A 16-year-old pro soccer star says she's ready to tackle the 'next step' of women's fight for equality in sports

• 16-year-old Olivia Moultrie is the youngest women's professional soccer player in the United States.
• The Portland Thorns midfielder is ready to tackle the "next step" of women's fight for equity in sports.

Olivia Moultrie has long been seen as the future of women's soccer in the United States.

The California-raised prodigy went from an 11-year-old UNC commit to a 13-year-old professional and, two years later, the youngest National Women's Soccer League player and goal scorer in the history of the league. Now a midfielder for the NWSL's Portland Thorns, following a drawn-out legal battle over her right to play, Moultrie has realized many of her dreams before becoming legally eligible for a driver's license.

Even still, she's intent on continuing "to push the status quo."

"I am fighting for a lot of these things and trying to create equality, but I look at the women's national team right now and the athletes that have been fighting for this before I entered this arena, and the thing that makes me want to keep doing it is I see how much they've done for the women's game already," Moultrie told Insider. "That's really what motivates me to want to push for more, because you still see what the men have and we're not there yet.

"We want to be able to have all the same opportunities, all the same equipment, all the same technology," she added.

Her latest partnership, a deal to become the first female ambassador for sports technology company Playermaker, furthers that initiative to give female athletes access to resources on par with what men regularly receive. Just 6% of sport and exercise science studies are devoted to women, but Playermaker — which monitors performance metrics for athletes via trackers strapped to their shoes — is helping to flip the script.

The brand is devoted to making top-notch, personalized data accessible to athletes of all genders and skill levels without exorbitant price tags. For Moultrie, a self-confessed "nerd" about the science behind performance, the opportunity to work with Playermaker was a match on a number of levels.

"I feel extremely lucky to, first of all, partner with a brand that I truly like their product.... It's so easy to just apply to what I do every day," Moultrie said. "And then obviously what Playermaker is striving for in the world, what they're looking to accomplish, in terms of creating equality and opportunity for men and women.

"Technology like this has only really been available to male professional athletes for so long," she added. "It's extremely cool that they are making it available to everyone. And obviously the data that it collects is like extremely cool for anybody to use. So yeah, making that available to everyone is definitely important and that's what they're doing."

It doesn't hurt that the product helps Moultrie in her own training. She started using Playermaker during off-season training at the Portland Timbers' Academy and remembers finding its data offerings "very intriguing right away."

Now, she has her own kit that she wears during training sessions. They strap onto the heels of her cleats and never "get in the way of touches or playing." Then, after she cools down, she can access all sorts of information about her workout — including differences between her left and right feet, her top speed, and her total distance traveled — all on her phone.

"I come back, put 'em back in, and my whole session will sync up in just a couple minutes, and I can just look at all the data," Moultrie said. "It's extremely easy for me, very low effort for me to put them on and go train with them. But the rewards of seeing all the details and all the information it can give me, it's like totally worth the three seconds it takes to put the sensors on before each training."

It all fits seamlessly into Moultrie's lifelong chase of two admittedly ambitious goals: "Working towards women's equality and equal opportunity in sport" and "wanting to be the best player in the world." It's safe to say she's ahead of schedule on both fronts, and that's thanks to a diligence instilled in her from as early as she can remember.

"My parents are pretty great at this stuff — I can give them a lot of credit, in terms of helping me understand what it looks like for me and just being realistic about the fact that if you want something, you're going to have to say you want it [and] you're going to have to work for it," Moultrie said. "You can't just say, 'I wanna do this' and then hope everything works out. So they've definitely been big for me in terms of like, [realizing] you have to work for what you want and that's the biggest part of it."

Since she was a kid, Moultrie's parents encouraged her and her younger sisters to write down their goals in order to visualize "what you want your future to look like" and identifying the intermediary steps necessary to make that dream a reality.

Next on the list, Moultrie says, is making the US youth national team roster for August's FIFA U-20 Women's World Cup, competing alongside players four years her senior. She's also working to establish a bigger role with the Thorns and soak up as much wisdom as she can from her veteran NWSL teammates.

And off the field, Moultrie is focused on helping to bring more visibility to the league. Later she hopes to "fight for more" in the players' next collective bargaining agreement (CBA).

But that'll take time. And while she's uniquely motivated to keep pushing forward, she's not unrealistic.

"[I'm] just trying to gain as much experience as possible, play as many minutes as possible," Moultrie said. "Because obviously, you know, I'm 16."