The 2024 edition of the NWSL college draft, held on Friday night in Anaheim, California, will be unlike many others.
Several of the top players available competed for all five years of their eligibility, taking advantage of the blanket NCAA rule allowing student-athletes to compete an extra season because of the COVID-19 pandemic. That’s led to a draft pool full of talented and experienced players at some of the best college programs in women’s soccer.
Despite this, this is a draft class without an obvious No. 1 pick, unlike every previous draft where the top pick was a player who had been in the fold with the senior U.S. women’s national team, like Naomi Girma (2022), Sophia Smith (2020) and Rose Lavelle (2017), among others.
About 230 players have registered for the 2024 draft. The top two picks will go to the Utah Royals and Bay FC, two new expansion teams entering the league for 2024, followed by the Chicago Red Stars picking third, and then the Royals, who traded up for the fourth overall pick. In all, there will be four rounds with up to 56 players selected by the NWSL’s 14 teams.
Here are the 15…
