KANSAS CITY, Mo. — When then-Manchester City midfielder Sam Mewis last March was ranked the best women's soccer player in the world by ESPN FC and espnW, the immensely humble and ever-hungry superstar appreciated the honor but essentially shrugged it off.
Anybody on that top 50 list could have been No. 1, she said in a recent interview with The Kansas City Star, and such a verdict "just kind of depends on what happens on the day of the vote or whatever."
Plus, for more than 20 years in the game now, she's fixed her gaze not on where she's been but on what's ahead of her: from a seemingly clairvoyant vision of the future as she watched the 1999 World Cup to the relentless pursuit of older sister Kristie, herself among soccer's elite, to her uncanny sense of what's around her on the pitch.
"Sometimes watching her, I feel like she sees things before they happen," said Kristie Mewis, a member of the U.S. national team who also plays for Gotham FC of the National Women's Soccer League. "She just has that instinct."
So the 29-year-old woman who regularly touts Australia's Sam Kerr (No. 2 on the list) as the world's best figures perhaps one day in her dotage she could take a moment to bask in such distinctions. But she's a bit preoccupied now.
"It was kind of one of those things where you have to say, 'That's cool, and I'll print it out for my mom,' " she said. "But I want to win the Olympics, and I want to win the World Cup ... and I want to win with Kansas City."
You heard her right: In case you missed it amid the onset of the holidays and Chiefs fever in late November, the KC Current of the NWSL traded for Mewis — a key contributor to Team USA's 2019 World Cup victory, an Olympian and three-time NWSL championship.
The KC Current and Sam Mewis
Among other major personnel maneuvers made by the rebranded KC Current club amid commissioning its own dedicated training facility and plans to build the first NWSL-specific stadium, the acquisition of Mewis epitomizes the ripples the Current is generating on the broader landscape and even its place as a harbor.
Last fall, Mewis spoke with her parents about her desire for a fresh start from her previous NWSL team, the North Carolina Courage. Then-Courage coach Paul Riley was fired last September when allegations of abuse in previous jobs emerged among other scandals that jolted the league and led to the ouster of half the league's coaches and the resignation of the commissioner.
At the time, Mewis took to Twitter to say she was "horrified to read the details" of the report in The Athletic and that "the league needs to do whatever is necessary to make them (and other victims) feel heard, believed, and protected."
Among those engaged in that effort was Current co-owner Angie Long, who served on a three-person committee that oversaw league operations until an interim commissioner was named.
Studying various options for her next step in the months after undergoing arthroscopic surgery on her right knee, Sam analyzed what her mother, Melissa, called "every aspect of Kansas City." She had something of an epiphany as she absorbed all that's happening here.
" 'Why would I not want to be a part of that?' " Melissa recalled her saying. " 'That's where I need to be.' "
Her arrival figures to make the adventure ahead all the more compelling for the second-year franchise when it begins NWSL Challenge Cup play on March 18 at Racing Louisville FC.
Since landing in last place in its inaugural season, the club has enjoyed an invigorating offseason of change (including hiring a new coach and general manager) under the ambitious stewardship of co-owners Angie and Chris Long and Brittany Matthews.
But Mewis' arrival here also makes for a tale to tell about a captivating voyage from Hanson, Mass., a journey that is as much a family affair as anything else.
Because her story is inseparably entwined with her parents and Kristie, with whom Sam jousted over everything: soccer scrums in the shredded grass of the backyard and best position on the couch and hoarding Easter eggs and juggling competitions and some trash talk.
A bond of family ... the Mewis family
This rivalry, of course, is sustained by an abiding love and devotion between the siblings, a bond all the more sacred for all they've shared.
Along with the crucial nurturing touches of remarkably complementary parents, all of that helps explain how they came to achieve the unprecedented in the annals of U.S. women's soccer history as teammates at the Tokyo Olympics.
A "wonderful, incredible dream-come-true moment that I still don't think I've processed," said Sam Mewis, despite her disappointment with the bronze medal. "Probably the coolest thing that's ever happened to us."
Perhaps because of her modesty, the way the UCLA graduate puts it almost sounds passive. As if it were simply a matter of fortune.
But there's been something much more substantial and deliberate about the trajectory.
"I don't think either one of us could have done it without the other one, and I think that that's obviously why it is so special," said Kristie Mewis, who in the NWSL's debut season of 2013 was the third pick overall by KC's previous franchise, FC Kansas City. "She made me the player that I am today, and I made her the player that she is today. And I really don't think that if we didn't have each other that we would be in the same boat."
The boatbuilding began with the meeting of Bob Mewis and Melissa Lang. Beyond bringing up girls they are proudest to call thoughtful and kind, they raised a rare pair of athletes.
Surely, it all started with the fact the parents were collegiate athletes: Bob played soccer at Fitchburg State; Melissa competed in basketball and track and field at Northeastern ... emphasis on "competed."
Melissa's father, also named Bob, had a notable high school basketball career and a tryout with the Boston Braves before serving in World War II. Beyond his athleticism, he cultivated a mindset that animated Melissa's athletic exploits and was poured into her daughters.
"He would look at me and say, 'You need to have the desire,' and he would define the word desire over and over to me," she said alongside her husband during a Zoom call with The Star. "That's still in me now."
Enough so that Sam laughingly remembers her throwing a clipboard and getting a technical foul when she was coaching basketball around Sam's sixth grade year.
"She took it really seriously, so we took it really seriously," Sam said, adding, "It was very cool to see a woman be that intense with sports. I think that's what gave us this permission to be, like, 'Soccer is my life, I'm doing this and I want to win and I'll do whatever it takes.'
"And I kind of think that her influence on us in that way was really important."
The genes, of course, also were really important, and it's worth noting that the parents met on a running date with a group that set them up.
"And then supposedly they just ran off together," Sam said, laughing and adding that among their ongoing activities together is long weekend rides together on their tandem bicycle. "They're, like, so in love. ... It's very cute, very cute."
They also were in tandem with the deft touch of encouraging the girls to pursue soccer without pushing them. Kristie was 8, Sam 6, as they watched the mesmerizing role models of the U.S. women's team beat China to win the 1999 World Cup.
With all four of them watching together on a couch, right then and there, the girls decided they were going to do that, too.
"As corny as that sounds," Bob Mewis said with a laugh, "it actually did happen."
Sam will tell you "it's kind of the same story everybody my age has." For all the thousands of girls who doubtless felt that way in the moment, though, only a precious few could convert that dream to a reality.
The support of Mom and Dad
Even with no way of knowing what could be ahead, the parents set about making the point that Bob figures any parent would: "Anybody can do anything" if you work hard to get there.
How they treated that notion became pivotal in what was to come. Bob and Melissa achieved the delicate balance of enabling the dream without force-feeding it. At every turn, even when it came to such opportunities as youth national team camps, the dynamic always began with, "Are you sure you want to do this?"
As she considered her success, Sam Mewis brought up that aspect almost immediately.
"They never assumed; they always wanted to make sure we were still into it," she said. "Which I think is pretty unique."
Still, that came with an understanding: If they were committing to play for a team, that meant accepting the responsibilities that came with it. Such as the self-respect to give your best and the loyalty to teammates to properly prepare.
Which meant no sleepovers the night before a game. And a lot of missed dances and parties and fewer social activities, like dating.
Holding them to that came at a price.
"We were kind of the enemy there for a while; I worried that they would never love me again," Melissa said. "Now, gosh, to get where they are now, I guess that made a difference. Because they totally get it now, you know?"
So what started as what might well have been merely a whim became actualized by Sam getting what she somehow could see before her: through a dream even her parents had no way of knowing could come true and with an 18-month older sister she both wanted to be like and wanted to beat.
Before she was of age to play, Bob Mewis remembered how Sam wanted to go to Kristie's games to go on the pitch herself.
"So Sam and I would have to go out on the field (at halftime) and pass the ball back and forth so (she) could try some of the moves that she saw during the game," said Bob, whom Melissa says provides the thought process in the "little package deal" of their relationship and parenting. "So Kristie definitely pulled her along a little bit."
Much as they've empowered each other's rich adventures through more than a decade together in various phases of U.S. national teams, though, each blazed her own distinct path.
Now Sam's trail thankfully has led her here, where she'll be consumed with what more she can do and be and somehow still be trying to prove herself ... no matter how much she already has.
Take it from one who knows.
"She just embodies," Kristie said, "everything that everyone wants to be."
