Lindsey Heaps Is Here: Denver Summit FC's # 10

Katie: to to know a as I was evaluating ⁓ and pursuing this job opportunity with Rob, ⁓ my ma mind immediately went to the fact that Lindsay would be a perfect fit if it was a good fit for her. So this was something in, you know well over a year ago that was in my mind and and everybody else's mind too. So you know from there it was a process. ⁓ I mean, first and foremost, it changes the mentality of the group, or it should impact and improve the mentality of the group when you put in a a world-class player, a winner, and a national team captain, it gives us ⁓ definitely an edge. and we've seen that in the practices over the last three days. Tactically, it gives us so much more opportunity. Lindsay can play deeper, she can play in the 10, she's

Kate Hanson: Lindsay Heaps is in the building. Practice kit, cleats, summit crest on her chest, on a training field in Centennial, Colorado. Folks, the day has finally arrived.

Katie: really effective in the box from speaking to her if she has a real desire to get close to the goal ⁓ and be in the box and score goals and be a a high impact player for us and the difference. So it just gives us opportunity and you know we've got a lot of wide players in the sense of the way we play our full backs and the likes of Ali and you know Yahs. But I've worked with Tash before as well and Tash has the ability to play off the side. We could play Tash maybe and Lindsay in between. I don't want to give too much away. I mean there's a few cameras here, right? Maybe we've got a few games to play. So We needed to educate her and talk with her about the the and ⁓ what were doing, what we were up to and ⁓ and answer questions and then certainly work with Leon. So it was it was ⁓ many but ⁓ well worth it. And ⁓ you I think that ⁓ having knowing this was going to happen. ⁓

Kate Hanson: And this isn't just anybody. 176 caps for the United States, 40 international goals, a World Cup, an Olympic gold medal she won wearing the Captain's Armband in every single match, a Champions League trophy, five French League titles, an NWSL championship, and the goal that won it. And the MVP Award from that game. that's yours.

Katie: Yeah, it just gives us a lot of flexibility tactically. Approximately six months ago has been fantastic. I think it's been great for the organization. I think it's incredible to add a player like Lindsay in in the middle of the season or after the first third of the season, maybe is a better way.

Kate Hanson: And she's here! She's finally here! We had the opportunity to sit down with Lindsay Heaps on Wednesday. and I want to tell you ⁓ what it's like to watch the American midfielder ⁓ of her generation walk into a conference in the state where her mother taught her to play soccer. ⁓ And she used the word, I also felt this word, but she used the word surreal. Seven weeks ago, she started a Champions League final in Norway. And on Wednesday, she said the strangest part of her life right now is that she gets to drive in her home state of beautiful Colorado to work. This is the 5280 Pitch Women's Soccer at Altitude. I'm Kate Hansen. Today it's just one player, no table talk, no tactics, just Lindsay heaps. and I'm doing this show for three of you. Yes, this is for the person that is brand new. If the summit is your first ever soccer team you've ever cared about, ⁓ and you know the Lindsay Heaps because it's on the back of the jersey, or you see a ton of them running around the stadium, this episode is for you. And I'm gonna tell you exactly who Denver just got, and I don't think that you're gonna believe some of it. This episode is also for the person who has watched the national team for ten years and you're sitting there like, Kate, I know. She's the captain. I know. Trust me, stay with me, because think even you are going to learn something about Denver's newest captain. And The third person that this episode is for. If you're somewhere in the middle, if you know she's great, but you couldn't tell me a ton of stuff about here or why we're all so excited. ⁓ this one's really great for you too, because the thing that is about to happen at Centennial Stadium on the 18th of July, it's not just a signing, it's not just a transaction. She's not just some free agent pickup that came over from Leon. She is a Colorado kid who left at 18, went and conquered the entire sport. and came home. Let's start with what that means. Obviously you guys can tell I'm excited. Deep breath, all of us. Here is the resume, and I'm going to read it slowly because it it deserves that. So Lindsay Heaps has 176 caps for the United States women's national team, 40 international goals, 38 assists. She has scored for her country in 12 consecutive calendar years. Every year since 2015. She is the seventh player in the history of the program to score 10 or more straight years. And I want you to hear who the other six are. Mia Ham, Abby Wombach, Carly Lloyd, Tiffany Milbrit, Shannon Box, and my daughter's favorite, Alex Morgan. That's it. That is the list. Those are the immortals and she is on it. She won the World Cup in 2019, scored the opener against Thailand, and the semifinal against England. She put Alex Morgan through for the goal that sent the United States to the final. Paris, 2024, she captained the United States in all six matches at the Olympics. Yes, every single one. She beat Brazil, 1-0 in the final, gold medal. Her club career, she's won the UEFA Champions League with Lyon in 2022. Seven American women have ever lifted that trophy. Seven. In the history of the competition. ⁓ is one of them, and not one of the seven has done it twice. She has five French league titles, ⁓ And this is the season twenty five, twenty six, the League Cup. And before Leon, she was in Portland. She was there for six seasons, the SHIELD in her very first year, then 2017, the NWSL Championship Game against North Carolina. One nothing, and the only goal of the match is you guessed it, folks, hers. She was named MVP of the championship game. The next year in twenty eighteen, she's the MVP of the entire league. Best eleven. I'm pausing here so you guys can really understand the type of player that Lindsay Heaps is. And we're gonna talk about more than what a a lot of her awards are. We're gonna talk about how she actually plays. Because if you're new here, you deserve to know what you're watching. So I'm putting this chart up. If you're on YouTube, look at it. If you're driving, just listen. I'm gonna walk you through the whole thing. it's from Mob. They call it player traits, and it's simpler than it looks. They take every midfielder in comparable leagues, they adjust everything to a per 90 minute basis so playing time ⁓ doesn't skew it. use the last 365 days and then they rank you against your positional peers. That's that's how this works. So ⁓ if you're in 90th percentile at something, it means you do that better than 90% of the midfielders that you are being. Compared to. There's six categories here. This is Lindsay Heaps. Touches ninety-fifth percentile. attempts ninety-second. Aerial duels won, ninety-second, goals, chances created, sixty-seventh, Now look at that again and tell me what you see. Because that is not the shape of a midfielder. That is the shape of a forward who happens to line up in the midfield. Ninety-fifth percentile touches means the ball goes through her. All of it. She is the outlet. She is the pivot, she is the reset. In her league minutes in France this past season, she averaged 85 touches per ninety. 92nd percentile shot attempts. 85th percentile in goal. She scored half a goal every 90 minutes that she was on field. And 92nd percentile in the air. she's five foot nine, ten of her twenty-four shots this season were headers. Nearly forty-two percent of everything she hit, well, she hit with her head. She is a set piece weapon ⁓ before she anything else. We have that missing piece. We finally found that centerpiece of the puzzle that's just been evading us. Lindsay Heaps is not a destroyer. She has never been. She is a sword, not a shield. And Denver already brought the shield. Devin Lynch has spent the entire season sitting at the base of that midfield doing exactly that work. So what you're getting is a number 10 who arrives in the box, shoots from anywhere, and wins everything in the air, playing in front of a 20-year-old Who screens the back four? Watch one of the things I want us all to watch with Lindsay is h at the set pieces. And Kaylee Kurtz spoke with media last week and said she was excited to have Lindsay here because she's so good at set pieces. Abby Smith was on the podcast during the June break. One of the things she talked about was how Lindsay Heaps is going to help with the set pieces. Watch for her arriving at the back post while a center back stands there counting the wrong bodies. You'll see it inside of four minutes. I mean, look, I do this for a living. I sit in press conferences, I've been around this team since the beginning, and I sat there on Wednesday and I thought, this is one of the greatest American soccer players who has ever lived, and she is going to play. Here in Colorado. Emma Hayes, the head coach of the US women's national team, said it when she came out to Dick Sporting Goods Park to watch one of the Denver Summit games. She said, Lindsay's no passenger ever. That is what Denver has. So where does Lindsay Heap come from? Golden, Colorado, just 15 miles west of downtown Denver. She's born in May 1994. And she does not want to play soccer. I'm serious. Shocking, right? The story she told on Wednesday, and I've heard versions of it before, but never from her, never like this, is that she would not play soccer unless her mom coached her. So I hope all the moms listening right now got a little warm heart. Her mom coached her. Linda Heaps had never coached soccer. She had a copy of Coaching for Dummies in the living room. Lindsay found it. But Linda, Lindsay's mom, coached her for six or seven years. And then when Lindsay moved to club soccer, Linda became the team manager at the Rush where Lindsay played Colorado Rush so she could travel with Lindsay and the team. Linda has been there for every step, all of that. I want you to listen to l how Lindsay talks about it. She said she could talk about that woman for days and you could tell. By thirteen, Lindsay is at Colorado Rush and the whole country knows her name. Summer of twenty twelve, before everything changes, she plays three games for the rush in the old USL Women's League. Three games, two goals, one of them is past none other than Hope Solo. the best goalkeeper in the world at the time, ⁓ playing for Megan Rapino was watching. Rapino called her one hell of a player. She then graduates from Golden High School. ESPN has her ranked as the number one college prospect in the country. she has a scholarship offer to North Carolina. Yes, the same North Carolina that produced me a ham. And in July of twenty twelve, at eighteen years old, she turns it down and signs a six-figure professional contract. with Paris Saint Germain. And she is the first American woman to ever do that, to skip college entirely and go straight into the professional game. And she didn't just turn pro, she got on the plane and left the country to do it at a time when American national team players simply did not play in Europe. Nobody had done it. There was no map. She drew it. And I need you to understand that it did not go, it wasn't all sunshine and rainbows. Unfortunately, Lindsay blew out her knee. She had to have surgery. It cost her the under twenty World Cup. She made her first appearance for the senior national team at 18 years old, March of 2013, against China, and then nothing. Two caps that whole year. ⁓ Zero in 2014. bummer, right? But she was she was the most gifted young player this country had ever produced. ⁓ was scoring goals for fun in the best league in Europe, ⁓ for two years the US phone did not ring. So she stayed. She kept going anyway. And then she came back and made herself impossible to leave out. She started 2016 with six career caps and played 24 games for the United States that year. Six caps in four years. Twenty-four games in one. That's determination. That is the engine that is now in the Denver Summit building. ⁓ And five years later, Mallory Swanson decided to skip college too, and before she did, she picked up the phone and called Lindsay Heaps, well, Lindsay Haran at the time, and she asked her how. Now Mallory Swanson She's also a Colorado gal. She played here in the Colorado Club system. If you did not know, fun fact. And then back in Paris, man, Lindsay is just tearing it up. 20 goals in 25 matches against all competitions. is determination and that's that kid from Golden. And here's the part I want every single Summit fan to sit with. Lindsay Heaps did not have to come here. She is the captain of the United States. She was at Lyon, the biggest women's club on the planet, eight European titles, nineteen French championships. She could've stayed there. She could have gone to Barcelona or Arsenal or Chelsea. She could have picked any of the 16 clubs in this league, maybe San Diego Wave, where her husband works. I I mean, and every one of them would have cleared their books to sign her. And Lindsay picked the newest one, the one that had never played a game. Kurt Johnson has told this story publicly, and it kills me every time. He ran into her at a national team game against Ireland. before he had even taken the GM job here in Denver. And what he was already thinking was that Lindsay would be the first person that he would call. Before he had the job. So when he when he got the job, he called. He worked through Leon to s to get permission to speak to her and her agent. It picked up STEAM in the fall, announced in January, ⁓ signed through 2029. he wanted her. Everybody wanted her. The question is why she said yes, and she has been unbelievably specific about it. The ownership group and what they have done for this club. The Common Spirit Performance Center. She says you cannot be mad about coming into work in that building, and she's not being polite. The facility is amazing. And Nick Cushing, who coached at Manchester City Women and New York City FC, and whose ideas about football, she said were a part a huge part of her decision. She's 32 years old with a World Cup, an Olympic gold medal, and a Champions League. She chose Denver because she thought this coach could still teach her something. Look at what she was actually evaluating. Rob Cohen's ownership group, investors that include Michaela Schiffram, Peyton Manning, a club that built a world class performance center before it been it finished building the stadium. One of the reporters asked her what's left for her to win and what keeps her motivated. Listen to what she says about this club. I love Colorado too, Lindsay. This is the place that I want to be. Denver, she looked at everything and she picked us. And I'll tell you what else she looked at. Sixty-three thousand and four, yes, can't forget those four, people at Empower Field on March 28th. The biggest crowd in the history of this league by more than 20,000. She was overseas and she saw that. She said this week that the support here in Colorado is immense and that every time she comes back to play at Dick's with the national team, she feels it. She said she handed out something like fifty tickets to friends and family for the Japan match in April. And on July 3rd, when Denver hosted Kansas City, she was in the stands. Not not on the roster yet, just watching, and she looked around and saw the heaps jerseys everywhere. She said I love this joke. She she said her husband thought they were all for him. God bless him. But folks, Denver, you did that before she has ever kicked a ball a Denver Summit player She's only been in the building for three days. Well, four including today. And and here's here's Nick Cushing on Wednesday talking about it. He said the last three days have confirmed that the best talent in the world is special. And that Lindsay is definitely definitely special. And then he said that it changes the entire mentality of this group. She said her job is to raise a standard, not just to fit in, to raise it. She said the veterans, the experienced players, the best players on the team, that's what they're for. She said she knows the staff expects that of her, no matter what, and that she expects it of herself every single day. She also said something I keep thinking about. She said, I'm not old, but I am older. I can still learn, I can still grow as a player, and it's good for the younger players to see that. That is the person walking into the locker room with the rookies in it. Devin Lynch, 20 years old. Yuna, a rookie. Natalie Means, they get to spend the next four years around her. Nick Cushing has spent half a season building in midfield with a hole right in the middle of it. ⁓ But on the eighteenth of July, that hole closes and closes with the captain of the United States women's national team. And here's the thing about the league she's walking back into. She hasn't played a minute in the NWSL 2021. So ⁓ asked her on Wednesday, What's the biggest change in the NWSL since she left? The players, the investment? And here's what she said. the most competitive league in the world. That's coming from a woman who just spent four and a half years Leon. She didn't have to say that. The NWSL is becoming one of the premier leagues in the world for women's soccer. Folks, if you're new to the NWSL, hop on the summit train. Plenty of room, all aboard. I want you to think about what she said for a second. When she was 18, this country could not offer her a professional career worth taking. She had to fly to France to have one. Fourteen years later, she's calling the NWSL the best league on earth, and she came home to play in it. This league has grown up, Now, there's been a lot of talk about the armband. Janine Saunas has been wearing it. Kurt Johnson has said publicly that the expectation is that Heaps wears it. And we had the difficult question about who wears the armband? What happened to Janine Songs? Because Janine has been the captain. She's from Highlands Ranch, Colorado, ⁓ caps for Canada. She played for Nick Cushing Manchester City. She was co-captain at Racing Louisville, and she made the NWSL Best 11. She's had a great year, and she's been the captain for the first half of the season. Janine started the group chat, for heaven's sake. Janine built this room from nothing. Heap's answer. ⁓ to the question about the armband. Might have been the best thing that she said all afternoon. She's been in the building for three and she already knows who she can ask. She said it's partnership. She said Janine has grown into a leader she has ⁓ never seen before. ⁓ And she said she's proud of her. That's not a press conference answer, guys. that's an answer from the heart. Janine and Lindsay have known each other for years. They grew up on rival clubs with Rush and Rael, ⁓ and heaps about that rivalry on Wednesday like it was one of the greatest things that ever happened to her. Two Colorado kids, two captains, one from Golden, one from Highlands Ranch, both of them wearing Evergreen. ⁓ In the state where they learned the game. Come on. Twenty years ago they were kids on opposite sidelines on the same Colorado rivalry, rush, real, and neither one of them had a professional team here to dream about. Not in this state, not for women. It's not a coincidence and it's not just a marketing angle. Kirk Johnson said he wanted Colorado soccer ⁓ in the of this team. So here's where we are. Sunday, five o'clock, Houston Dash at Dick Sporting Goods Park. That is the last one at Dick Sporting Goods Park. match from here on out will be at Centennial Stadium. And if you wanna know more about the Dash preview, I already talked about it on the Tuesday episode, but I wanted to share with you ⁓ of the excitement that we have for Lindsay. She'll play on the eighteenth against her former team at Portland, who's sitting at the top of the table. But until then, on Sunday she'll be in the stands She's gonna be doing a halftime interview on the field. So if you're not planning on going to the game, we'll get your tickets now. And the summit is also asking fans to submit their questions. Until then, that's the most we're gonna see of Lindsay Heaps until she takes the field on July 18th. Against, yes, like I said, Portland. Yes. The club where she won a championship and scored the goal to win the game. Six seasons of her life, her first NWSL minutes since twenty twenty one. Opening the brand new stadium against the club that helped make her and on the other side of the field. Is Sophia Wilson. ⁓ native ⁓ from Windsor, Colorado. She has 50 goals in this league. Somebody in a marketing department is to take credit for all this. And they should not, because nobody could have written it any better. ⁓ I will also say this: Portland leads the entire league in goals scored. are coming to Colorado to ruin the party in front of probably one of the most excited crowds we will ever see at Centennial Stadium. But that's the point, right? You don't open the stadium against a team that you're supposed to beat against a boring game. And one of the reporters asked her when it's going to really set in that she's here, when it's going to feel real. And she said, probably stepping out for that first game, which of course like happens to be against Portland. And then she said something else. She said her family hasn't been able to be at nearly as many of her games as they wanted over all these years. Because she's been playing overseas. And now they can be at every home game. So picture this with me. July eighteenth, noon, it's gonna be a hot one. A stadium that didn't exist nine months ago. Linda Heaps, the woman with the coaching for dummies book in her living room, who coached her daughter because her daughter wouldn't play otherwise, who drove her everywhere while her husband traveled, who became the team manager just so she wouldn't miss a trip. Linda Heaps is going to sit in that stadium and watch her kid captain a professional soccer team. in Colorado. years ago that girl got on a plane to Paris because there was nothing for her here. Now there's a club, ⁓ a stadium, there's a league she calls the best in the world. and a whole state that's excited for women's soccer. Alright, folks, that's the show. This has been the Pitch Women's Soccer at Altitude. ⁓ this is your first episode because ⁓ number 10, yes, Lindsay Heaps, well, welcome. Stay. I'm at every every press conference, every practice availability, and I will absolutely be at Centennial Stadium on the 18th, If you want more Denver Summit. Head on over to fifty two eighty pitch.com. sign up for the newsletter, you get special discounts on merch, get the latest news, ⁓ and make sure you subscribe to show wherever you're listening. And if this one got you, send it to whoever ⁓ bought a Heaps jersey. Sunday it's In ten days, it's Portland. ⁓ I'm Kate Hansen. This is the eighty pitch, women's soccer at altitude.