San Diego Wave midfielder Kenza Dali likes to swim in the ocean on Thursdays.
One day after training in July, the 34-year-old French international waded out into the Pacific Ocean, as she normally does, but this time was different. A rip current carried her away, and not even Dalis elite athlete-level strength could steady her. Before panic took hold, Dali remembered what her teammate, Wave defender Quincy McMahon, had told her once: when a rip current strikes, angle your body parallel to the shore and let go.
So she did. Eventually, her feet grazed the sand.
Dali was grieving when the Wave called late last year, feeling herself pulled away from the sport she loved and unsure if she wanted to continue playing. She was living in Birmingham and playing for Aston Villa at the time, and her home was filled with nothing but memories of the person shed lost. (Dali was not comfortable naming the person out of her desire for privacy.)
San Diego Wave head coach Jonas Eidevall was familiar with Dali from their time together in the Womens Super League in England. Dali was first with Everton and then Aston Villa when Eidevall coached Arsenal from 2021 to 2024. She was planning to sign with a different NWSL team, one closer to France than Southern California, but the more she thought about it, the more the distance from that particular shore appealed to her.
It was really like my last bit of, like, its all or nothing, clearing my head and having a different environment, Dali told The Athletic from the San Diego Wave training ground in July.
Such has been the way of the Wave this season in many ways: riding the crests and the troughs, figuring out when to surrender to the rip currents.
The club entered its fourth season in the National Womens Soccer League (NWSL), desperate to bounce back from a 10th place finish the year prior, which might have been understandable for a new club had it not been for the impression they made their first two seasons in the league. As an expansion side in 2022, the Wave made history by reaching the playoffs in their inaugural year, falling to the Portland Thorns in the semifinals. They will play against the same team today in the NWSL quarterfinals.
Back then, the roster glistened with U.S. womens national team stars Alex Morgan (who won the Golden Boot that year), center back Naomi Girma (who was named both Rookie of the Year and Defender of the Year) and midfielder Jaedyn Shaw, who signed with the club when she was 17 years old. All three departed the Wave in a span of three months.
Former England national team player and Manchester United manager Casey Stoney led the team at the time. Her staunch defensive philosophy was compelling the first two seasons; in 2023, they finished top of the table and secured the NWSL Shield, given to the club with the most wins in the regular season.
But the trough came in 2024.
Despite winning the NWSL Challenge Cup to kick off the season, the inspiration that once drove the teams style of soccer puttered out, and suddenly, they were face-to-face with a seven-game winless streak. In June of that year, the club fired Stoney, a move that was still widely considered abrupt despite the teams form at the time. A perplexing duo of interim managers replaced her: Paul Buckle, once an interim assistant coach for the Wave in 2022, and former U.S. mens national team forward Landon Donovan, for whom the Wave marked his foray into managing a womens side.
Things were d*** s***, Canadian goalkeeper Kailen Sheridan, one of three players on the roster who have been with the club since its inception, said of that season. Speaking to The Athletic one August afternoon after training, the 30-year-old Olympic gold medalist was candid about the highs and lows of the Waves short history in the NWSL.
The high turnover last year wasnt contained to the coaching staff. Morgan announced her retirement and pregnancy with her second child on Sept. 5, and played her final game three days later. She became a minority investor in the club in May this year.
In October, the Wave came under new ownership as the Levine Leichtman family completed its purchase of the club from former owner Rob Burkle for a then-record valuation of $120 million. By then, the club had already found and hired a new sporting director general manager in Cami Ashton, who was last with the Kansas City Current in a similar role. A former NWSL player, Ashton was charged with reconstructing the clubs culture amid the turbulence and laying the groundwork for sustainability.
There was much to be done on the culture front. Last October, five former San Diego Wave employees filed a lawsuit against the club over multiple allegations of discrimination, retaliation, wrongful termination, and sexual harassment. The claims in their case followed allegations first raised by one of the named complainants, Brittany Alvarado, against Jill Ellis, the former Wave club president who stepped down in December. Alvarado accused Ellis of creating a hostile work environment, and Ellis later filed a defamation lawsuit against her.
Nothing is ever constantly up, Sheridan said. There was a lot of internal reflection and player reflection and challenging the ownership, challenging the club itself to (ask) What do you want to be? Do you want to just be here, be present, or do you want to be a competitive winning team?
Ashton was central to those reflections, drawing from her own experience as a professional soccer player to inform her approach to the clubs rebuild. The club hired former German national team player Anja Mittag as an individual development coach to ensure the growth of the younger players and acclimate others who are new to the league. On Mondays, the Wave trains with a boys club team. Ashton also facilitated a renovation of the Waves training facility, which they lease from the San Diego Surf, a youth club. They hired a full-time chef, improving the catered food they once relied on, and added dedicated rooms for meeting and hanging out. Hot tubs are coming soon.
Before pivoting to NWSL front offices, Ashton worked in the WWE as a talent manager, where she was exposed to the scale of a mature professional sporting environment. Knowing that neither the Wave nor the NWSL could just catapult itself there, Ashton approached the Waves new roster with a bifocal vision that aimed to deliver immediate impact while building toward the future.
Enter the trio known as the French connection: fullback Perle Morroni, winger Delphine Cascarino, and Dali. They became a quartet when the Wave signed Laurina Fazer in July.
All four have represented France at the national team level; Dali and Fazer competed in the 2023 World Cup, and Cascarino featured on Frances roster for the Euros this summer. No NWSL team has had as many French players on its roster at once, and their familiarity has proven lethal. Cascarino leads the league in assists with six, and she, Dali, and Morroni have collectively made 24 goal contributions to the Waves 38-goal tally in the regular season. Fazer signed with the club during the summer transfer window on July 29 and has played just over 500 minutes.
The first half of the season for the Wave was, by many metrics, an outperformance of expectation.
After an early dip in the fourth week, the Wave began a steady climb up the NWSL table, reaching as high as second place for the ninth and tenth weeks. Their tenth match against the North Carolina Courage resulted in a 5-2 win, and the Wave set a new club record for most goals scored in a game. By then, 13 different players had scored 20 goals for the club. The cautious optimism was justified, but as Sheridan and other Wave veterans know, the season is long, and a teams run can change on a dime.
After the summer break, the Wave began to unravel. Once a possession-oriented team, they began coughing up balls. They struggled to convert their chances in front of goal and deny opponents scoring opportunities. Of their last 13 games, they won three, all against teams at the bottom of the table. Had it not been for their strong start to the season and the insulation of those points won, they might not have reached the postseason.
Its possible Sheridan anticipated this dip in August when she described the next step in this teams development as one that synthesized the strengths of prior rosters.
We had some talented players, but we had more workhorses, and that was what created that success. Nobody was going to outwork this team, she said. Now we have talent on top of that, so we need to hold back to the standard of that work ethic of the people who were here before and really ingrain that into the group who has more talent.
This team has more talent, but that group was just gonna run through a brick wall. So if we can put those two together, itll be unstoppable.
Work ethic takes time, and the Wave are one of the younger teams in the league with an average age of 26. The experience on the team is diverse: Sheridan with her years in the NWSL, Dali with her experience across the French and Womens Super Leagues, as well as 18-year-old forward Melanie Barcenas, whos been with the Wave since she was 14 years old.
Despite having the nerves and having maybe a little bit of pressure, because I do have high expectations for myself, I feel like definitely the past years have set me up for success this season, Barcenas, who is currently out with a foot injury, told The Athletic in August. Im finding myself off the field, talking moreI think just from being in the environment the past year has definitely helped and having people that can make me feel confident in myself.
It also takes time for intergenerational dynamics to gel. Dali can still recall moments from her career when she was the young renegade, figuring herself out with each game, and the importance of growing through that. She sees a lot of herself in her Wave teammate Gia Corley, a 23-year-old midfielder who joined the Wave in January from Hoffenheim in the Frauen Bundesliga. Corley is eligible to represent either the German or U.S. womens national teams.
Shes so talented, but its risky, Dali said of Corley. She plays with fire, but its her quality and shes young. You cant take that. So Im like, Do your thing.
Corley will often apologize to Dali when she loses the ball, but said part of the reason she gambles with the ball is because she trusts her to clean up after her.
I played crazy in PSG (Paris Saint-Germain) because I had (two-time Olympic silver medalist with Sweden) Caroline Seger behind me. I can lose the ball anywhere on the pitch and shes gonna cover me, and this is how I expressed myself.
Now its her job to do the same for Corley and the other young players on the Wave, while also trusting them in turn.
Though their record didnt improve significantly as the regular season concluded, the Wave started to look more like themselves. It helped that 20-year-old Brazilian forward Dudinha, whom the club signed in July, arrived from São Paulo FC and was activated. Shes played 10 games, seven of which she started, and has already scored five goals, equal to Dali and Cascarino as the teams leading goal scorers this season.
The Waves highs and lows this year make it difficult to know which version of the team will show up at Providence Park on Sunday. But they are rebuilding momentum a very different kind of trajectory from their origin story as an NWSL team, but one that could take them just as far in the long run.
This article originally appeared in The Athletic.
San Diego Wave, NWSL, Women’s Soccer
2025 The Athletic Media Company