Impossible to Ignore
How Savannah DeMelo reached the pinacle of soccer by just being herself.
By Samuel Reno
LOS ANGELES – A caramel iced latte with caramel drizzle from Starbucks.
McAlister Field.
The No. 10.
Less than three years ago, they were facts of life for Savannah DeMelo, captaining the USC Women’s Soccer team in her final season in Los Angeles.
“I feel like I haven’t been in college in, like, a long time,” DeMelo said. “That does feel like a long time ago, and that was only two years ago.”
In that “only two years,” McAlister Field has ceased to exist – set to be replaced by USC’s new Rawlison Stadium – the cardinal and gold No. 10 on her back traded in for a lavender encased No. 7 before a stint down under in a red, white and blue draped No. 9.
Savannah DeMelo is one of only three players to ever make the USWNT World Cup roster having never previous appeared for the national team.
And after a brief pit stop with an iced vanilla latte with oat milk from Quills, the SoCal Starbucks has given way to a cappuccino with dairy milk from the same Louisville coffee roastery.
“Oh my gosh,” DeMelo said. “I hate oat milk now, so I’m back on regular milk.”
DeMelo is just 26 years old and in the early hours of year three as a professional. She’s started a World Cup match… and another. She’s rebounded from a torn achilles – made NWSL Second Team Best XI.
It’s a resume that made her the new kid on the block in Australia and New Zealand at the 2023 FIFA World Cup just nine months ago. But in the short time since, that same CV has dubbed her experienced, a veteran, worthy of a leadership role in a United States Women’s National Team program amidst one of its biggest ever sea changes.
“Now girls are starting with the national team to come in at like 16, 18, 19 years old,” DeMelo said. “I’m considered one of the older players, which is a hard reality to wrap my head around.”
Since DeMelo and her 22 teammates in the navy-speckled, white U.S. uniforms left Melbourne Rectangular Stadium last August, more than a half dozen have made their debuts for the USWNT.
Manager Vlatko Andinovski was not brought back after the USWNT failed to advance to the World Cup semifinals for the first time in its history. Twila Kilgore stepped in on an interim basis, and Emma Hayes is set to take the reins this summer to make it three coaches in less than 10 months.
Kelly O’Hara recently joined Megan Rapinoe, Julie Ertz and Sam Mewis as the latest members of a true golden generation of U.S. soccer to formally hang up the cleats for good. And more still may be on the way.
“The 2023 USWNT had their worst ever World Cup performance,” Tara Thobe, co-host of the Scuffed Podcast – an award-winning U.S. Soccer podcast – said. “After that, a lot of changes would have to be made. We got an interim coach, players retired, players haven’t been called back in, players who used to start are no longer starting – it’s a new chapter.”
Regardless of how the national team fared down under, Thobe said the tournament was always going to the close of one chapter and the ushering in of another. In less than two years as a professional, DeMelo scaled the near impossible mountain of playing her way into the previous stanza.
Now, at the dawn of the next, she faces the even tougher task of proving she belongs for the long haul. But if her just over two years as a pro – or her life in soccer – shed any light, it’s one she’s more than up for.
She always has been.
“I’m not playing against girls that are younger than me. I’m playing against girls who are 30-plus years old, national team players.”
“Once I got to the pros,” DeMelo said. “I was not a starter. I didn’t really play much in my first couple games, and that was hard on me.”
Savannah DeMelo's senior season in 2022 was one of the most successful in USC history. (Photo by Jenny Chuang - USC Athletics)
It’s May 2022. Less than half a year ago, DeMelo was sharpied into the starting midfield for arguably one of the most talented USC teams ever assembled. They rattled off a program-record 14 straight matches unbeaten including a Trojan-best 11 consecutive victories – all with DeMelo wearing the captain’s armband.
She was more than 2,000 miles from home and her dog Milo – who DeMelo laments has still not made the journey to the Bluegrass State. Her soccer environment had changed for the first time since she got to USC in the spring of 2017.
After being synonymous with Trojans soccer for nearly a half decade, she now had to prove she belonged at a higher level.
“I’m not playing against girls that are younger than me,” DeMelo said. “I’m playing against girls who are 30-plus years old, national team players.”
She quickly got her chance, and four games into the season, the breakthrough finally came.
“My first goal,” DeMelo said, “was when I was super like, ‘Oh my gosh. This is actually happening.”
Having already been entrusted with set piece responsibilities, it came off a free kick against the San Diego Wave – a perfectly placed strike in the upper righthand corner that proved decisive in a 1-0 victory, Racing’s first of the season en route to an undefeated month of May.
Savannah DeMelo earned monthly Best XI honors in her first month as a professional.
Her efforts landed her on the first edition of the NWSL’s monthly Best XI, and she would add three more goals to her tally by season’s end, trailing only Diana Ordóñez among 2022 draftees.
Starting the final 22 games of the regular season, DeMelo was the primary string puller for Louisville. She led the team in shot and goal creating actions with more than double anyone else on the roster.
“To take that into the pros,” Anna Smith – former USC goalkeeper and teammate of DeMelo – said, “and be that player that she’s always been who’s just crafty and skillful. That’s when Savannah plays the best she can be.”
But it wasn’t just her skill with the ball at her feet that made her a household name. There was something else it took to establish herself as a completely player at the next level.
“Her defending,” former USC head coach Keidane McAlpine said with a laugh.
Especially in her early years at USC, the two said it was the biggest point of emphasis when it came to improving her individual game. She had to become more willing to work, more willing to run on that end.
DeMelo credits McAlpine and the USC coaching staff for transforming her into that player, one who became what her former coach considered a defensive strength in her final years in cardinal and gold.
It translated almost instantly. Among midfielders in the top eight leagues around the world, DeMelo was in the 96th percentile in tackles per 90 in that area of the field. The rookie also finished in the top 15% in interceptions, blocks and clearances for her position.
Come late August – merely three months after such an uncertain start to her rookie campaign – it wasn’t just her former coach who noticed. It wasn’t just her or her teammates, past and present. She’d caught the eyes of those even beyond the NWSL award voters.
“I looked at my phone,” DeMelo said, “and it said, ‘Vlatko: Can I call you in five minutes?’ I was super pumped. I got super red. I went and had a conversation with him and within three hours I was flying to Kansas for camp.”
A month later, she was traveling to Europe – having earned a second stint with the national team – for a pair of friendlies in Spain and in front of 76,000 at Wembley Stadium in London.
While the World Cup was still just under a year away, the calendar turned to 2023 without another call-up for DeMelo. The SheBelieves Cup marked the final competitive USWNT roster before the 23 would be set for the world stage, and the Racing midfielder didn’t make the cut.
Now in April of a World Cup year, there was just one roster left. One more national team camp – featuring a pair of friendlies with Ireland – to make a case. Despite the performance in the NWSL that warranted the first camp invites of her career, DeMelo had still never taken the field for the USWNT.
This was the former Trojan’s final chance at an audition, to prove – as she’d done at every level so far – that she belonged on the biggest stage. It had been more than two decades since a player made the World Cup roster without having ever appeared for the U.S. If DeMelo was going to play her way in, it had to come now.
The World Cup roster announcement was just two months away. The next time the public would lay eyes on a USWNT roster graphic, it would be the 23 players headed to Australia and New Zealand hoping to capture an unprecedented third straight world title.
And DeMelo’s name was nowhere to be found.
Savannah DeMelo made back-to-back All-Pac-12 first teams in her first two season as a Trojan. (Photo by John McGillen - USC Athletics)
“That practice is so ingrained in my head,” Smith said. “It was just like the most freaky thing.”
“...instantly, everybody was like, ‘Oh no.’”
It was a practice during the spring session in 2019. DeMelo, preparing for her junior season in the upcoming fall, was fresh off a pair of All-Pac-12 first team selections in her freshman and sophomore seasons.
She was just the fourth Trojan freshman to ever crack the conference’s first team, and her 10 assists the following season were good for top-15 in the nation and the sixth best single season mark in program history.
Prior to donning the Cardinal and Gold, DeMelo represented the United States in not just one, but two U-20 FIFA World Cups. The midfielder scored four times in the 2018 edition – her second appearance in the tournament – including a hat trick in a group stage match against Paraguay.
“She was a great player before we got her,” McAlpine said.
Before USC got her was when her first exposure on the world stage came – at the 2016 tournament in Papua New Guinea. DeMelo delayed her enrollment to participate, and the United States made a run all the way to the semifinals.
But while she was nearly 7,000 miles away, the rest of her fellow high school class of ‘16 and would-be Trojan teammates were enjoying some success of their own – to the tune of the 2016 NCAA National Championship.
USC was 16 seconds from avoiding what became a penalty shootout defeat in round two of DeMelo’s eventual freshman season. In the Sweet 16, a similar penalty kick fate befell the Trojans the following season – the fall prior to that 2019 spring practice.
The championship expectations and pedigree were in place, and after a pair of stellar individual seasons that ended in group heartbreak, DeMelo was ready to lead USC back to the college soccer mountaintop.
“She led by example,” McAlpine said. “She led in the way she went about her business. She led us just in her skill and technique and her soccer IQ. She was always a leader.”
That’s when it happened. DeMelo wasn’t kicked. There wasn’t contact. But it sounded like a gunshot. She had torn her achilles.
After having to wait an extra year to finally get her first taste of college soccer, she’d have to wait even longer to rinse her mouth of the bad one that lingered from a pair of agonizing NCAA Tournament exits.
“We’ve always called her grandma as a joke because she was at USC forever… to me she’s not like an older player.”
“Walking out, and there were 70,000 people at that game,” DeMelo said. “That was a surreal moment.”
Morgan. Rodman. Smith. Horan. Sullivan. Dunn. Girma. Ertz. Fox. Naeher.
And DeMelo.
The United States starting 11 in front of those aforementioned 70,000 fans in their World Cup opener against Vietnam.
“That’s when it became really, really sweet,” Smith said. “And you really rallied behind both her and the team… There’s so many wonderful, talented female athletes, and she’s one of them.”
Less than four months ago, she’d yet to appear for the national team. She was on the outside looking in of the penultimate roster reveal. Now, she was starting for the greatest national team program in the history of the sport, with the eyes of the world watching.
Savannah DeMelo is the only player in USWNT history to make her World Cup debut in one of her first two caps.
They won that first group stage game 3-0, but it would be the States’ only victory in the competition. DeMelo picked up a second start in the following contest, a 1-1 draw with The Netherlands. Another draw with Portugal sent them onto the knockout rounds before a penalty shootout defeat to Sweden sent them home sooner than in any World Cup prior.
But there was no time to pick up the pieces. DeMelo was sent right back to Louisville in the thick of a playoff race, one in which Racing came up just short – missing out on the league’s final playoff spot on the final day.
Once the dust finally settled on 2023, and the U.S. soccer landscape shapeshift had begun, DeMelo was now the experienced one. No longer the wide-eyed World Cup debutant tiptoeing onto the game’s biggest stage, she’d been through the ringer – perhaps the most soccer-specific struggle an American side has ever had at the tournament.
Still without the companionship of Milo, she got a cat named Bootsy. She became a homeowner, putting down roots in Louisville at a spot she described as “perfectly far enough away from the facility.”
“I feel like here [DeMelo’s new house], I’m really living on my own,” DeMelo said. “Just kind of a bit older. It feels different… it makes me a little more individual and – maybe – mature.”
It’s a dose of perspective she hopes will ground herself once again, help maintain that balance of highs and lows her father instilled in her that’s seen her through to this point.
“It’s so interesting to say that Savannah is technically ‘old,’” Smith said. “We’ve always called her grandma as a joke because she was at USC forever… to me she’s not like an older player.”
DeMelo self-described 2023 as “crazy.” The triumphs of World Cup inclusion and NWSL award recognition. The agony of a pair of painful World Cup and season ending defeats.
With the 2024 Olympics just months away, the cycle begins again. New manager Emma Hayes is tasked with assembling a roster to reclaim the USWNT’s gold-gilded crown the Canadians snatched from them in 2021 – one DeMelo aims to join.
Racing Louisville is looking to make its first postseason appearance since its addition to the NSWL in 2021 – a leap the club’s Best XI midfielder believes they’re primed to make.
And while Milo may never be pried away from the loving hands of her family back home in Long Beach, it may finally be time for the former Trojan get her own dog – one to share DeMelo’s nowfound home in Louisville with her and Bootsy.
“Of course,” DeMelo said, “some big goals.”
“When she finally got a chance to go, it was no hesitation. It was all confidence”
“I always say,” DeMelo said, “‘injuries never come at a good time.’ That was definitely a time when I was like, ‘I don’t know if it’s going to happen for me.’”
Left to fend without their first team all-conference midfielder, the Trojans rallied to put together their best tournament run of Demelo’s career to date.
USC advanced all the way to the Elite Eight for just the third time in program history. But after a back-and-forth affair in Chapel Hill, N.C. that featured multiple ties and lead changes, the run ended at the hands of eventual runners-up North Carolina.
Nobody knew it yet, but that was the closest they would get to a return to the College Cup during DeMelo’s time in Southern California.
“She should have been a part of that [2016 National Championship team],” McAlpine said. “I hated that we never gave her a chance to get back there. That one weighs on me heavily.”
Even though she never stepped inside the lines, never kicked a ball, never had her named penciled in a starting lineup, DeMelo was instrumental in spearheading the run. In spite of such a debilitating injury, she was determined to make an impact, and it didn’t go unnoticed.
Savannah DeMelo and Anna Smith spent four years together in the USC program. (Photo by Jenny Chuang - USC Athletics)
“She brought the best attitude, and I know that’s not easy,” Smith said. “Being injured is awful. It’s something that’s really, really mentally draining, but the way she handled herself throughout all of that, I will remember that forever.”
DeMelo had led by example from the moment she walked through the door at USC, and her rehab process was another chance to do just that. She was attached at the hip to the training staff, attacking rehab with the same intensity as she had when she was at her best pulling the strings in the USC midfield.
“She was at everything,” Smith said. “The only thing that was different was she was on the sideline.”
It was a process that taught her to just enjoy the sport again, a reminder that her existence in the beautiful game could cease at a moment’s notice. It was that contagious attitude that won the respect of Smith and the rest of her teammates.
“Unbelievable” was the word McAlpine used. It’s what helped see DeMelo through what became a roughly 27-month hiatus between college soccer games after COVID-19 pushed the 2020 season to the spring of 2021.
After more than two years away from the highest level of the sport, the next 11 months were a whirlwind.
Savannah DeMelo came back from the achilles injuries with a pair of All-Pac-12 selections. (Photo by Jenny Chuang - USC Athletics)
“When she finally got a chance to go,” McAlpine said. “It was no hesitation. It was all confidence”
Two NCAA seasons, two more All-Pac-12 selections and – almost predictably cruel – two more seasons ended via the bedlam of penalty kicks.
The former USC head coach said he still remembers that final postgame conversation, basically apologizing to DeMelo for not getting her to a College Cup.
“For me,” McAlpine said. “That’s always going to be something that’s a bit frustrating. A player like that deserves to play on that stage.”
The campaigns ended in heartbreak. The what-ifs left to linger. But they ended on her terms, with her inside the lines, not rehabbing outside them. She had life on the pitch again. Smith could see it. McAlpine could see it. Everyone who packed the bleachers at McAlister Field that season could see it.
And inevitably, so did the next level – to the tune of the No. 4 overall selection in the 2022 NWSL Draft by Racing Louisville. More than two years away had not stolen her joy for the game, and that persistent passion is what helped it shine through on the field once again.
“She’s such a free, youthful and joyful player to watch… She’s always been so sure of her game and knew what she brought to the table.”
“I think that’s why we all love sports,” DeMelo said. “Because it’s so competitive. That’s kind of what I live for day in and day out.”
Even for a self-diagnosed competitor like DeMelo, referring to the task at hand as steep would be a massive understatement. The USWNT competitive roster is arguably the toughest to break into in the world of soccer.
Not only did Thobe dub them the best in the world – as would many others – but she added that it was particularly tough to break through in this most recent cycle. Andinovski had been particularly hesitant to move away from the program’s established veterans and embrace young, rising talent like DeMelo.
The Louisville midfielder had not only been left off the final roster prior to the World Cup announcement, she had still never even made an appearance for the national team. Earning a World Cup roster spot with zero national team caps had not happened in two decades – not since Shannon Boxx accomplished the feat back in 2003.
Unlikely? Yes.
Impossible? Not entirely.
“Control the controllables.”
The above was advice from her father, Robert, she leaned on, preparing to make her closing argument as the calendar turned to summer. All DeMelo could do was play her game, be herself, and he told her to make to make it impossible for them to leave her off.
That’s exactly what she did.
Six goals and a pair of assists over the next two months vaulted her into the thick of the roster conversation, a stretch Thobe said made her one of the best attacking midfielders in the NWSL.
Her chance creation numbers were up. Her conversion numbers were up. Her touches were up. Her passing numbers were up. DeMelo knew she had a two-month audition for a spot that might not even be available to her, and she put together one of the best stretches of soccer of her life.
“An incredible accomplishment to make that happen,” Thobe said. “A testament to how strong of a club season [DeMelo] had in 2023.”
DeMelo was named to the NWSL May Best XI. Then again for June. It seemed everyone had taken notice, but there was still one remaining endorsement DeMelo was hoping to receive, one she knew she’d given herself a real chance at.
“I just remember stressing so much about it,” DeMelo said. “Just checking my phone very two seconds. ‘When am I going to get this call?’”
It’s the same phone call dozens of national team hopefuls were set to receive on June 15 – one that would officially send 23 Americans to Australia and New Zealand next month, one that would leave all others with no choice but to set their sights on 2027.
The clock struck 4 p.m. on June 15 in Louisville – the place, where after spending her entire life in Southern California, she’d made her home. The place where she purchased her first home.
The place where she became a professional. The place where she stamped that reality with a second contract and her U.S. National Team callup. The place where her family – her original soccer supporters from the day 8-year-old DeMelo gave up gymnastics and made the switch – now surrounded her in anxious anticipation.
That’s when the phone rang.