As Lorne Donaldson remembers it, his elite girls’ soccer team from greater Denver was trouncing an opponent at halftime at a club tournament in Portland.

Sophia Smith — soon bound for Stanford and, within two years, the U.S. national team — already had scored seven goals. With a cold rain drenching players to the bone, Donaldson opted to rest his prized forward.

“We’ve got a game tomorrow, and you’ve scored seven goals,” he explained to her. “You’re done.”

Smith didn’t understand. “I don’t want to embarrass the team and the coach,” he said.

She reacted as if she had been yanked from the World Cup final. “Embarrass the team and the coach? So why are they here?” she raged. “I’m here to play. Their problem is not my problem.”

Some five years later, Portland Thorns’ forward Smith will carry her unapologetic ruthlessness and blinding skills to the World Cup in Australia and New Zealand. It’s a global introduction for a 22-year-old attacker who has stormed the National Women’s Soccer League and joined the top-ranked U.S. team’s bid for a record third consecutive trophy.

What fuels her fire?

“I grew up with two big sisters who played sports, so everything was a competition,” she said. “I always had to kind of fend for myself from Day 1. I’m a winner. I have to win. It makes me sick to lose anything. A card game. Anything. When it comes to soccer, I just find a way.”

Smith did a lot of winning last year: In her second full season with the Thorns, she won the NWSL championship and the MVP awards for both the regular season and final. She was also voted the U.S. Soccer Federation’s female player of the year.

Goals have flowed, too: 28 in 40 matches across all NWSL competitions in 2022-23 and 11 goals in 17 national team appearances last year.

Before reporting to U.S. camp last month, Smith scored in four straight NWSL appearances, including a hat trick against the Washington Spirit, her second three-goal feat of the season.

The first two goals came on shots from outside the penalty area after she accelerated into the open field and took on multiple defenders. Her placement of quick-release shots was as exact as that of a pitcher firing into a catcher’s mitt set up on the edge of home plate.

“When you give her time on the ball, bad things are going to happen,” said Spirit midfielder Ashley Sanchez, Smith’s World Cup teammate.

Having watched Smith excel in the NWSL and in U.S. tournaments and friendlies, Coach Vlatko Andonovski sees the World Cup as her next frontier.

“Doing well in this league is great, but it’s totally different doing it at the international level or in the World Cup,” he said. “We do believe that Soph has the quality to do well in this tournament, and actually we’re excited to see how that is going to look.”

Smith is from Windsor, Colorado, 55 miles north of Denver. She comes from a basketball family.

Her father Kenny was the University of Wyoming’s point guard for two years. Her mother Mollie played in high school. Her sister Savannah set more than a dozen records at the University of Northern Colorado, including career points. Twice she scored 40 in a game. In 2017-18, she led the Bears to their first Big Sky championship and NCAA tournament berth.

Sophia, Savannah and their elder sister, Gabrielle, played multiple sports growing up. While the older girls opted for basketball, Sophia stuck with soccer.

“She was a typical soccer player when she played basketball: They like to run,” said Savannah, 26. “She was skilled but also had the energy and the stamina of soccer. I like to think she would have gone just as far in basketball as she did in soccer. She couldn’t beat me, but she was pretty good.”

Skills learned in basketball applied to soccer. “The spatial awareness, using your body to shield the ball — there’s a lot of translatable skills,” said Paul Ratcliffe, Smith’s coach at Stanford. “She uses her body as well as any player I’ve seen. She gets her body in between the ball and the defender. And she has a low center of gravity; she’s very powerful.”

By age 12, having outgrown the local soccer league, Smith joined Real Colorado, Donaldson’s renowned club that has launched numerous college and pro careers, including that of Mallory Swanson, the U.S. star who will miss the World Cup with a knee injury.

The commitment required a 170-mile round-trip commute four days a week .

Her talent was unmistakable.

“She had all the makings then,” said Donaldson, who doubles as the coach of the Jamaican women’s national team, which qualified for the World Cup. “She was a goal scorer. You can start judging them at 14, 15, and right there we saw a player. Her mentality was just ruthless. She just wanted to score goals and score more goals.”

By 16, Smith had earned a place on the U.S. U-17 World Cup squad alongside Sanchez, among others. She then received a call-up to the senior team, and although she wouldn’t make her debut for a few more years, the path was set.

Her first roommate was defender Becky Sauerbrunn, 15 years older and a national team member for nine years. (Smith and Sauerbrunn are now Portland teammates; the latter will miss the World Cup with a foot injury.)

“I was so nervous and scared because you’re in camp with people you’ve looked up to your whole life, and then you have to room with Becky Sauerbrunn,” Smith said. “You watched these people on TV, and you think they’re scary or mean or something. She was just so normal and asking me about my homework.”

Top NCAA programs came calling. She chose Stanford.

After posting seven goals in an injury-shortened freshman season, Smith recorded 17 goals and nine assists, including a hat trick in the 2019 NCAA tournament semifinal against UCLA. The Cardinal won the title, defeating North Carolina in a shootout, and Smith was named the College Cup’s most outstanding player.

Portland selected her No. 1 in the 2020 NWSL draft. Her rookie season was almost entirely wiped out by the coronavirus pandemic, and after scoring seven times for the Thorns in 2021, she broke out last year, finishing second in the scoring race behind San Diego’s Alex Morgan.

“Playing in the NWSL,” Smith said, “has allowed me to find my place within this world.”