Casey Krueger didn’t know when she was going to get the call. She paced, waited by her phone, tried to distract herself.
But keeping her mind off of whether she’d be a two-time Olympian is no small feat.
Then the phone rang. Krueger jumped.
She scrambled to find a quiet place to answer. Emma Hayes, head coach of the U.S. women’s national soccer team, was on the line. Hayes started talking, but Krueger began to lose service. Her heart dropped.
The anticipation stretched on for 15 long seconds. Then they reconnected. And the stress fell away.
“She said, ‘OK, I’m going to put you at ease,’” Krueger recalled. “Once I heard that sentence, I took a breath and I was like OK. This is good. This is good. This is what I’ve been waiting for. Then she told me I made the team.”
Krueger, a Naperville native and former Naperville Central High School soccer star, is on the U.S. women’s soccer roster for the 2024 Paris Olympic Games. This will be the second time the 33-year-old is headed to the games, having already helped the U.S. take bronze in Tokyo three years ago.
But this time is all the more momentous. She’s sharing it with her 2-year-old son, Caleb.
“It’s hard to put into words just how special it is to have him here along the road,” Krueger said, speaking last week just after the women’s national team clinched a win against Mexico in one of two friendly matches they were set to play before heading off to France.
“He travels with me for everything, which is such a blessing to have him around,” she said. “It’s the most special thing I could ever ask for.”
Krueger’s place on the Paris team is only more gratifying, she said, because she wasn’t sure these past few years if she’d even be able to make the cut.
After Tokyo, the defender took a step back from the game and focused on starting a family with her husband, Cory, she said. In July 2022, she gave birth to Caleb. Meanwhile, she grappled with the future of her soccer career.
“I kind of went back and forth on whether I could come back,” she said. “Whether I wanted to come back. Whether my body would be able to come back.”
But through her pregnancy, Krueger couldn’t shake the feeling that she had more to give to the sport. More than that, she wanted to show herself — and her son — that she could do it.
Her recovery and return wasn’t easy, especially after an unplanned cesarean section, but in the spring of last year, she was called up to join the national team in its last training camp before the roster for the 2023 World Cup was decided.
Krueger recalled that camp alone as a “really cool moment.”
“It was my first moment back on the field, playing at the international level as a mom,” she said. Krueger felt great, better than she did before her pregnancy. Then she was left off the World Cup squad.
“It was devastating,” Krueger said. But it wasn’t the end. In the months after the World Cup, she was again named to the national team roster. That ignited a renewed hope, and she turned her attention to Paris.
“It meant that I could still do this,” she said. She resolved she was up for the challenge — in more ways than one.
In January, it was announced Krueger had signed a three-year contract with the Washington Spirit, the Washington, D.C.-based team that’s part of the National Women’s Soccer League. For much of the last decade, Krueger had competed on her hometown team, the Chicago Red Stars. An itch for change drew her away.
“(Leaving Chicago) was certainly one of the most difficult decisions I’ve ever had to make,” said Krueger, noting that her mom still lives in Naperville. “But at the same time, just seeing what other clubs were doing and seeing the direction of the Spirit excited me.”
The changes and ups and downs of the past three years all came to head in June, when Krueger was named to the 2024 Paris roster .
Going into the Olympics, Krueger has one goal: keep an open mind. She’s hoping that whatever role she’s given, she will step up and do her part to make the team successful.
At the end of the day, she says, what really matters most is having her family in her corner. That makes all the difference.
“Whether things went well, things went poorly … (my son) is all that matters. And so I think that makes me play more freely, which is a lot more fun.”
The first round of play for women’s soccer in the Paris Games is Thursday, July 25, when the U.S. faces off against Zambia at 2 p.m. CDT.
Statewide, there are a slew of Illinois athletes headed to Paris alongside Krueger competing in sports from wrestling to gymnastics. Others hailing from the western suburbs include Thomas Jaeschke and Jeff Jendryk, who are both from Wheaton and competing in volleyball, and Lauren Carlini, a volleyball player from Aurora.
tkenny@chicagotribune.com
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