She’d dreamed about the moment since she was 12. On Feb. 20, it became reality.
From 27 yards out, Ally Sentnor launched what would be her first-ever goal for the U.S. women’s national team in her first-ever start.
Though normally not one to celebrate, Sentnor lifted her arms high over her head like Rocky Balboa before teammate Sam Coffey lifted her up in a hug and the rest of the U.S. squad swarmed the two of them.
Sentnor’s goal came against Colombia in the U.S. team‘s opening match of the 2025 SheBelieves Cup — just two days after Sentnor turned 21.
Prior to the match, Sentnor had only played eight minutes for the senior national team across two appearances in November and December.
The Utah Royals midfielder and forward described the moment to the Deseret News earlier this month as “surreal” and the highlight of her young professional career.
“That is every girl’s dream and something I’ve literally dreamt about since I was 12, so for it to actually happen, it still hasn’t sank in that like that is me now,” she said.
Sentnor admits she watched the highlight “a bunch of times the next day” and had to ask herself, “Did I really do that?”
The goal earned her shoutouts from NWSL commissioner Jessica Berman and former men’s and women’s national team players on X.
It was the latest in a line of high-profile achievements for Sentnor, who only turned pro last year.
Over the course of 14 months, Sentnor went from being drafted first overall in the NWSL draft by the Royals, to captaining the U.S. team in the U-20 World Cup, to winning the 2024 U.S. Soccer Young Female Player of the Year award to now scoring and starting for the senior national team.
“It’s crazy to think that all happened in a short period of time. It feels like it’s been a lot longer, but I think it’s a testament to the environments that I’ve been in, the people around me, the people helping me to grow every single day,” Sentnor said.
Sentnor’s SheBelieves performance begs the question, could one of soccer’s next great stars and the future face of the USWNT be found in Utah?
The making of a soccer star
Sentnor has come a long way since she first started playing soccer at age four in her hometown of Hanson, Massachusetts, which has a population of roughly 10,000.
By age 10 or 12, Sentnor knew she loved soccer and wanted to seriously pursue it. She was skipping other activities in order to play and practice.
She was playing club soccer for South Shore Select while attending Thayer Academy when she caught the attention of Anson Dorrance, the then-head coach at the University of North Carolina.
“Everyone was interested in her, and so, we just felt very fortunate to end up recruiting her to come to play for us at UNC. But I just loved everything about her game and also her personality. She was someone that loved the ball and loved the game and loved everything about the process of becoming a great player,” Dorrance said.
Sentnor’s time at UNC didn’t start off as planned. She left Thayer Academy a year early to begin her collegiate career, but in her first college scrimmage, she tore her ACL and then missed the entire season.
“It was super unfortunate,” Sentnor said. “But I learned a ton about myself — what I like to do outside of soccer, how to be a good teammate — and I think it was one of the hardest things I’ve been through mentally as well as physically, but more mentally because soccer is part of my everyday and it’s something I use as a release for a lot of things, and I wasn’t able to do that."
Dorrance remembers how hard Sentnor was willing to work.
He described presenting an idea for a four-day break to Sentnor and the rest of the team’s leadership council in the spring of 2023. The older players on the council wanted the time off, but Sentnor, who was just a sophomore, piped up and said she wanted to train.
Dorrance called it his “Ally Sentnor moment.”
“All of a sudden I was thinking, ‘That’s it. She’s going to make it at the highest level.' Because when the majority of my leadership wants to go to Cabo ... this little kid wanted to become the best she could be,” he said.
Dorrance knows a thing or two about making it in soccer, having coached some of the best players in the world, including former and current U.S. national team players Mia Hamm, Kristine Lilly, Carla Overbeck, Cindy Parlow Cone, Heather O’Reilly, Tobin Heath and Crystal Dunn.
That leadership council meeting was just one of the many times Dorrance saw Sentnor’s commitment to greatness. It was like when he famously discovered a young Hamm training alone on a cold February morning in Chapel Hill.
If recent success is any indication, Dorrance appears to be right about Sentnor, and the Utah Royals seem to agree.
The Utah Royals' rising star
Although she had two more years of collegiate eligibility, Sentnor chose to enter the NWSL draft in 2024 to begin her professional career.
“I was just ready for a new environment that was going to push me in all levels of my life, and I always kind of want to be in an uncomfortable environment that I’m continuing to grow in and continuing to make my own,” Sentnor said.
As one of the NWSL’s two new expansion teams, the Utah Royals owned the first overall pick in the draft and used it to select Sentnor, whom Royals sporting director Kelly Cousins called “a huge piece of our puzzle” late last month when talking to the Deseret News.
“Goalscorers are very hard to find, and Ally showed that ability through college. ... People pay a lot of money for those people. So, even though as young as Ally is, she had those attributes of scoring goals. She was explosive, and I think there was just a lot that we knew that we could work with,” Cousins said.
As a rookie, Sentnor led the Royals in assists with four and finished with three goals, the second most on the team.
She had been the leading scorer before teammate Cloé Lacasse scored a hat trick in the second to last game of the season.
Sentnor also had two goals during the NWSL x Liga MX Femenil Summer Cup that didn’t count towards her regular season stats.
“She’s only been playing professionally for one year right now, almost exactly a year. So I mean, if after one year, you’re able to use your body like this, you’re able to use the technicality of the game like this, I think that’s quite amazing,” Royals head coach Jimmy Coenraets said.
Sentnor’s efforts throughout the season made her a finalist for 2024 NWSL Rookie of the Year award.
“That’s something that works in your advantage, knowing that it only took you 365 days to be good at this. So imagine you get another 365 and another and another, like where could this potentially end?” Coenraets said. “When we look at Ally, we just know how much potential she has, and she’s been showing it all year round.”
Sentnor accomplished all of that while finishing her bachelor’s degree, which included “a lot of early morning classes, lots of just homework on the road and Zooms at breakfast,” she said. Sentnor graduated in December.
Both Cousins and Coenraets believe Sentnor has a high ceiling, with Cousins thinking Sentnor “can be a big fixture for both the Royals and definitely for the national team as well.”
“She could become one of the best players in the world. There’s no doubt about that. She has those attributes that allow players with those attributes to become the best players in the world, and I truly believe that she can be one of those,” Cousins said.
Coenraets said Sentnor could possibly become one of the top five or 10 attacking players in the world.
“I think that should be the goal. But before we get to that, she needs to be a starter at the national team. She needs to be at 90% available for us. She needs to be within the top scorers from her position,” he said.
Making waves for the USWNT
On Nov. 30 in Wembley Stadium, Sentnor entered the U.S. women’s national team’s match against England in the 87th minute — her first cap for the team.
Dorrance, who coached England coach Sarina Wiegman, was at the game as a guest of The Football Association, England’s governing body of the sport.
Afterwards, he thanked U.S. head coach Emma Hayes for subbing Sentnor into the scoreless draw.
He recalled Hayes saying, “I didn’t put her in just to give her a little experience. I put her in because I thought she could help us win.”
Hayes, who this summer coached the U.S. to its first Olympic gold in 12 years, has continued to show trust in the young Sentnor.
After Sentnor’s first start and goal last month, Hayes said Sentnor comes to the team “demonstrating the qualities you need to be at this level.”
“I thought she was tenacious on both sides of the ball. For a young player, of course, you still got a lot to learn, but I thought it was a very strong performance,” Hayes said.
In the U.S. team‘s last two games of the SheBelieves Cup, Sentnor came in as a second half sub against Australia contributing with an assist that was almost a goal of her own.
She followed that performance up with a start in the tournament final.
Sentnor gave the U.S. its only goal of the match, an equalizer in the 14th minute. She was subbed off at the half and the U.S. fell to Japan and Sentnor’s Royals teammate Mina Tanaka 2-1.
Cousins said SheBelieves was “just a glimpse ... of what (Sentnor’s) future is about.” Dorrance said the “sky’s the limit” for his former player.
“Just seeing the investment that Emma Hayes is making in her, you don’t invest in a player at that level with a tough game like Colombia, unless you as a coach feel the kid has the potential to impact the United States,” Dorrance said.
Two days after Sentnor’s first start and goal, the Deseret News asked Hayes about Sentnor and her future role with the team.
Hayes described Sentnor as an “extremely diligent learner” and “great thinker.”
She acknowledged Sentnor’s attacking abilities, as evidenced by her goalscoring, and also highlighted her 19 pressure regains in the game against Colombia.
Hayes called it “the best counter pressing, back pressing performance from our team since the Olympics.”
“I think she deserves huge credit for the way she’s not afraid to do the dirty work. She’s not afraid to get stuck in. She’s not afraid to come back, and you have to do that to play in this team. That’s a non-negotiable,” she said.
But what of Sentnor’s future with the team?
“She has a nose for being in the right spaces at the right time, and (I’m) very excited to watch her journey grow with us,” Hayes said.
Not declaring Sentnor a future fixture of the team is understandable due to the unpredictability of the sport, the deep talent pool in the U.S. and the fact that Sentnor only had three caps with the team at the time.
But Hayes' response mirrors what she told Sentnor as she made her national team debut in November: “You’re going to have plenty of years of this.”
“To make that impact at that tournament is just incredible and surreal. I grew up watching it, and to be playing in it and inspiring the next generation is just crazy to me. Obviously, I’m still a young, new player trying to break into that team and just learn all that I can, but I’m just trying to embrace all the information coming at me and learn from the people around me so I can stay there,” Sentnor said.
She hopes to earn more national team call-ups this year and a roster spot for the upcoming 2027 FIFA World Cup and 2028 Olympics.
But until then, fans can catch the rising star playing for the Utah Royals.
“As much as people are looking at Ally as a face of the national team, I think Ally is also the face of the Utah Royals, in terms of the mentality, the way she plays, but also the way she is and acts off and on the pitch. That’s just what we want the traditional Utah Royal player to be like,” Coenraets said.
Contrary to what the 11th place finish might say, the Royals showed marked improvement towards the end of last season.
Sentnor believes if the team can carry that into this season, “it’s going to be really fun and exciting to watch us.”
Sentnor and the Utah Royals kick off the 2025 NWSL season at home against Bay FC on Saturday.