da stake casino： From landing a dream NWSL move to making her Australia debut in Sam Kerr's iconic jersey, it's been some year already for the 24-year-old

da betsul： There are whirlwinds and there is Kaitlyn Torpey’s 2024. When the year kicked off, she was still playing in her native Australia, still waiting for the right offer to take her career overseas and still pushing for that first Matildas call-up. In the space of just nine days in February, that all changed. Now, she can call herself a team-mate of stars like Alex Morgan, Caitlin Foord, Jaedyn Shaw and, when she returns from injury, Sam Kerr.

“It still doesn't really feel real,” Torpey tells GOAL from San Diego, having signed for the Wave, the 2023 NWSL Shield winners, earlier this year. “It still hasn't really hit me where I am. It's been great. I don't know when it will actually feel like, 'Okay, this is real life and this is happening'. It's been a whirlwind and I'm just living my dream and that's all I can ask for.”

Things are set to get better yet, too. Having boxed off her first title with the Wave in March with the Challenge Cup, despite only having five caps to her name, Torpey has secured a spot on the plane to France for when Australia flies out for the Olympic women’s football tournament this summer. It’s just another sprinkle of surrealism on top of six sensational months.

USA TODAY SportsBig move

The catalyst for it all came just before Christmas when Torpey heard that a club in the U.S. was interested in her. “I had no idea what team or whether it was even in the top league or anything,” Torpey tells GOAL. At that point she was a seasoned A-League Women’s player, in her eighth campaign in Australia’s top-flight, but was still playing National Premier League football during the off-season, that the regional second-tier, still waiting for her big move abroad.

“I think that I was ready for it,” she remembers. “I didn't want to leave just for a mediocre offer, a not-as-good overseas club or league to play in. But this opportunity, I felt like I couldn't say no. It was such a big league, it's one of the top two leagues that I wanted to go to in the world. Wave won it last year so they are an amazing team with amazing facilities and everything. For me, there was no hesitation to leave. It's obviously, personally, a massive move, it's my first move overseas, but I was ready to go the next step and push myself and push myself for the national team as well.”

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One of the biggest reasons this move was seen as a no-brainer was Wave head coach Casey Stoney. After speaking with the former England star for the first time, Torpey said to her agent: “I can't see anything that's wrong with this. I can't see a fault in this move.”

“The one thing I really loved about her is that she said, straight away, 'Okay, I know where your strengths are, but I also know where your weaknesses are and what we want to work on'. And she named them,” the 24-year-old recalls. “And that's what's happening now. I felt straight away, 'Okay, I'm going to improve as a player under an amazing coach like Casey'.

“I think the best thing about her is that you don't have to be playing for her to give you her full attention. Even when I don't play or don't get as many minutes, she will sit with me through game film each week if I want to, and then we'll do extras after training and we work on really specific things just for me. It's not like she's just handing me over to an assistant coach or anyone else. She's like, 'No, you and me are going to do this' and she always makes time for me. That's been one of the biggest things that I love about working with her.”

USA Today SportsLearning from the best

As a former defender, Stoney has been able to give Torpey, who can play full-back or winger on either side, a few pointers – and the players she comes up against every day in training also help, without even knowing it. Torpey remembers her first session with the Wave and going up against Shaw, the exciting young United States women’s national team star. “I was like, ‘Okay, this is where you know where the standards are’,” she says.

“She's obviously an amazing player, but everyone [is]. If you make one mistake, it can lead to a goal in training and that's why it's so good because you learn so much. In the last two to three months, I've probably learned more than I ever have on the football side of the game. Casey's a big reason for it, but it's also because the players around me are world-class and everyone has a name and everyone's got a bit of fame here. It's great. I'm learning so much and that's exactly why I wanted to come here.”

In Sofia Jakobsson and Kyra Carusa, Torpey has been coming up against two forwards who played at last year’s World Cup, and there is no introduction needed for Morgan, the captain of this team who was also at that tournament. The two-time world champion has a great reputation with nurturing young forwards and there are ways she has been able to aid a promising defender like Torpey, too.

“She’s said a few things that have really helped, but it's also just having a quality player like that running at you,” the Australia international explains. “Yesterday in training we were going at it and I had to tackle her a few times and she was so class with everything. She's such a hard player to mark. She doesn't even need to say anything for me to learn from her, just defending her is enough.”

USA TODAY SportsBringing plenty to the table

There is plenty of star quality in San Diego on the defensive side as well, with a World Cup winner in Abby Dahlkemper and the exceptional Naomi Girma, and their direction has been useful for someone with Torpey’s skillset. The 24-year-old can be thrown into a number of positions, so having players like that around her as she settles into a match in a different role is a bonus.

“It's been so helpful when I sub into games to have leaders at the back like Abby and Naomi, they've been massive. As soon as I step onto the field, I feel like, 'Okay, I'm covered either way', whether it's covered from the wing or covered from my center-backs,” Torpey says. “They talk to me so much and that's one of the biggest differences I've felt. In this team, everyone communicates and everyone's a leader so it makes it so easy to just slot right in and feel at home straightaway.”

Constantly being able to switch positions is something Torpey admits can be a lot of work, requiring extra study, film and time with the coaches to go through how it changes her set-pieces roles, for example. However, she loves that, she’ll “do anything” to get on the pitch and she recognises that such versatility is “one of the best assets” she has.