How Ashley Sanchez found the joy in soccer again, thrived in a new position and got back into USWNT picture

A tactical shift to winger under club coach Mak Lind and a renewed focus on enjoying the game helped the Courage star rebound from career lows and earn her way back to the national team When you have a career year and match a single-season goal-scoring record of 20 goals in NWSL, the spotlight brightens quickly. Your skills end up in more social media clips, you earn more league recognition, and you gain overall honors. You also get way more media requests. North Carolina Courage forward Ashley Sanchez is having a personal-best season. Drafted in 2020, she's playing a new position as a winger and has become the first American player to score 20 goals in the NWSL regular season.

While she still has a handful of games to set an even more impressive record, she found time for an interview with CBS Sports after a club training session while on her way home with a teammate in the car. "I'm here with Ryan [Williams] too in the car, so don't say anything bad about her," she joked. For Sanchez, navigating the brighter spotlight means blocking most of it out altogether. She's on the verge of breaking a league goal-scoring record, recently engaged, and now back in national team camps for the first time since January 2025. "I mean, definitely,