NWSL Week 11 preview and fixtures: Sam Kerr’s bicycle kick can’t happen without Maya Hayes

The goal everyone’s talking about had a setup that tells a story too.

Yurcak Field is funny. The field itself is nice, and grass, but the rest of the place — all metal bleachers on one side, a weird and empty grass berm on the other — is pretty bare bones. It seems in some ways strange, then, that some of the most spectacular goals in NWSL history have happened there; extraordinary pieces of skill hidden away in this perfectly ordinary place.

There was the olimpico Lauren Holiday scored in 2014, one of five goals her FC Kansas City team put in against Sky Blue that night. In the Women’s Professional Soccer days, Casey Loyd (Nogueira) also scored directly from a corner, hers with the outside of the foot and something she later claimed to have done kind of by accident. Christie Pearce scored her first-ever professional goal on that field, 13 years and three leagues into her club career. And of course, there was the time in 2013 Lisa De Vanna somehow turned a broken play into a Puskas-nominated bicycle kick goal.

Four years after De Vanna’s highlight reel tally, another Australian added to the List of Things That Have Somehow Happened at Yurcak Field. On Wednesday night, Sam Kerr scored on her own bicycle kick, a goal that, at the time, gave Sky Blue a 2-1 lead over Orlando. (The Pride eventually won, 3-2.)

Right now, there’s no one in the NWSL who’s more fun to watch than Kerr, and at 23, she’s also undoubtedly one of the best strikers in the league. With five goals and three assists in 11 games, she’s third in the league in scoring, behind only Megan Rapinoe and Marta, and all of Kerr’s goals have come in the run of play.

Looking at Kerr’s goal on Wednesday, it’s certainly an impressive piece of individual skill (and also some not-so-great defending from the Pride). But what makes the goal even better — and again, it’s really good and you should definitely watch this video over and over because the De Vanna one is there too — is the buildup.

In particular, it’s the work that Maya Hayes does to set it up. First, she has to beat Ali Krieger to a ball that’s played almost too far. Then Hayes has to beat Krieger on the dribble, which she does, though only temporarily. Krieger recovers, partially dispossessing Hayes, but Hayes stays with it, barely keeping the ball in on the endline. From there, she sends a kind of last-ditch floater toward the goal as she’s colliding with Toni Pressley. That’s the ball Kerr converts.

The assist on Kerr’s goal was Hayes’ second of the season, and beyond that, she’s got only one goal, the game-winner when Sky Blue last played Orlando a month ago. But Hayes has also played just 367 minutes out of a possible 1,080, and Wednesday marked only her fourth start of the season. That — utility player — has mostly been the role Hayes has played with Sky Blue since the team drafted her out of Penn State in 2014.

Hayes was selected by Sky Blue as the team’s first pick, and the sixth pick overall, in the 2014 draft. It was a move that didn’t seem that surprising. Hayes was a New Jersey native who had a standout career at Penn State and with the U.S. U-20s. And Sky Blue was badly in need of someone who could consistently score goals. Danesha Adams had been a bust. Monica Ocampo was somehow both unreliable and the team’s leading scorer. Kelley O’Hara was being converted to a defender. And De Vanna was eventually traded to Boston.

Hayes, then, would immediately have a lot of responsibility upon arriving in New Jersey. And she did make 13 starts in 23 appearances in 2015, logging nearly 1,200 minutes. Contribution-wise though, Hayes struggled. That, for a highly touted rookie to not quite live up to expectations in an immediate way, isn’t all that unusual. So many players, even college standouts or ones with some international experience under their belt, have talked about having a hard time adjusting to speed of play and physicality of the league. And Hayes did look better as the season progressed, especially once Nadia Nadim arrived. Ultimately, Hayes finished her rookie season with one goal and one assist.

The next year, with the World Cup looming and Sophie Schmidt, who’d been one of Sky Blue’s most consistent offensive contributors, gone, expectations were again high for Hayes. But the 2015 season again turned out to be mostly a bust, as Hayes struggled with both injuries and form, registering just a single assist and logging just 899 minutes in 13 appearances.

Sky Blue stuck with Hayes through last season, too, mostly using her again as a utility player. In 2016, Hayes again had injury issues, including a sprained MCL, limiting her time to just 749 minutes in 16 appearances. But unlike in seasons past, Hayes this time used her limited minutes to become a key contributor off the bench, netting a career-high three goals.

Now, Maya Hayes is still in New Jersey, and finally, her role with Sky Blue has started to expand beyond utility player. With assorted injuries and other absences, the team has, at various times, been without O’Hara, Kerr, Leah Galton, Tasha Kai, Raquel Rodriguez and Daphne Corboz. It hasn’t quite added up to consistent starts for Hayes yet, but it’s definitely forced her to take on a bigger role, and Hayes has taken advantage. The work she did leading up to Kerr’s goal is just one example, the game-winner she scored against Orlando last month another. As Christy Holly’s had fewer offensive choices, Hayes has more and more become one of Sky Blue’s go-to players, and she’s used those limited minutes to make a case for becoming more than that.

All times Eastern

Wednesday

Sky Blue FC 2 - 3 Orlando Pride

Houston Dash 0 - 0 Boston Breakers

Portland Thorns FC 3 - 0 FC Kansas City

Seattle Reign 2 - 1 Chicago Red Stars

Saturday

North Carolina Courage vs. Sky Blue FC, 3:30 p.m., WakeMed Soccer Park (Lifetime)

Boston Breakers vs. Washington Spirit, 4:00 p.m., Jordan Field (go90)

Orlando Pride vs. Chicago Red Stars, 5:00 p.m., Orlando City Stadium (go90)

Seattle Reign FC vs. Portland Thorns FC, 10:30 p.m., Memorial Stadium (go90)

Sunday

FC Kansas City vs. Houston Dash, 8:00 p.m., Children’s Mercy Victory Field (go90)