Kilgore finished her record-setting college career at the University of Arizona in 2001. For the next three seasons, she played semi-professionally with the Arizona Heatwave of the USL W-League. But by 2004, a path to full-time professional soccer was gone. The Women’s United Soccer Association, the first ever full-time women’s professional soccer league, had folded after the 2003 season and the next full-time women’s professional soccer league wouldn’t appear until Women’s Professional Soccer kicked off in 2009.
“It was pretty clear that if I wanted to [get into coaching] now was the time,” Kilgore said.
Kilgore started in the college ranks as an assistant at Northern Arizona and then was an assistant and associate head coach at Pepperdine before spending time as a head coach with W-League side Los Angeles Legends and the University of California, Davis. In 2019, she joined NWSL side Houston Dash as an assistant coach, before becoming an assistant coach with the USWNT in 2022.
But just before she was officially brought in as an assistant with U.S. Soccer, Kilgore acquired some valuable experience at the international level. While still an assistant in Houston, she was brought in to run the U.S. Under-23 Women’s Youth National Team camp at the start of 2022. As a self-described over-preparer, Kilgore immediately got to work preparing for this opportunity of leading a youth national team for training camp. Then, she learned who her opponent in that camp would be late in her preparation.
The full U.S. Women’s National Team.
“I got to camp, and as prepared as I was to coach the 23s and take them through a series of things I wanted to teach them, I quickly realized that they needed something different than what I had prepared for in order to be their best,” Kilgore said. “It was just a really good lesson in putting the people first and meeting them where they were at. Putting our plans aside and making some adjustments. And it ended up being one of the most rewarding and best experiences I've ever had being with that 23 team.”
Being flexible and making adjustments would become the central theme of a major challenge – but also opportunity -- that came her way in the fall of 2023: being the interim head coach for the USWNT.
