In their 2016 season opener, Sky Blue FC was the underdog. The team had seen a massive personnel turnover in the offseason, from bench players all the way up to the head coach. Their starting lineup included six players making their National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL) debuts, including two players who came to the team through open tryouts and two who were returning to the sport after multi-year absences. They were playing at Memorial Stadium, where Seattle Reign FC had never been beaten. By all means, Sky Blue was not supposed to win that game.
But no one told Kelly Conheeney that.
In the 67th minute, the score tied at one goal apiece, Taylor Lytle chipped the ball just over the reach of Reign goalkeeper Hope Solo and Conheeney made a run towards goal. As Solo just managed to get her fingertips on the ball, Conheeney realized she might have overrun it, but with a back-heel flick, she sent the ball into the back of the net, scoring what would ultimately be the game winner.
As she ran to celebrate with her teammates, Conheeney was celebrating more than just a goal. She was celebrating her comeback to the sport she had loved ever since she was a little girl.
Growing up in Ridgewood, New Jersey, Conheeney, 25, said soccer was her life. She started playing the game when she was eight years old on a team put together by her dad, John.
"He coached for my team and he put all of my best friends on the team, even if they didn't know how to kick a soccer ball," Conheeney laughed. "As a kid, I loved it."
Even from an early age, Conheeney dreamed of one day playing professional soccer, even though there was no women’s professional league in existence yet.
"For me when I was little, it was the whole national team, like Brandi Chastain, Mia Hamm and Kristine Lilly. You know, those are the players that I wanted to be like," she said.
It was the ambition to be like the best that helped Conheeney progress as a player. Despite her first team not being very good, Conheeney continued to play for various club teams as she grew older and stronger as a player. She was picked up by the Americans, the first team where she said she started getting good as a soccer player.
To say that Conheeney was good would be an understatement.
In her four years at Ridgewood High School, Conheeney scored 78 goals and tallied 52 assists. She held the records for the fourth-highest in goals scored, second-highest in assists and fourth-highest in points for her alma mater. She also served as captain her junior and seniors years and was named Bergen County Player of the Year as a senior.
At the same time, Conheeney helped lead her club team, the Montclair Aristocats, to three state championships, won a national championship with the New Jersey Olympic Development Program (ODP) team in 2007 and was a national finalist with the team in 2008. She also traveled to Russia to play in a tournament with the ODP Region I team in 2009, but the team lost in the finals to the Chinese Under-19 Women’s National Team.
"I was just so focused, I was so tunnel-visioned on soccer and getting to the highest level," Conheeney said.
That dedication at the high school, club and youth international levels took her to Virginia Tech, where she immediately became an impact player. In her first three years with the Hokies, she started all 68 games she played in, scored 26 goals and had 23 assists. She finished out her junior year leading the team in points, goals, shots and game-winners.
In 2012, after her junior year at Virginia Tech, Conheeney took a step closer to achieving her dreams of playing professionally when she joined the Ottawa Fury Women in the United Soccer League’s W-League, the second tier of women’s soccer in North America at the time. The Fury made it to the league championship that year, and it was Conheeney’s penalty kick in the fifth round of a shootout that clinched the first ever league title for her team.
It would also be the last goal that Conheeney would score before being sidelined from the game for several years.
In just the fourth game of her senior year at Virginia Tech, Conheeney suffered a concussion that was severe enough to sideline her for the rest of the season. Although she was medically redshirted to preserve her final year of eligibility, she had unknowingly already played the last game of her collegiate career.
And at the time, Conheeney did not know if she would ever play soccer again.
After a short break after graduation, Conheeney decided she wanted to continue working with soccer while also traveling the world. She began working with Coaches Across Continents, a non-profit organization that uses soccer to educate residents of third-world countries.
"It was incredible because for me, it was a different approach to soccer. It was different in a lot of ways, but for me, it's always been so competitive. Even growing up, everything was a competition," she said. "But with Coaches Across Continents, it doesn't matter who wins. You're learning things that are important about soccer, but also about more things that are important about life."
Conheeney worked with the organization for a year, traveling to 13 different countries on three different continents. She said the experience was not only educational for the people they reached through the program, but for her as well.
"I was learning how soccer really influences that world. It's just everywhere in the world. You can reach people through the game because everyone loves the game," she said.
Despite her injuries, that love of the game never died within Conheeney.
"I'm the happiest when I'm on the field and I'm expressing myself in the best way I possibly can. I just feel so, when I'm playing my best and I'm out there, I'm free. And I think that there are so many things, there's just so much that you can learn from the game, and there's just so far that you can just go. There's no limit. It's like you're pushing yourself as far as you want to and you're becoming the best version of yourself off the field because of the person that you're making yourself on the field," she said, her voice warm with affection of the sport around which so much of her life has revolved.
(Jane Gershovich, ISI Photos)
Unable to stay away from the game for long, Conheeney began training with Kazbeck Tambi, a renowned coach for World Class FC in New Jersey. Tambi worked with Conheeney on getting back into playing shape, footwork and other skills necessary of a top-level soccer player.
As she made sure her body was in playing shape again, she also had to make sure her brain was going to be in playing shape as well. In February of this year, Conheeney went to the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center for more information about her condition. What the doctors told her there completely changed her outlook on returning to the game.
"It’s a different approach. Instead of resting, the way these issues are fixed is by training and by pushing yourself. It's like a muscle and you're strengthening the muscle, so by pushing yourself on the field, if you're getting a headache, the pain actually isn't bad. It means that, yeah maybe you've pushed yourself a little bit too hard and you can rest, but you're actually helping yourself heal," she explained. "I've never been to doctors that knew so much about it, that were so willing to help to get me back onto the field. They basically told me, ‘You can get back out on the field. You're good to go.’"
With the permission to return to the sport she loved so much, Conheeney decided to give her dreams of playing professionally another shot. Just a few weeks after being medically cleared to play competitively again, Conheeney attended Sky Blue’s open tryouts.
"I went in with a very open mind. I mean, I was out of the game for three years, seven months, so I was like, ‘If this doesn't work out, it's not meant to be and I'm not meant to play soccer and there are other things out there for me,’" Conheeney said.
Her goal was to just go out and have fun, enjoying the experience of playing soccer competitively again, but after so much time away, the rust was evident. According to Conheeney, between that and the nerves, she almost did not receive a call back for the second day of tryouts.
"Kelly showed up the first day of tryouts, and there were 65 players there. For every five bad moments she had, she would have one incredible moment of class. It struck us that there was something there as these moments began to happen more often. We saw enough where she squeezed through to the second day, and her class slowly began to make itself more prevalent on that second day," Head Coach Christy Holly said.
Not only did her talent earn her a call back the next day of open tryouts, but it eventually earned her an invitation to the team’s preseason camp. There she continued to impress Holly and the rest of the coaching staff, and she went on to make the final 20-woman roster for the 2016 NWSL season.
"We are ecstatic that we were able to get her through that process and into camp. Ever since that point, she has continued to develop and become an instrumental part of our success as a club," Holly said.
After three years and seven months away from the game that was once her life, Kelly Conheeney returned to the pitch, starting in her professional debut with Sky Blue FC. And it was in her debut that Conheeney scored the game winner to put Sky Blue on top of Seattle Reign, handing them their first ever loss at Memorial Stadium.
As she scored the first goal of her professional career, she could not help but think back to her last goal, the championship-winning penalty kick for the Ottawa Fury.
"I would say there's no better feeling than scoring a goal, whatever kind of goal it is, but those are special because they sit with you," she said, her voice slightly quivering with emotion. "You remember goals. You don't particularly remember games, but you remember goals. And the feelings that just, they make you feel good. They're rewarding and they make you feel like your work is worth it. Just to step on the field again and for that to be my first game back, it's just…I couldn't have written it any better."