 |
| Photo by Mike Kiel, LJR Sports Media Copyright 2020 All Rights Reserved |
Copyright 2020 All Rights Reserved
HERRIMAN, UTAH (March 27, 2020) Today starts a new era for former Houston Dash captain Kealia Ohai, now Kealia Watt (shown right), after her marriage to Houston Texans star JJ Watt in February. She takes the pitch with her new team the Chicago Red Stars. Traded in the off season, Watt, a high school star in Utah, returns to the scene of some of her most fondest soccer memories in Salt Lake City only this time with Chicago the 2019 NWSL runner-ups in the NWSL Challenge Cup.
The last six months have been strange for Watt and the NWSL. She arrived in Chicago to much fanfare apartment hunting back in January. She then returned to Houston to get ready for the season before arriving back in Chicago in March and that's when things got a little crazy. COVID-19 raised its ugly head and things became uncertain for everyone worldwide notwithstanding professional athletes.
“When everything started it was the weekend and we thought we literally would have the weekend off and we would be back in on Monday, that everything would just blow over,” Watt told the Chicago Tribune last week. “But then two months later we were still in quarantine. It was wild to have soccer taken away from us, and trying to train on our own was difficult.”
Although most thought the pandemic would be over in a relatively short period of time, it was not.
“The original date was a couple of weeks, so we waited until then and then we waited a little longer and then I finally went back to Houston to train,” she said. “All of it was pretty weird timing, and throughout we didn’t have a firm date of when we’d be back. You would train and think, OK, I have three weeks until we get back, so you schedule your training for that. And then a few days before that they would delay it more. It was such a weird time. The whole world was having such a difficult time.”
But all that is behind Watt and the NWSL as the Challenge Cup begins tomorrow with defending NWSL champion NC Courage facing perennial power Portland in the opening match. Watt and Chicago will follow that game with a match against the Washington Spirit.
In a media Zoom press conference on Friday, Dames shared with Houston based LJR Sports Media his thoughts on Watt.
"She is significantly better then I thought she was though I knew she was really good. She has more tools in her tool chest then I knew. She is one of our top six players, so unselfish. She is super clean, turns corners and is not afraid to do anything."
Watt, the franchise leading scorer for Houston with 28 in 114 appearances is one of the players that Dames and company will be relying on to replace Samantha Kerr who left for Chelsea in the Women's Premier League in England. Kerr had 34 goals in 40 games with the Red Stars.
Chicago with "Captain K" is once again expected to be one of the teams to beat in 2020.
No comments:
Post a Comment