Jessica McDonald’s troubled childhood home pushed her to go where her mother wouldn’t

Jessica McDonald grew up in Glendale, Arizona, where the temperature is hot and shade can be hard to find. It was in this heat, playing on a court or field, that she spent most of her childhood. Jessica could often be found competing in any sport, and with eight maternal aunts and uncles, she usually played with members of her big family — cousins, uncles and her older half-brother who was close in age.

“The only way we were able to entertain ourselves was to be outside to kill time, which was fun,” Jessica said. “We loved it. I grew up the only girl in my family, so I always carried this chip on my shoulder, like, ‘I’m this underdog. I’m the only girl. I gotta prove myself all the time if I wanna roll with the boys.’ ”

Jessica translated a competitive mentality into the many sports she played growing up, including basketball, softball, track, volleyball and football. She rode her motivation through two NCAA women’s soccer championships, three National Women’s Soccer League titles and a World Cup win.

“The great athletes that play forever, they always feel like they have something to prove,” said Jessica’s former coach at the University of North Carolina, Anson Dorrance. “I think that’s the way Jess competes.”

Jessica was hooked on soccer at age 11 as she sat in her grandmother’s living room watching the U.S. women’s national soccer team make history by winning the 1999 World Cup at the Rose Bowl, where Brandi Chastain’s sports-bra clad celebration was immortalized after she scored the winning goal during a penalty shootout against China in the final. Playing in front of more than 90,000 fans, that team set an international attendance record for a women’s sporting event, and its popularity influenced the lives of many young girls, including Jessica. Those players were important to her, she said, but her main source of inspiration was her older half-brother, Brandon McDonald.

The McDonald children technically started soccer when they were around 5 years old. Brandon stuck with it. He excelled as a youth player in the Phoenix area and at Cactus High School in Glendale, and later at the University of San Francisco. He eventually played as a defender internationally and professionally, debuting in Major League Soccer in 2008 on the same LA Galaxy team as David Beckham and Landon Donovan.

Athletic talent led to soccer success

Jessica played multiple sports before settling on one. A coach from Brandon’s youth club scouted Jessica one day on a field “smashing balls into the net,” said Les Armstrong, the former director of Sereno Soccer Club. Running came naturally to her, but her soccer technique was gradually refined.

“Her first touch was terrible,” Armstrong said. “The ball would bounce off of her legs, but she was so fast, she could catch anything. And any mistake she made, she was able to make up for it with her athletic ability.”

Jessica’s uncle, Kevin McDonald, recognized her speed. He remembered a race that she entered as a kid in which she left the pack behind as soon as the starting gun fired.

“After the first 100 meters, everyone slowed down,” Kevin said. “Half the kids started walking. Jessica almost lapped kids on a one-lap race.”

Under the direction of her Sereno coaches, Jessica developed into a highly recruited teenage phenom. By 17, she had made youth national team appearances and quickly became a top prospect for college soccer programs, while setting state records and winning championships for Cactus High School in track and basketball.

Basketball, volleyball and football

Jessica’s athleticism came in part from her father, Vince Myers, who’s around 6-foot-3 and a self-described former athlete, but much of it also came from her mother’s side. She continued the legacy of the previous generation of McDonald women as a standout athlete at Cactus High.

Lori McDonald is the sister of Jessica’s mother, Traci McDonald. They played for the same Lady Cobras basketball team that Jessica eventually did.

The whole family was “legendary,” as one school administrator put it, but it was Traci’s talent that especially stood out. Traci’s brother, Kevin McDonald, watched Traci collect a big, green notebook of interest letters from college basketball coaches. Kevin is still convinced, more than 30 years later, that Traci could join a WNBA team. By all accounts, she was an exceptional athlete.

Without a professional women’s basketball league to aspire to while she was in high school in the 1980s, Traci aspired to the NBA instead, according to her family members. In a 1986 article in The Arizona Republic, Traci said the same, and that as a 5-foot-9 forward, she hoped to grow to six feet one day so that she could dunk the ball.

“There are no doubts in McDonald’s mind,” reporter Ken Sain wrote in the article. “She knows she will play in the NBA. She is confident she has the ability. A lot of other people are beginning to believe in McDonald’s ability.”

Her athletic talent translated to multiple sports and to her soccer-inclined children.

“She had a long throw-in,” Jessica said. “People are like, ‘Oh my gosh, where do you get your throw-in?’ And I’m like, ‘My mother.’ ”

“Baller,” Jessica called her.

Lori remembered Traci regularly throwing a football farther than their boys’ high school varsity quarterback.

“We didn’t have all the training, the clubs,” Lori said. “We didn’t have all that. My mom didn’t have the money to pay for any of that stuff, so it was just raw, natural talent that she had.”

The articles from Traci’s prime also include bits of information that allude to her potential. She averaged just below 30 points a game for her team at one summer basketball tournament before her junior year, scoring 39 points in a single game. LeBron James’ stats from his sophomore year sit in that ballpark.

Traci was set to compete in three varsity sports during her junior year — basketball, volleyball and soccer. In previous quotes, she said that soccer was her favorite sport, but without a girls’ team to play on while she was in high school, she played with the boys’ team instead.

“Traci’s always played with the boys,” her mother, Abbie McDonald, told The Republic at the time. “Knocking and punching would be right up her alley.”

It made sense that Traci concentrated on basketball in order to pursue athletics professionally. The first seemingly viable iteration of a paid professional U.S. women’s soccer league was called the Women’s United Soccer Association (WUSA) and its inaugural season wasn’t until 2001. The U.S. women’s national soccer team was still in its earliest iterations in 1985. A men’s national team was more established, but professional men’s soccer in the U.S. was still finding its footing after the North American Soccer League folded in 1984.

The U.S. basketball landscape held more promise for talented young women athletes at the time. Traci told The Republic that her goal was to follow her icon, Cheryl Miller, to the University of Southern California and beyond. Miller was drafted by the United States Basketball League, a men’s league, after graduating in 1986. Traci said that she hoped Miller would be one of the first women in the NBA to help carve a path for her.

“I think by the time I’m ready to try out, there will have been other girls before me,” she said.

‘She played soccer with a belly’

But knee injuries cut Miller’s playing career short and motherhood stunted Traci’s chances. She never made it to USC. The Republic article was published seven months after Traci gave birth to a son, Brandon, when she was 15 years old. She had Jessica two years later.

While Traci was pregnant, she continued to play on her high school teams.

“I was on the sidelines when she was on the field, and she was pregnant,” said Lori, who was the manager for the boys’ team Traci played for. “She was full-blown, seven, eight months pregnant, running up and down that soccer field.”

“She played volleyball with a belly. She played soccer with a belly,” Lori continued. “My mom battled the school board. They didn’t want Traci to play because they didn’t want other people to see a pregnant girl out there. … They didn’t want that image. And my mom said, ‘Show me where it says she can’t play.’ And there was nothing. There was no rule. … My mom fought the school board and they had to let Traci play.”

Even with family support, the strain of having two young children as a teenager would take a toll. For Traci, her athletic dreams largely fizzled after high school. Kevin said that Traci became more rebellious in high school after their father, who Traci was close with, was diagnosed with cancer; he passed away in 1995.

“One of the last conversations that (we) had while (Traci and I) were still really close was me telling her that I think she needed to go and talk to someone,” Kevin said, suggesting that he was referring to mental health resources. “ … I do not think that she ever went and sought help with anyone, which is why we’re in our situation we are today.”

Fulfilling her mother’s athletic potential

Jessica and Lori said that Traci became involved in a string of violent relationships, which Jessica was exposed to when she was young and living in Traci’s home. Jessica alleged that Traci was often physically and verbally abusive toward her, and family members said that was plausible.

Traci did not respond to repeated attempts over the past 10 months to get in touch for this story. Her family members said that they often aren’t able to reach her, but that she was aware of its publication.

Those closest to Traci spoke of her athletic prowess, too, and their lingering questions of what could have been.

“I’m not surprised that Jessica is who she is, because that’s basically her mother,” Lori said, “had her mother fulfilled her potential.”

Aware of her parents’ history, Jessica said that she didn’t want to leave questions lingering for herself. It wasn’t an “underdog mentality” that propelled her unlikely soccer success. It was also fear: Not that she wouldn’t be good enough to compete, but that she could be great, and still never fulfill her potential.

But if there was anyone who believed in Jessica’s ability to juggle motherhood and soccer, it was the same woman who once helped Traci do exactly that in high school — the McDonald family matriarch who raised them all.

This story was originally published March 15, 2022 at 9:00 AM with the headline "Jessica McDonald’s troubled childhood home pushed her to go where her mother wouldn’t."

Alexandra Andrejev

The Charlotte Observer

NASCAR and Charlotte FC beat reporter Alex Andrejev joined The Observer in January 2020 following an internship at The Washington Post. She is a two-time APSE award winner for her NASCAR beat coverage and National Motorsports Press Association award winner. She is the host of McClatchy’s podcast “Payback” about women’s soccer. Support my work with a digital subscription