ATLANTA (May 22, 2025) – U.S. Under-17 Women’s National Team head coach Katie Schoepfer has named 24 players to the first training camp after her team qualified 2025 FIFA U-17 Women’s World Cup, which starting this year, will be staged annually and has been expanded from 16 to 24 nations. The camp will take place from May 27-June 3 in Fayetteville, Ga., site of the currently under construction Arthur M. Blank U.S. Soccer National Training Center, which will host the majority of YNT camps after its completion in 2026.
Players born on or after Jan. 1, 2008, are age-eligible for the 2025 FIFA U-17 Women’s World Cup. Twenty-three players selected by Schoepfer were born in 2008 with Gotham FC forward Mak Whitham, who was the youngest signing in NWSL history at age 13 (she’s now 14), born in 2010.
The USA is preparing for the World Cup which will be held Oct. 17-Nov. 8. The next five editions of the tournament, starting this year, will be held in Morocco. To qualify, the USA needed to win its group in the Final Round of the Concacaf Women’s U-17 Championship, and did so with aplomb, outscoring its three opponents, 17-0.
This camp will also serve as a springboard to the June training camp at which the U.S. U-17s will face youth international power Japan twice in Kansas City, with the first match being a promoted game at CPKC Stadium, home to the Kansas City Current, and the first purpose-built stadium for women’s soccer. That match will take place on June 28 (6:30 p.m. CT) and the teams will also play a closed-door international on July 1 at The University of Kansas Health System Training Center, which is also home to the Current. Japan has won one FIFA U-17 Women’s World Cup and finished runners-up twice. Tickets for the promoted match are available through the Kansas City Current here.
Just eight players on this roster participated in the qualifying tournament as Schoepfer takes a deeper dive into the player pool to evaluate players who could contribute to the World Cup Team.
The players that were in Costa Rica for the Concacaf tournament were goalkeeper Evan O'Steen, defenders Pearl Cecil, Lauren Hemann, Gacie Milam and Sydney Schmidt, midfielders Jaiden Rodriguez and Chloe Sadler and forward Ashlyn Anderson. Rodriguez scored twice in the three goals while Anderson tallied four times. Cecil, a center back, and Schmidt scored once each. O’Steen, who plays her youth club for Solar SC, also is on the books for the Dallas Trinity in the USL Super League, but she has not seen action this year.
Goalkeeper Hannah Folliard, defenders Marlee Raymond and Milam and midfielder Brooke Bunton -- all of whom are named to this camp -- were alternates on the Concacaf qualifying team. Milam was eventually moved to the full roster for Costa Rica after an injury to another player.
One professional club and 22 different youth clubs from 15 different states are represented on the roster, with four players from California, three from Florida, and two each from Georgia, Utah and Illinois.
Fourteen countries have qualified so far for the 2025 FIFA U-17 Women’s World Cup. China PR, Japan, Korea DPR and Korea Republic have qualified from Asia via nominations by the Asian Football Confederation based on results of the last three editions of AFC U-17 Women's Asian Cup in Thailand in 2017 and 2019 and in Indonesia in 2024. New Zealand and Samoa have qualified from Oceania via the 2024 OFC U-16 Women’s Championship. From Africa, in addition to host Morocco, Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Nigeria and Zambia have earned berths via the 2025 African U-17 Women’s World Cup qualifiers. The Concacaf teams that qualified along with the USA were Mexico, Canada and Costa Rica.
Domestic Training Camp – Fayetteville, Ga.