Crystal Dunn etched her name into Portland Thorns’ history when she landed a stoppage-time volley into the back of the net to beat the San Diego Wave and advance her team to the NWSL Championship Game last October.
The Thorns went on to win that game against the Kansas City Current, claiming the franchise’s second league trophy.
It was Dunn’s second biggest accomplishment in 2022: Portland’s title run came just a little more than five months after Dunn gave birth to her first child.
Get Tri-state area news delivered to your inbox.> Sign up for NBC New York's News Headlines newsletter.
In some ways, however, it was par for the course for the defender who has earned the reputation of a certified winner at every stop of her career.
Raised in New York, Dunn went to the University of North Carolina for college where she helped win the Tar Heels a record 21st national championship. From there, she won a Women’s Soccer League title with Chelsea, three NWSL Championships and was named NWSL MVP at the age of 23.
She now attempts to join the USWNT in a quest to win her second World Cup next month. This time, she’ll have her son alongside.
Preparing for motherhood
Becoming a mother has long been a goal for Dunn, but it wasn’t clear to the 30-year-old defender how she would incorporate her family and her career.
That once hypothetical question came true in 2021 when she announced her pregnancy on the heels of a campaign that earned her CONCACAF Player of the Year honors.
There are no step-by-step instructions for elite female athletes on how to navigate pregnancy to ensure they can still compete at the highest level after giving birth.
While motherhood is an uncertain path – especially as a professional athlete – Dunn was far from the first to embark on it. In recent years, Serena Williams, Allyson Felix and fellow USWNT teammate Alex Morgan have all welcomed children while remaining at the top of their game.
Athletes like Williams, Felix, and in particular Dunn, has shared many of their concerns surrounding maternal health for Black women, who are three times more likely than white women to die of pregnancy-related causes.
“One thing I'm super passionate about is always representing women of color in the sport,” Dunn said. “ … Always preaching diversity in the sport and really trying to, like I said, leave this game in a better way where there's visibility, there's representation, there's a way for people to turn their TV on and see someone who looks like them.
“I want this game to look even better ten years down the road.”
In June 2022, Crystal decided to partner with Modern Fertility, an organization that educates women on their bodies and reproductive health.
She told Just Women’s Sports at the time that thanks to this organization, women are “understanding that you can be a parent. You can start thinking about being a mom and not sacrificing your career. You can do both.”
True to Dunn’s reputation of being a hard worker, she remained heavily involved in team and league developments throughout her pregnancy.
“I thought it was simultaneously awesome and nuts,” Thorns teammate Meghan Klingenberg said. “… She was so committed to being with her teammates and being around the team because it made her feel like she was still a part of it.”
There is a common misconception that pregnancy, postpartum and competitive athletics are an unrealistic combination.
Not only are women capable of maintaining regular exercise well into their pregnancy, but the science actually says it’s beneficial to their labor and postpartum experience.
“Giving birth is an endurance event,” Dr. Stacy T. Sims, an exercise physiologist and nutrition scientist, said. “When we're staying strong through exercise … having the muscle muscular and metabolic control for that is not only beneficial during the pregnancy, but definitely during labor and then recovery from it.”
A 2018 study published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine found that 130 elite female athletes, many of whom trained into their second trimesters or beyond, experienced healthy pregnancies and few delivery complications.
Sims said the social component of sports is equally as important as the physical benefits.
“It also encourages the female athlete to kind of keep going and knowing that, okay, I'm maintaining this fitness and then after I give birth, I'm going to have a level of fitness that is going to allow me to return to play,” she said.
Those months of dedication and commitment to making a comeback paid off when Dunn returned to Thorns’ practice a month after giving birth to her son, Marcel, in May of 2022.
Support system from home to the league offices
While Dunn’s willpower and commitment are largely responsible for her return to the pitch, she reiterated the importance of a strong support system as she navigates her career and motherhood. Something she acknowledged not every person is afforded after having children.
According to a 2015 report from InTheseTimes, 23% of women returned to work two weeks after giving birth. This is likely due to the minimal infrastructure in place to support working mothers in their recovery and early transition to having a child.
In 2016, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that only 13% of women in the private sector have any form of paid maternity leave. Another report from Healthline revealed that 40% of women don’t qualify for the Family Medical Leave Act which awards 12 weeks of unpaid leave.
“It absolutely breaks my heart that a lot of women go through, postpartum and not having the support that they need,” Dunn said. “They're going back to work sometimes two weeks after they gave birth, which is madness.”
Dunn’s support system started at home with her husband Pierre Soubrier, former Portland Thorns trainer.
“She's a student of the game,” Soubrier said of Dunn’s decision to keep training up to a month before giving birth. “…It was her desire to stay involved.”
Almost immediately, that involvement started on the national level, with a cause that’s close to home for Dunn, who took on a union role as vice president and secretary of the U.S. Women’s National Team Players Association, advocating for equal pay. While training with the Thorns up to a month before going into labor, Dunn played an active role in the collective bargaining agreement reached in 2022 with the U.S. Soccer Federation to institute a number of equal pay provisions, such as sharing World Cup revenue.
That same respect and encouragement showed up for Dunn in the Thorns’ locker room in the form of her more nearly 30 teammates, who consider themselves “aunties” to Marcel, according to Klingenberg.
Returning to the field
While Dunn’s return was nothing short of remarkable, it didn’t come without its challenges. She said having suffered relatively few injury-related setbacks, the process of getting back into shape postpartum was unfamiliar.
“There were doubts,” she said. “There were moments where I was like, I feel unfit. I am severely out of shape. This doesn't feel great.”
Unsurprisingly though, for a player of Dunn’s caliber and experience, it didn’t take long for her to get back in the swing of things. She described it as a switch going off and suddenly getting her confidence back.
“You celebrate those days because you're just like, ‘Wow, I never thought I'd see this ever again,’” she said.
Since welcoming Marcel into the world, Dunn said she finds everything she does is geared toward his future.
“I think having a boy wanting to raise him right, wanting to raise him where he respects women, where he can see his mom doing his thing on the pitch,” Dunn said. “And I think being a mom does change the way you see yourself.”
Soubrier echoed that sentiment, saying their world went from revolving around soccer to their family.
“It's always been about football… I just feel like now in the last two years, that mindset has changed,” he said. “… You start to build a family and obviously puts some things in perspective.”
Klingenbeard described feeling “incredibly fulfilled” for her role in the story of Dunn’s motherhood journey and Marcel’s life.
“I can't wait for him to have favorite soccer players growing up, and they're all going to be women. That doesn't really happen for young boys,” Klingebeard said “… And it's like something that's bigger than soccer. It's something that's really important because then Marcel will be able to go out into the world and just by being him, make it a better place.”
“Every time I am on this field, I know I'm playing for something bigger than me and it gives me great joy to be able to play for something higher than just winning a soccer game,” Dunn said.
