Olivia Moultrie Faces Season-Ending Injury After Breakout Campaign

Olivia Moultrie’s season is over before it ever really reached its peak.

Portland Thorns announced Tuesday that the 20-year-old midfielder has been placed on the season-ending injury list after tearing the ACL in her right knee during training last week, a brutal halt to one of the most exciting ascents in the NWSL.

For a player who has spent years fast‑forwarding through milestones, this is the first time the game has slammed on the brakes.

“Heartbroken doesn’t even begin to sum up all of the feelings right now,” Moultrie wrote on Instagram. “To be taken away from something you love more than anything is a feeling I never wanted to experience. I know there is a reason this path has been chosen for me and I can’t promise everything but I can promise I’ll be back and I’ll be better.”

Those words land heavier when you look at what she was in the middle of building.

Moultrie had five goals and five assists for the Thorns this season, a breakout campaign that underlined why she has long been tagged as one of the faces of the league’s future. Her influence in Portland has stretched well beyond the stat sheet, but the numbers alone tell the story of a young playmaker starting to bend games to her will.

She has been doing the same on the international stage. Moultrie already has 18 caps and five goals for the United States and was named U.S. Soccer Young Player of the Year in 2023, an award that usually serves as a signpost for the next decade of the national team.

Now that momentum stalls. The timing could hardly be worse. The injury will likely rule her out of the Concacaf W Championship, which doubles as qualifying for next summer’s Women’s World Cup, robbing both club and country of a creative force just as the calendar tightens and the stakes rise.

Inside the Thorns, though, there is no doubt about how she will attack the long road back.

“Olivia is one of the most driven players I have been around, and she will use that drive during her recovery and rehabilitation,” Thorns president and general manager Jeff Agoos said in a statement. “She has our full support and every resource this club can put behind her.”

That drive has already reshaped the league once. Moultrie signed with Portland in 2021 only after successfully suing the NWSL over a rule that blocked teams from signing players under 18. The case cracked open the pathway for younger talent, and turned a teenager into a trailblazer before she had even established herself as a starter.

Three years on, she had become exactly what that fight promised: a central figure in Portland’s midfield, a regular in the national team setup, and a symbol of a new generation that expects to arrive early and stay for a long time.

Now the storyline shifts from acceleration to endurance. ACL injuries test everything a player has: patience, resilience, faith in their own body. Moultrie has already made clear she intends to meet that test head‑on.

“I’ll be back and I’ll be better,” she wrote. For someone who has spent her career pushing boundaries, the only question now is how quickly she turns that promise into another landmark return.