Jaedyn Shaw brings the future to the present as the USWNT’s new teenage phenom

CINCINNATI — Jaedyn Shaw knows how much buzz there is around her first senior U.S. national team call-up. She knows a hype train is heading for this city’s grand old Union Terminal, whose Art Deco halls gaze east toward a modern soccer palace.

But the rumblings and the roars have not moved the dynamic 18-year-old attacker.

“I don’t really surround myself with hype, or whatever, that is attached to my name or how I play,” Shaw told The Inquirer in an interview this week at U.S. camp. “I think that I just, up to this point — and will continue to do it — just focus on myself and focus on my journey, and just try to learn as much as I can, and enjoy this experience.”

It’s a polite introduction from a player with an almighty amount of potential. A second-year pro with the NWSL’s San Diego Wave, Shaw can play as a central attacking midfielder or winger, and has been wreaking havoc on the league since her debut last summer: 9 goals and 3 assists in 30 games, with 24 starts.

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“I think my preferred position would be in the midfield, but I think I’m just OK with playing any position at this point,” Shaw said. “I feel like I’ve played anywhere attacking. But I mean, I’m just grateful to be here and to be on the field if I get that opportunity.”

We’ll see if that opportunity comes in a two-game series with South Africa, Thursday at FC Cincinnati’s TQL Stadium (7:30 p.m., TNT, Universo, Peacock) and Sunday at Chicago’s Soldier Field (5:30 p.m., TNT, Universo, Peacock). Much of the attention will be on Julie Ertz and Megan Rapinoe’s retirements from the national team, but plenty will be saved for Shaw’s potential debut.

“I think it’s going to be unreal,” Shaw said. “I think that just being in this environment is unreal. But whether in the stands or on the field, I think just being able to represent the U.S. at this stage is an amazing opportunity. … My mom’s going to be here, and I think it’s going to be great.”

Shaw’s arrival in the NWSL last summer forced the league to make a rule change allowing minors to turn pro without an exemption from the commissioner’s office. The push for that change was led by Jill Ellis, who became the Wave’s president after coaching the U.S. women to back-to-back World Cups in 2015 and 2019.

“I think that it is an opportunity to be able to grow in an environment where you are challenged, but also encouraged to be a young player and take big leaps, as I did,” Shaw said. “And I think it just allows me to be comfortable in my environment, and continue to be myself and be the best that I can every day.”

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Now the Wave have not just Shaw, but another precocious teen in 15-year-old (yes, really) Melanie Barcenas in a squad with U.S. World Cup veterans Alex Morgan, Abby Dahlkemper, and Naomi Girma, Sweden’s Sofia Jakobsson, Australia’s Emily van Egmond, and Canada’s Kailen Sheridan.

“When we signed [Shaw] mid-season last year, she immediately came in and was a great professional at 17 years old, so much more mature than for her age,” Morgan told The Inquirer. “The goals she scored and the composure that she had in front of goal — you kind of knew right from the start after those first few weeks that she was going to have a long career, not only in the NWSL but hopefully with the national team as well.”

The significance of Shaw’s breakthrough is not lost on the first U.S. starlet to bypass college as a teen: current U.S. captain Lindsey Horan.

“When I first did it, I didn’t foresee this coming. I didn’t know it was going to be a massive change,” Horan said. “This is so, so amazing that now everything that men basically had, now the women are able to do that in the U.S., and you’re going to see more and more of these incredible youth players want to do that.”

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Asked what she has seen from Shaw so far, Horan admitted the squad hasn’t had much practice time to find out.

“Calma,” advised veteran U.S. women’s team PR chief Aaron Heifetz, who has worked with every phenom since Mia Hamm. “Give it time.”

That was a fair invocation of soccer’s universal language. But hyping young prospects is also universal, for women as much as men these days. And even as Horan and the reporters around her laughed, she said she’s looking forward to finding out what Shaw can bring.

“The more training sessions that we have, we’ll see more and more,” she said. “I’ve heard such incredible things. I wish NWSL games were better times for me in France [where she plays for Lyon], because I could probably give you a better answer right now. But I’ve heard nothing but the best, and the little bits that I’ve seen, it’s really cool.”

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