She's No. 1: Ally Sentnor keeps Hanson's streak of NWSL stars alive as top draft pick

According to Wikipedia, Hanson's footprint is 15.7 square miles and it's the 180th most populous and the 154th most densely populated town in Massachusetts. First settled in 1632, it was incorporated in 1820 and was named for – hey, get this – newspaper publisher and U.S. Sen. Alexander Contee Hanson.

Chief export? Well, that appears to be standout women's professional soccer players.

Go figure.

Already the proud home of the Mewis sisters (former Whitman-Hanson High stars Kristie and Sam), the town now can boast of Ally Sentnor, whose introduction to the pro game came with about as much pomp and ceremony as possible. The Thayer Academy product, who tore it up for two NCAA seasons at North Carolina, last month was the No. 1 overall pick in the National Women's Soccer League draft by the expansion Utah Royals.

"It's crazy," Sentnor, 19, said of her hometown's ability to churn out talent in this particular field. "Hanson is genuinely one of the tiniest towns."

Sam Mewis, a highly decorated U.S. Women's National Team star who won three NWSL crowns in a 10-year pro career, last month announced her retirement from the game at age 31, citing a lingering knee issue. Older sister Kristie won an NWSL championship with NJ/NY Gotham FC in November and then moved to London to play for West Ham United's women's team.

Clearly, there was a Hanson-sized void in the league, so here comes Sentnor to fill it.

"It is an irony, right?" Sentnor's mom, Lee, said. "Both Kristie and Sam have been amazing to her and to the other kids in the area. They're not only someone that (kids around here) look up to, but they really make an effort to be mentors to those kids."

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"I have looked up to the Mewis sisters my whole life," said Sentnor, a 5-foot-3 midfielder/forward. "They went to my town high school and so I had some of their old textbooks in middle school, which I thought was the coolest thing. They've just always been people that I have tried to be like. Especially Sam, (she) has been such an amazing mentor to me. She's texted with me about the college process and going pro. She's such an incredible person."

Sentnor recalled that she was a bit starstruck when she began communicating with Sam Mewis instead of just admiring her from a distance. But now Sentnor herself is a bona fide star, complete with all the expectations that go along with going No. 1 overall.

No pressure, but as the Los Angeles Times pointed out recently, the last 10 top overall picks in the NWSL draft have gone on to play in the Women's World Cup and two were named league MVPs in just their second season.

"I do like a little bit of pressure," acknowledged Sentnor, a veteran of age-group international competitions with the U.S. program, "but I am trying to just enjoy the moment and get to know my team and do whatever I can to help the team. There is a little bit of pressure, but I think I want learn how to thrive under that."

'Competitive fire' burns brightly

Of course, there's no way to predict which young kids will grow up to become elite professional athletes. But there certainly were indicators early on that Sentnor, the 2019 Sports Illustrated Sports Kid of the Year, had two requirements for the gig – a single-minded focus and a frighteningly competitive drive.

"We made her try every sport, but she wasn't interested" in anything other than soccer, her mom recalled. "She would try (something else) and then give us all the reasons she didn't like it."

Sentnor did like gymnastics and she tried to juggle that and soccer for a while, but two-hour soccer practices started bleeding over into three-hour gymnastics practices and finally she had to trim her schedule. "At every soccer practice it was always, 'Oh, can I stay a little later and keep working on soccer?'" she said. "I think, ultimately, I was showing up later and later to gymnastics and I was like, 'OK, this is it.' I clearly liked soccer more than I liked gymnastics."

One thing Sentnor does not like is losing. Again, the family found this out early.

"When I was really young, I flipped over a Candy Land board ... allegedly," Sentnor said with a laugh. "You can ask my Mom about that one."

"She's definitely one of the most competitive (family members), whether it's soccer or family board games or cornhole in the backyard," younger sister Katelyn agreed. "There's always a competitive fire in her."

Katelyn Sentnor is an accomplished soccer player herself, having captained the 2023 Thayer team that finished runner-up in the Class A New England tournament. A senior, she won't be continuing the sport in college, though. She's passionate about rock-climbing and wants to be an environmental engineer one day.

"I love soccer, to an extent," Katelyn said. "But it's not what I want to do with my life and it's not my whole life. And (Ally) loves it with every part of her (being). It's a lot of who she is and a lot of what she wants to be."

Immediate impact at Thayer

Kiley Lilly played played club soccer with Kristie Mewis growing up. If she thought that was going to be her last brush with greatness, she was mistaken. The Thayer Academy assistant coach figured out early on that Sentnor was going places, too, after she made varsity as an eighth-grader.

"My favorite moment of hers was we had a game against one of our rivals (Lawrence Academy). It was home, and one of their players scored and their fans started chanting, 'SHE'S a FRESH-man!'" said Lilly, who lives in Scituate. "We went to midfield and the whistle blew to start play again, and Ally literally took the ball (off the restart) and dribbled through seven people and banged the ball into the back of the net, and our entire sideline started chanting, 'SHE'S in EIGHTH grade!' It was such a beautiful moment."

"Yeah, I actually do remember that," Sentnor said. "That was quite funny."

At Thayer, Sentnor formed a dynamic partnership with forward Brittany Raphino, a Randolph resident who went on to star at Brown University and just recently signed to play professionally in Portugal. The Tigers won a New England crown in Sentnor's first season on varsity, but she only stuck around for one more campaign, choosing to focus her soccer energy instead on her club team (South Shore Select) and her commitments to various U.S. age-group squads.

Her first international tournament came with the U-16 National Team in Belgium.

"I honestly thought it was a one-time thing, coolest thing in my entire life," she said. "I figured, I gotta savor it while it lasts. That was my mindset. But then I (realized), oh, I can actually keep doing this. That was a cool realization."

Sentnor's passport now includes stamps from China, France, Germany, Portugal, England, Costa Rica and the Dominican Republic. That last one was the site of this past summer's CONCACAF U-20 Championship. Sentnor had 4 goals and 2 assists in five games as the U.S. won its group and lost to Mexico, 2-1, in the final, qualifying anyway for this summer's U-20 Women's World Cup in Colombia. Sentnor is eligible for that tournament and hopes to be chosen.

With globe-trotting experience like that, those NWSL road trips will seem like a quick getaway to Cape Cod.

"It's insane when I look back on it and I can say, oh, I've been there, I've been there," Sentnor said. "It's been an absolutely wild experience that I know not every 19-year-old has been through."

She's Royal-ty now

Not many 19-year-olds get to hear their name called first at a pro draft, but that's what happened to Sentnor on Jan. 11 in Anaheim, California, with her parents, Lee and Richard, in the audience. "I guess there were a lot of emotions," Lee said. "It was excitement, it was relief. Just so happy for her. If you watched it, she was just so happy. It's just a moment you want to catch and hang onto."

Katelyn Sentnor, who said she "watched patiently from the couch" back home in Hanson with younger brother William, said her older sister was "over the moon" at going No. 1.

Ally Sentnor admitted she was surprised the Royals tabbed her, but she wasn't exactly a controversial pick after a standout career at North Carolina that included scoring 22 goals in two seasons. She was a First Team All-Atlantic Coast Conference pick as a redshirt freshman in 2022 and the league's Midfielder of the Year this past fall, when she led the Tar Heels to a 13-2-8 record and a spot in the NCAA quarterfinals.

Legendary North Carolina coach Anson Dorrance told the national media that Sentnor's year-to-year improvement was "one of the greatest of any player I have ever coached in my life, including the full national team players I coached for eight years."

Her UNC career wasn't all roses, though. She did tear her ACL in her very first preseason game, an injury that was devastating at the time but now seems almost like a blessing in disguise.

"I learned how to be a better teammate, I learned how to support the team from a new role," Sentnor said of missing the entire 2021 campaign. "I learned how to battle with adversity and come back from something that is very hard to come back from. ... I think having that experience has helped me in more ways than it hurt me."

Now Sentnor will take all those soccer/life experiences into her new challenge as part of an NWSL expansion franchise. Technically, the Royals were around before (2018-20) but they folded and essentially became the Kansas City Current. This rebooted group will play its home games at 20,000-seat America First Field in Sandy, Utah, also home of Real Salt Lake of Major League Soccer.

The Royals will kick off their season on March 16, hosting the Chicago Red Stars. The closest they'll come to Hanson will be a Sept. 22 visit to Gotham, which plays at Red Bull Arena in Harrison, New Jersey.

Sentnor already has made an impact on the pitch – she had two assists in Saturday's intrasquad scrimmage that concluded a week of preseason training in Cancun, Mexico.

"It's a really unique and exciting opportunity to be part of an expansion team," said Sentnor, who is already working on getting her family outfitted in Royals gear. "Everyone's new to the team so we're all still getting to know each other, but we have this mentality that we're still here to win a championship."

This article originally appeared on The Patriot Ledger: Meet Ally Sentnor, the latest Hanson star in women's pro soccer league