Each Saturday morning as a young child growing up in San Jose, California, Naomi Girma would show up to the park to play a version of soccer that was “as informal as you can think”, she says now.
The children were divided by the adults into three groups: little, medium, and big. From there, the kids would scrimmage, their voices cutting through the crisp, California air uninterrupted by any formal coaching.
Girma never made it to the big-kids group – which still upsets her, she jokes – but for good reason. By the time she reached third grade, Girma’s talent had become clear. She entered the formal, competitive US youth soccer landscape, ascending from the complicated system that she and her parents learned on the fly to her position today as a budding star for the United States women’s national team.
“I kind of just walked into [soccer], and I’m very grateful I did,” Girma tells the Guardian. “It’s always just been around.”
Girma will most likely play an integral role at center-back for the USA this summer in the team’s bid to win an unprecedented third consecutive World Cup. She only turned 23 last month but has already positioned herself to be one of the next great center-backs for the United States by combining her exceptional one-on-one defending with a calmness on the ball to spark attacks.
Who Girma is today – as a player and a person – was shaped by her formative years growing up in the Bay Area. Her father, a refugee from Ethiopia who arrived in San Francisco in the early 1980s, established those Saturday morning gatherings in the park as the basis of the Maleda Soccer Club, “maleda” meaning “dawn” in one of Ethiopia’s languages.
The purpose was then and is to this day to gather Ethiopian families – tens of thousands of Ethiopians are estimated to live in the Bay Area today – and strengthen community bonds. Those Saturday mornings also served as the dawn of Girma’s soccer career.
“I think it just really made me value community and family,” Girma says. “I feel like that’s really big in Ethiopian culture and not always as big in the American culture, so that was definitely something that my parents wanted to make sure was ingrained in us from a young age.”
Saturdays in the park for Girma soon became weekly jaunts around California. Her mom, who also came to the United States from Ethiopia, would drive the two around in their navy blue 2000 Toyota Camry. Together, they figured out the USA’s complicated pay-to-play youth soccer system in the country’s largest hotbed of talent. For Girma’s mother, who didn’t share a soccer background with her husband, some of the lessons were a little more basic. Explaining the offside rule to her mom was a particular process, Girma recalls.
Those years paved the way for Girma’s path to Stanford University, the prestigious school where she earned nearly perfect grades in symbolic systems – a combination of “mind and machine” in a world of technology and artificial intelligence – before pursuing her master’s degree in management science and engineering.
She captained Stanford’s women’s soccer team to an NCAA national championship in her hometown in 2019. Then came the professional and international opportunities.
Even as the stakes on the field rose, Girma – “Nay,” as most know her – remained grounded. Her joy is unabating, summed up by a beaming smile she carries with her on and off the field.
“I don’t think I’ve met anybody that’s as good as her and doesn’t realize they’re as good as what she is,” says Casey Stoney, Girma’s head coach at the National Women’s Soccer League’s San Diego Wave FC. “She’s so humble. Humility is a big thing for her but I’m trying to get her to realize how good she is at the same time, so she plays with that confidence every single week.”
Stoney was adamant with her team’s management that the Wave use the top pick in the 2022 draft on Girma. Most players are either good defenders or can distribute the ball. Girma does both, Stoney said recently. Stoney would know, having played for England as a defender at three World Cups.
“I wasn’t half as good as what [Girma] is and can be,” Stoney said recently. Stoney was speaking about Girma in response to the club announcing a long-term contract extension for the defender that will keep her in San Diego through 2026.
It doesn’t take long to recognize Girma’s unique skills in the position. Less than five minutes into the match against Jamaica at World Cup qualifying last year, Girma hit a diagonal ball to Sophia Smith, who brilliantly beat her defender to open the scoring for the United States.
Girma attributes her ability on the ball to spending most of her youth career as a central midfielder. She was converted to a center-back with the USA’s youth national teams in her early teens.
“Hitting any and every type of ball: whipping it, hitting it over,” Girma says of her strengths before stopping herself to say that she must still improve this skill, among another 10 or so on her list. “I think having that from a center-back is so dangerous because you never know what to expect when the team is building out and that sets up the midfielders and forwards to be even more dangerous and have more time.”
Last season, Girma was named the NWSL Rookie of the Year and Defender of the Year while finishing as a finalist for MVP. She was integral to the success of a San Diego team that gave up the second-fewest goals in the league and sat atop the table for half the season. Girma did that in an even larger role than expected after 2019 World Cup champion center-back Abby Dahlkemper missed most of the year due to injuries. Girma admits that her comfort zone was stretched.
“I think it was me finding my voice and then kind of being put in a position where I had to find my voice and I had to be a leader in that role as the season progressed,” she says. “It only pushed me more.”
A similar situation is now playing out at the international level. United States captain Becky Sauerbrunn, the center-back who anchored the team’s 2015 and 2019 triumphs, will miss this World Cup due to a foot injury. The news was confirmed only in mid-June, adding to a long list of major injuries for the USA.
Previously, Girma was competing for a starting role alongside Sauerbrunn. Dahlkemper’s ongoing absence meant the USA had a particular need for a player capable of accurate, long-range distribution, a trademark of Dahlkemper at her best.
Now, given Sauerbrunn’s injury, Girma is almost certainly a starter who must once again assume a leadership role. Girma and Alana Cook, the other regular center-back in the regular rotation, have a combined 41 caps; Sauerbrunn has 216.
USA head coach Vlatko Andonovski must now figure out a new plan. Girma and Cook make sense to pair together, although Julie Ertz could move back from a holding midfield role to center-back, where she played at the 2015 World Cup.
Andonovski was also a defender as a player and knows that his young center-backs are still in the nascent stages of their careers. Mistakes are to be expected, he says. Girma is “one of those special players” who makes fewer errors than most – but she will still make them.
“In order to become a good defender, unfortunately, you go through a few mistakes and sometimes it costs you a lot and sometimes it doesn’t,” Andonovski says. “With Naomi, we see potential, and we understand that she will make mistakes in the stage that she’s at and we’re OK with that and we will support her regardless, because we know she’s going to be one of the most important players on this team.”
It is possible that three of the four USA starters in defense will be playing in their first major international tournament. How they perform under their greatest stress test to date will go a long way in determining the team’s success. Girma plays with a noticeable calmness on the field, a reflection of her internal state.
“I try to keep a level head during the game,” she says. “I think that helps me perform better. I think it’s calm in my head, too.”
Keeping perspective is important to Girma, her past serving as motivation for her present. There are her parents and her older brother, who she still often sees thanks to San Diego’s proximity to home. There is the best friend she lost in early 2022, former Stanford teammate and goalkeeper Katie Meyer, who was found dead in her dorm room in what was ruled a suicide.
“My parents came over here from Ethiopia and sacrificed a lot for me to be in this position,” Girma said. “All of the work that they’ve put in and their support and their love is a big driver for me.
“And my best friend passed away last year, Katie. Playing for her, honoring her: she was one of the most competitive people, loved soccer. I think just continuing her legacy is a big thing for me.”
Next in that process is Girma’s first senior World Cup. Millions of eyeballs on a game in Auckland, New Zealand – or Sydney, Australia, should the United States make it to the final – is about as far away from a quiet park in San Jose, California, as Girma could get.
Still, the game is fun. She is still Nay. And she still holds with her the joy of those Saturday-morning kickarounds – this time, finally, with the big kids.