Desiree Scott has had a hard couple of years.

She missed out on the World Cup roster for Canada last summer while she continued rehabbing a knee injury from the end of 2022, her mother passed away in March of this year, she was originally not selected for the Olympics and she has had to fight for any ounce of playing time with the Kansas City Current this season. And so Scott has decided that it’s time; at 37, she will retire from professional soccer after 14 years, 187 caps for Canada, an Olympic gold medal and two national championships with FC Kansas City.

For all of Scott’s plaudits, she has not had the most heralded career, at least in comparison to superstars such as her Canadian teammate Christine Sinclair. That is not because it didn’t deserve heralding, but has, in large part, been a function of her position as a defensive midfielder. You only have to look at her nickname — The Destroyer — to understand Scott’s career has been about the kind of dig-deep gritty work that usually does not make the highlight reels, but is the foundation on which teams still build their success.

Scott tackled her knee rehab last year with that same mindset. “That was my first major injury in my entire career. But I wanted to prove to myself that I could come back from that,” she said in a call with .

But the years take their toll regardless of determination and Scott could feel her body becoming unable to keep up with her love for soccer. “I call myself Miss Rice Krispies,” she said, describing the crackling sounds her joints now make whenever she stands up. She would watch younger teammates run right out onto the field, no laborious activation exercises needed, and realize the gap was growing between them.

Scott has seen everything that NWSL has had to offer, as a mainstay of the league since its inception in 2013. Teams folding, changing in her car after games, playing surfaces of all qualities and sizes — it seems a miracle sometimes to look at the high-school facilities with football-field lines on them that hosted NWSL games in the beginning, and then to see Scott now training and playing at a stadium custom-built just for her and her teammates. But the years of progress were years of wear and tear too.

Life off the field also started chipping away at her endurance. When Scott’s mother, Charlene, passed away, she lost a tremendous source of support and advice. Her mom, Scott said, was the type to FaceTime her six times a day just to hang out and chat. The grief still seems fresh, somewhat; there has not been time yet to count the anniversaries of her passing, to get more used to not having your mother call you all the time than hearing her voice daily.

“The silence has been the hardest part,” said Scott. “You kind of think back, ‘Oh, I kind of miss when she was calling me six times a day’. It was annoying in the moment, but now the phone’s not ringing as much.”

Charlene had helped raise Scott’s foster brother, DeeJay, whom Scott formally adopted in 2021. Scott said she and DeeJay, who turned 14 this year and has just started high school, have been going through it together. It is hard though, with DeeJay remaining in Winnipeg with family while Scott lives 800 miles away in Kansas City during the season.

“Through these past six months of life with my mom passing, not making rosters for national teams for the first time, it has been like getting slapped in the face and a lot of heartbreak,” Scott said. “I think there are definitely days where I’m down in the dumps. This is not maybe how I wanted this season to go. You can get lost in the chaos of life and everything that is hitting you at once, which it definitely did for me. I find I can live in that space for a bit, but I’m always able to come out and look back and be like, ‘OK, you’re a stronger woman for this, you’re a resilient woman for this’.”

Scott is one of the last of her generation of Canadian players to retire. Sinclair announced recently that she would call time on her pro career, after already stepping away from the national team last summer. Sophie Schmidt also decided to retire internationally, although she just re-signed with the Houston Dash.

Scott said there was a big celebration last December around Sinclair, Schmidt and Steph Labbé (who retired in 2022) and that they all got tattoos.

“I’ve kind of been the one holding on, trying to still hold it down for us as veteran players. And we joke about it all the time, like when I was trying to make the Olympic roster. Like, ‘Come on, Des, hold it down for us’,” she said. “But I think we have such a fantastic younger group that through Tokyo (Canada won gold at the previous Olympics in 2021) has already been stepping up and are into that role already.”

Scott saw the gap again as she fought her way back into national team camp, returning in March for the SheBelieves Cup, although she did not get playing time during the tournament.

“You kind of know it’s coming, especially as all your friends start to leave,” she said. “I would go to camp by myself. We’d have an off day. And normally I get texts, like, ‘What we doing?’ and I remember sitting in my room like, ‘This is weird’, because all of my closest friends were kind of gone.”

Scott at least got to be with her team one last time at the Olympics in France, although what should have been a joyous experience turned into weeks of stress due to the revelation that members of the coaching staff had been using drones to spy on their opponents.

“I just remember us being, like, ‘This is not the experience that you were supposed to be having at such a pivotal event. This is not normal!’” she said. “Every day — honestly, every hour — there was new information or a new kind of storm that would hit us, and the way we were able to unify as a group, connect as a group, I think we played some of the best soccer we’ve played because of the situation we were in. I was so incredibly proud of the group for performing like that at a world-class event, all things considered.”

Scott rallied behind the team as the veteran at her fourth Olympics, the player with two bronze medals and a gold on her shelf. She was made an alternate on the roster at the last minute after an injury forced Sydney Collins to withdraw and alternate Gabrielle Carle moved up to the main 18-player roster to replace her. With Scott now present, she helped provide leadership, and she tried to ease the tension with laughter, acting as comedic relief where she could.

Through the laughter and the support of her family, her boyfriend, and her teammates, Scott said she has been getting through it all. She knows there will be a hard transition period going from pro athlete to retiree, but she is also a big believer in feeling your feelings. Her heart lives on her sleeve, whether she wants it there or not. And there is also the next step to consider, because there’s more than one way to be involved in soccer. She has some friends and former teammates launching a brand new professional league in Canada, which is of no small interest to her.

“I’d love to coach in some capacity,” she said. “I honestly love the grassroots. I love seeing that passion and really teaching them the fundamentals and watching them learn the game. With the league coming to Canada, that’s a very exciting time. It’s something we have dreamed about for many, many years. So to see that come to fruition, I’d love to be involved in that. In what capacity we’re just not entirely sure yet, but definitely stay close to the game.”

For now, she’ll wrap up in Kansas City and then head back to Winnipeg to be with her family and enjoy the holiday season. Her mother was a determined Christmas ornament collector for 60 years, and this will be the first time Scott sets up the tree without her. She will unwrap each lovingly preserved piece, crack open the eggnog, get someone taller than her — DeeJay, perhaps, having hit his teen growth spurt — to put the topper on the tree. Charlene loved Christmas, and so Christmas is her daughter’s favorite time of year too. And, Scott said, she will find time to give herself some flowers.

“I’ve had an amazing career, and I’m so grateful to have played the sport for so long,” she said. “I think there’s got to be time to acknowledge the things I have done and celebrate that as well.”

This article originally appeared in The Athletic.

Canada, Kansas City Current, Soccer, NWSL, Women's World Cup

2024 The Athletic Media Company