Wonder Woman of the Week: Kim Little
Our Wonder Woman this week is a bit of a tear jerker for me. She was a mainstay of my favorite soccer team for years along with being a member of the Scottish National Women's soccer team and Great Britain's Olympic soccer team. Fans of the Seattle Reign continue to talk about a bygone golden age with names like Beverly Yanez, Keelin Winters, and this week's Wonder Woman Kim Little. Little was born in Scotland in 1990 and played soccer from a young age. Little credits soccer's provision of a chance to travel and play sport as her driving force for inspiring her later professional career. Little meant it too. At sixteen, she joined the pros by signing with Hibernian LFC in the Scottish Women's Premier League, and scored her first goal in her first game with the team. The following year, Little signed with Arsenal to play in the English Women's Premier League where she continued to make a name for herself as a dominant goal scorer.
After playing with Arsenal from 2008-2013, Kim Little took her old Arsenal coach up on an offer to sign with the new Seattle Reign FC in the National Women's Soccer League in the US. Little made such an impact in the early years of the league (which had its first season in 2013) that she became the first player to earn the Player of the Month award twice. Things didn't end there either. Little won Player of the Month three total months in her first season with the Reign and even earned the league's MVP award for the season due to her contributions to what many consider to be the Reign's best season in the league's history. Little earned such international attention, that the Australian W-League team Melbourne City FC signed her on loan during the NWSL off-seasons for the 2015 and 16 seasons. In 2017, Little left both Australia and the US and returned to the UK to once again compete for Arsenal.
Apart from dominating in professional leagues, Kim Little represented Scotland on the Scottish National Women's soccer team for years. At the international level, Little continued to be a domination force on the pitch, which included being a major factor in Scotland's rise to power that allowed the team to qualify for the 2019 World Cup in France for the first time in the nation's history. In 2020, Great Britain's Olympic soccer team (which organizes itself differently from FIFA teams) picked Little as one of two Scottish players to represent Great Britain on their women's national team for the Olympics. Scottish soccer players rarely get these offers, and even more rarely accept them. Little was happy to join the team however, and helped the team reach the quarterfinals before losing to Australia 4-3.
After the Tokyo Olympics in 2021, Kim Little retired from the Scottish National Team, but continues to play for Arsenal. As an athlete, Little has helped shatter the proverbial glass ceiling through both dominant athleticism and by supporting organizations like Athlete Ally (which promotes LGBTQ+ civil rights efforts) to increase viewership of women's soccer across the globe and to prove the power women athletes are capable when given the chance to prove themselves. Little not only elevated the Scottish women's national team and the Seattle Reign to unparalleled success, she also raised the bar for women athletes everywhere to a standard that can give them the ability to work harder and reach further than ever before.
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