. So if you haven't heard of her yet, that's totally okay. You're about to. Yamamoto is 23 years old. She joins the summit from the WE League champions, Tokyo Belzea, she was named league MVP after scoring eight goals in 22 appearances. the WE League is Japan's women's league and she just won it and was the best player in it. She's also actively playing in Women's Asia Cup right now with Japan. So she'll join Denver ⁓ once that is over and has signed a two-year contract through 2027 with a mutual option through 2028. Now I want to take a second here and give some context on the WE League because I think it's important. Japan's top women's division is ⁓ of the strongest domestic competitions outside of Europe and the NWSL. The technical quality is high. The tactical sophistication is high. Players who come out of that system, especially players who are starting at 23 years old, are not adjusting from some lower level league. They're coming from a serious environment. to NWSL is very real, ⁓ but not dramatic for some people that are coming from, say, the WE League or ⁓ coming over Europe. Yamamoto represented Japan at the U-17 Women's World Cup in 2018 and the FIFA U-20 Women's World Cup in 2022, where she helped Japan finish as runners up while recording three goals and three assists. She has been playing in big international moments since she was a teenager. She's 23 now. The ceiling on this player is genuinely exciting. You might say, OK, well, Kate? What kind of player is she? It sounds like she scores a lot of goals. And Denver's own GM described her as someone with tremendous upside who can play on both sides of the ball. So she is a forward who works defensively, who can operate in tight spaces, who's dangerous in the final third. She is not just a goal scorer. She does score goals. She's a press trigger, a creator, a disruptor. Two-way nature is naturally really important in how Nick Cushing wants to play. His team presses, they work, they don't just have pretty attackers who go hide when the other team has the ball. Yamamoto fits that profile to a tee. And the timing of this is important too. She's currently in the semi-finals of the Asia Cup. Depending how far they go, she might not arrive until April. So Denver's gonna have to manage without her for a bit. ⁓ Playing at the highest level, playing with that confidence, you're not getting just a question mark. You're getting a player in form who just won a league title, who's competing internationally. You're getting her at a high point. And she's 23. We're talking about a player who could genuinely be a part of the Denver Summit story for the next several years of her prime. When Lindsay Heaps eventually retires, when this team starts at second or third chapter, Yamamoto could be one of the faces of it. And that's the kind of long range thinking that this front office is showing. So let's zoom out just for a minute because I don't want to just run through resumes here. I want to talk about what these signings actually mean for this team. Denver came into this season With a lot of promise, we were very excited after the preseason, but also came with a lot of questions. The attack looked capable, but unproven at the NWSL level. The midfield had good pieces, but needed a true engine, and the front office was clearly in a win-now mode, which honestly is good. Go for it. You don't typically see that out of expansion teams. These signings answer multiple questions at once. Ryan gives you a proven NWSL scorer, someone who has been in big games, big moments and delivered. She slots into a forward line with Kossler and Brazier and suddenly Denver's attack has genuine depth and quality across three positions. Opponents can't just game plan for one player anymore. You can't just double Brazier and leave Ryan one on one. You can't take away the middle and leave space wide. Every defensive decision against Denver now has a real cost. Sheehan gives our midfield stability, the ability to control games, protect the defense and connect play through the middle. is the kind of player that makes a team harder to beat, ⁓ just be more exciting, but harder to beat. That's a difference. And for an expansion team, harder to beat is actually just as important as being explosive going forward. You need to be able to grind results. You need to be able to draw on the road against a tough opponent when things aren't clicking. Sheehan helps you do that. and Yamamoto. She might not arrive until later on in the season, but she is a long game piece. The player you're signing, not just for 2026, but for the next few years, the one who grows with the club, the one who's still going to be here when a lot of the veterans have moved on. There's something really intentional about that. Denver isn't just trying to be competitive this year. They are trying to build something that lasts. And here's one thing that I keep thinking about. This team already suppressed 50,000 tickets for the home opener on March 28th. Yes, folks, 50,000 of us are coming to see a team that we've never watched play in a competitive match live before. And the front office responded to that energy by making more moves, That is how you build something, not just marketing, not just vibes. actual roster construction that matches the ambition of the fan base and it sends a message to the players already here, Kurtz, Kossler, Pickett, all of them, that the organization is serious, that they're not just here to fill a schedule slot, they are here to compete. The other thing I want to say is this, expansion teams fail when they get too patient. When they say year one is about learning and building the culture, year two is when we will build this, year three is when we'll compete, That's a recipe for losing your best players to free agency, losing your fan base to boredom, and never actually arriving at the thing you promised. Denver isn't doing that. They're arriving now. They're not waiting. Will it all come together perfectly? I mean, who knows? This is still a new team, but there's still chemistry to build, systems to install, moments of figuring it all out. That's real, but the talent level is now genuinely good enough that when things do click, and they will, This team is going to be really fun to watch. If you thought they were fun to watch in preseason, man, just wait. It's just gonna go up from here. All right, that is your bonus episode. Three signings in 24 hours, one week into the season. Yazmeen Ryan, Delanie Sheehan, Yuzuki Yamamoto. I genuinely did not think the summit would make moves like that this fast. There's a game tonight for those of you who are listening on the day that this episode comes out. They're playing the Orlando Pride tonight at 6 p.m. Make sure you tune in. There is a number of watch parties all over Denver. Make sure you head to one of the watch parties. There's some down south, some up north. Find a watch party, join a watch party, and join some Denver Summit fans. Let's get this Summit train rolling. If you're not subscribed to the pod yet, well, what are you waiting for? please do that right now wherever you listen. It takes two seconds and it genuinely helps the show reach more people. And if you want more match previews, if you want start stat breakdowns and all the good stuff in between episodes, head over to the5280pitch.com and be sure to get on the newsletter. You can get special discounts if you're on the newsletter. All right, until next week, we will hopefully not have any more surprise bonus episodes. I hope that you enjoyed this episode as much as I enjoyed creating it. and we'll see you on the next episode of the 5280 pitch Women's Soccer at Altitude.