U.S. women’s national team star Trinity Rodman said that the back issues that have followed her for several years will likely persist for the remainder of her career, saying she does not think it will ever be “100 percent.”
Rodman started her first game of 2025 on Friday in the Washington Spirit’s 2-0 win over Bay FC, though that came after a lengthy period away from the field. The back injuries she’s dealt with since her rookie season at the Spirit in 2021 flared up last September and kept her out for nearly a month, though she returned for the Spirit’s playoff run that ended in a defeat to the Orlando Pride in November’s NWSL Championship. Spirit head coach Jonathan Giraldez opted not to risk Rodman for the NWSL Challenge Cup earlier this month, but has played each of the team’s three regular season games so far and took time on Friday to discuss the chronic nature of the injury.
“Honestly, I don’t think my back will ever be 100 percent,” she told reporters, per Pro Soccer Wire. “It’s not one specific thing, it’s just the way that my back is structured. And it’s more so management than like a curable fix. So I think we’ve managed it really well, and I’m happy with the progression that we’ve had. But for me, I don’t think my back will ever be like the way it was my rookie year, which is unfortunate.”
The lingering back issue means Rodman has missed a sizable chunk of games at different periods during her career, sometimes when the timing was not ideal. Last season’s injury came after she played a crucial role in the USWNT’s gold medal winning run at the Olympics and in the midst of an NWSL season in which she was nominated for the MVP award.
“It’s tough for me, coming off of such a good season and the Olympics and then going into an injury, and then now trying to kind of find my place again, and find my role, and find my rhythm,” Rodman continued. “I think having such an incline of momentum and going and going and going and then getting injured, it’s like, where am I starting again? Because you can’t just get right back into it. So for me, that’s been the mental battle of, I can’t be the Trinity that I was at the Olympics now coming back from injury. So I’m just trying to play the role as best as I can and still be effective in a different way as I build back up into it.”
Rodman’s USWNT return
Rodman will now focus her efforts on the USWNT, who will play two games against Brazil in April as they continue to build towards the 2027 Women’s World Cup. It marks her first time on the USWNT roster since the Olympics, with head coach Emma Hayes choosing to offer Rodman some rest after a demanding season for club and country. Hayes has also played her part in helping Rodman manage her back injuries by consulting specialists to work with the player.
“She’s been so receptive to everything that I’ve said and even she goes out of her way to reach out to me, to ask how I’m doing and just to let me know they’re working behind the scenes to get people to be able to help with my back just because it is a hard location of injury ’cause with sports, you’re kind of used to the knee down,” Rodman said about Hayes at the NWSL’s media day in January. “It’s been really nice. She’s very supportive and very considerate of all of us, which is nice.”
Hayes does not necessarily intend on rushing Rodman back into the fold, either. The head coach has embraced the spirit of experimentation with the long countdown to the World Cup underway and hopes to use the games against Brazil as a chance to test her inexperienced squad. Hayes, though, openly admitted that Rodman may not be ready for an oversized role for the upcoming friendlies.
“We’re delighted she’s back with us,” Hayes said during a press conference last week. “But of course, [I] have to urge a little bit of caution because she’s had an ongoing back complaint. I think she’s on the right road to that, but it can be quite easy to trigger it. You can go from a position of a managed return to play to too much, so I have to try to find the sweet spot in camp to reintegrate her back into the team but also to manage her because she has a long season ahead.”
Read the full article here
