With the third pick in the 2020 NWSL draft, the Washington Spirit selected star UCLA attacker Ashley Sanchez, who exploded onto the scene in the inaugural Challenge Cup, winning the competition’s Future Legend award. In the 2021 draft, the Spirit used their second and eighth picks overall to bring in teenage phenom Trinity Rodman and USC forward Tara McKeown respectively.
Ahead of the first full regular season in over a year due to the pandemic, this trio joins 25-year-old center forward Ashley Hatch and Japanese international Kumi Yokoyama as the bunch tasked with figuring out how to do the one thing that has plagued the Spirit for years: putting the ball in the back of the net.