Before Becoming a WNBA Star, Olivia Miles Owned the Soccer Field. Just How Good Was She?

Blink and you’ll miss it: A cunning pass through a sea of arms to set up a teammate under the basket, or a you-can’t-stop-this move to juke out a defender and coolly lay it in herself. Familiar applause erupts. Lynx star rookie Olivia Miles, aptly dubbed “The Spectacle,” has been dazzling WNBA audiences for nearly a full season now, with Minnesota having clinched the top seed heading into what should be a thoroughly entertaining playoffs featuring the bespectacled, afro-sporting magician in her natural habitat.

But long before Miles dominated the basketball court, she similarly wowed fans in a wholly different sport: Soccer. Her highlights on the pitch recently went viral during her guest appearance on the Welcome to the Party podcast with Abby Wambach, Julie Foudy and Billie Jean King.

“You’re acting like you’re embarrassed, dude, that’s s— that I would be so proud of,” Wambach, a former Women’s World Cup champ, told Miles after showing a short reel of her high school soccer goals.

In her breakout junior season at Blair Academy in New Jersey, Miles logged a team-high 17 goals along with six assists, and her highlights included everything from precise chip shots to powerful headers to 40-yard bangers. Even in today’s world of specialization, it’s not too uncommon to see two-sport athletes in high school develop their all-around skills (Caitlin Clark also produced her share of soccer highlights back in her day). To get a better idea of just how good Miles was on the pitch, we spoke on the phone with her Blair soccer coach, David Mamukelashvili.

Mamukelashvili currently teaches at Newark Academy but coached Miles for three years from her sophomore to senior season. During that span, Miles came just two goals shy of becoming Blair Academy’s all-time leading goalscorer, and she probably would have broken the record had it not been for her COVID-impacted final year.

“The freer she was, the better she played,” Mamukelashvili told Sports Illustrated. “And I think I always tried to get her to that mindset like, ‘Hey, just do your thing.’”

Though she possessed the omniscient vision and crafty ball skills typical of an attacking midfielder, Miles primarily played striker in high school, since the final third was where she could inflict the most damage.

“The reason I put her as a striker is because of the sheer goalscoring ability that she had. Mostly I played her as a ‘9’ just because one-on-ones, two-on-ones, she would just be incredibly difficult to stop,” said Mamukelashvili.

“I think it’s a little bit of a mix of Messi, [Cristiano] Ronaldo, Bale,” Mamukelashvili continued, when probed about Miles’s playing style. “She has really good footwork, she can operate in tight spaces, just quick touches with the inside and outside of her foot. However, she was even better at finding that ball and operating in a large space. Messi will try to dribble through that space, but she was more direct. Kick it forward and out-sprint everybody. ... Technique I would say she was very Messi-like, but general attacking strategy I would say she was more like Ronaldo or Gareth Bale. Aggressive as well on top of being technical.

“And also the multifaceted ways of her scoring was, to me, like Ronaldo. Penalty kicks, a ton of header goals—she was really athletic, could jump really high—volleys and powerful shots outside of the box.”

Minnesota Lynx rookie Olivia Miles’ high school soccer highlights had Abby Wambach and Julie Foudy impressed! pic.twitter.com/mp8uEBSAKR
— Welcome to the Party Show (@WTTPartyPodcast) August 26, 2026

Years ago, Mamukelashvili wrote in Miles’s college letter of recommendation that “Olivia is an athlete who will change sports and give women’s athletics a new platform.” Even back then, the philosophy teacher knew it: She was going to be an a bona fide star. Miles went on to play basketball at Notre Dame for three full seasons before transferring to TCU for her final collegiate season in 2025-26. She then effortlessly transitioned into the WNBA as the ready-made No. 2 pick by the Lynx, lifted Minnesota amid the early-season absence of then-injured star Napheesa Collier and indisputably has the Rookie of the Year award locked up.

From a young age, Miles may have been destined to thrive in the WNBA, but she probably had a good shot at an equally successful pro soccer career, too.

“Knowing Sophia Smith or Trinity Rodman and the players that we have now on the [women’s] national team, she played a very similar style as a striker. I don’t know if she would’ve made it to the national team or how far she would’ve gone had she chosen that path. ... I would say, ‘Why not?’” said Mamukelashvili.

On the podcast, Miles told Wambach and Foudy that playing soccer early on helped prevent her from getting burnt out, and helped her with her timing of passes and “reading windows” on the court. Her old soccer coach would agree.

“She had this really good sense of how to read the game, how to operate in tight spaces, which I think was part of her basketball experience as well,” Mamukelashvili said. “Basketball courts are smaller, and there’s usually 10 people crammed in a very tight area. You can imagine a soccer penalty box, that’s where she was thriving all the time: A quick step to take a touch to the right [and] create enough space just to get a shot off—and she had a pretty powerful one. ... Soccer and basketball complement each other pretty well in that sense. To have that vision to understand who’s going to be running where and how.

“But then she would also play in space really easily, you could see her outrunning girls left and right. She would often times isolate herself, kind of like an iso in basketball. I would want her to be more involved in the play but then I realized what she was going for, so I would let her do it. Which was being remote from the play and receiving the ball in space, one-on-one, and then from there it was just so easy for her to dribble past somebody or outrun them.”

In soccer and in basketball, Miles fits the mold of a do-it-all, stop-me-if-you-can playmaker, with her incisive through balls and deadly right foot translating to her artful, through-the-needle passes on the floor and silent-killer bag of jumpers, layups and threes.

I put Olivia Miles highlights over Superfly by Curtis Mayfield and something magical happened… 🥽 pic.twitter.com/44QWyxsHXO
— Sean Hurd (@seanahurd) August 10, 2026

Miles also boasted the expressive personality and swagger to back up her game, Mamukelashvili said, fondly reminiscing about the various times the high-schooler would shush crowds after her goals or stare down the opposing team’s bench: “There were moments where she would just really be feeling it, and it would just bring a smile to my face—like, she’s on top of the world and I’m going to do my best to make sure she stays there.”

It’s nice to know some of her iconic celebrations haven’t changed, regardless of the sport. “Aura” is a word that might be too often thrown around in this generation, but Miles definitely had it back then and she still has it now, as the Lynx prepare for a title-contending run with “The Spectacle” at the center of the show.

“Keep doing what she’s doing, keep self-reflecting, stay humble,” Mamukelashvili said of his advice to Miles at this point in her young WNBA career. “With Liv, just the way she was moving, the way she was owning the field, her character, her personality, the way she wanted to win, the way she was always learning... I knew she would get to wherever she wanted to go. The sport’s going to grow in her hands and that comes with a lot of responsibility, but I’m sure she can handle it.”

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