How would you envision the greatest individual season in NWSL history? Obviously, our imaginary player needs to score a lot of goals. Breaking Sam Kerr’s single-season scoring record (18) will definitely get a lot of attention, so let’s put that at the top of the list. How about help? Support is also important. Let’s say this player has… five of them. Five sounds good.
Let’s go back to the goals for a second. We know that not all goals are created equal, and hunters and punter specialists can often sneak their way to the top of the leaderboard. That won’t happen – we’re talking about the best season in history here – so let’s make sure our player hasn’t scored any goals from the spot, and is two behind his expected goals. However, we need more. Let’s go crazy and say this player is an NWSL newbie, and at the age of 25 arrived from the Chinese Women’s Super League to attack the NWSL with the league’s first 20-goal season. We’ll also need a fun, quirky statistic, so let’s say this player becomes the first player to score a goal against every team in league history. and we need moment. Like, what if the record-breaking goal happened to be a 25-yard strike, making a solid case for it being the hardest goal ever kicked by a woman in a professional match? What if that goal looked something like this:
He is Temwa Chawinga, who scored his 19th goal of the season in the win over Bay FC on 12 October. Yesterday, his Kansas City Current played their final game of the regular season against the San Diego Wave. The Current won the game 4–1 and Chavinga scored his 20th goalPutting every imaginary above reality.
So, has Chawinga put together the greatest season in NWSL history? It’s hard to argue against that conclusion. Yes, he has played four more games than Kerr when he set the scoring record in 2019, but Chavinga’s season has been about much more than just his goal tally. What stands out the most whenever Chawinga plays is not just his scoring ability, but also his scoring ability The power with which she dominates sportsI have never seen a player so often make professional defenders look like they are not on the field with him. Watch that goal against Bay FC again, and instead of focusing on the intensity of the strike, look at how helpless Kiki Piquet looks while trying to do anything to stop Chavinga from getting away from him. It’s the kind of moment that can speak to a player’s greatness as loudly as 20 goals, and Chavinga is creating moments like that every week.
Chavinga will have another chance to present his statistics on November 3, when Current play the Red Stars in their final game of the regular season. Whether she scores or not, she will leave the field having left another mark.