The few minutes McKenna "Mak" Whitham played in NY/NJ Gotham Football Club's game this past weekend made history. At 14, she's the youngest player in the National Women's Soccer League.
Last year 鈥� Whitham achieved multiple firsts, including when she signed with the league and becoming the youngest ever player to sign a name, image and likeness deal.
But as a teenager in a professional sports environment, what protections does she have? NPR Morning Edition host A Mart铆nez spoke with ESPN reporter Charlotte Gibson, who covers emerging athletes, about what it's like being a 14-year-old on a professional soccer team, and the existing protections for young athletes like Whitham.
This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Interview highlights:
A 惭补谤迟铆苍别锄: How did Mak Whitham become a professional at such a young age in the first place?
Charlotte Gibson: This year, we did not have a draft, so Mak didn't really have to worry about going through a draft, avoiding a draft. But she did have to sign with Gotham under the guise of the , which would mean that she basically has to have additional requirements, including provisions around pediatric medical evaluations, facilities and safety assessments and long term development plans. And, of course, she has to live with a parent or guardian in the NWSL teams market.
惭补谤迟铆苍别锄: Okay. So she does have some protection. Separate locker rooms, too, right? Someone has to be with her all the time.
Gibson: Yes, separate locker rooms. And that is a big, big thing right now in NWSL. So you are seeing teams take it into their own hands and make sure that these locker rooms aren't just like these side closets that the players go into and change and get ready for a game. They are mini locker rooms and I say mini because they're not the full fledged locker room like the main team gets, but locker rooms that are pretty much adjacent or attached to the main locker room. And in Mak's case, she has great adjacency to her teammates. She's in her separate locker room, but she's close enough that she is not missing out on any team camaraderie right now.
Note: Mak was signed last year, when she was 13. She is now 14.
惭补谤迟铆苍别锄: How is it possible, though, to [protect] someone that's 13 in a professional league? I mean, there's so much that comes with physical and mental development, maybe between the ages of 13 and 18, that's impossible to kind of put a finger on.
Gibson: I think that is the biggest challenge facing the NWSL right now. We have this really big wave of teenage players entering the league, wanting to enter the league, and honestly, they're kind of guinea pigs right now. We don't know how it's going to turn out. NWSL doesn't even know how it's going to turn out. And it is one of those things where you have someone like Mak who's just this unbelievable, maybe once in a lifetime type of talent, but she is still only 14.
She's playing against women who are twice her age, and even more than that, right? There are some girls in the NWSL, some women, I will say, who are 38 years old. That is a huge difference when it comes to physicality on the pitch. And so right now we are kind of facing this big challenge with how young is too young.
And for someone like Mak, this is all she's known. Soccer is her life. She's lived and breathed soccer since she was a young girl and she's wanted to play in the NWSL. She wanted to play professionally. Now she's here. And it raises the question: is 14 going to be the cutoff point? Are we going to see someone younger step onto the pitch next season?
惭补谤迟铆苍别锄: Wow. Maybe single digit age range at this point, but we'll see.
Gibson: That would be unbelievable. And I imagine that would have to bring in a whole new case of rules and regulations, because I don't even know if the NWSL is fully prepared for this new wave of teenage players entering the league.
This story was edited for radio by Peter Granitz and the digital version of this story was edited by Treye Green.
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