Kennedy Fuller was so accomplished as a gymnast that she became a state champion in Texas in her age group and was even ranked on America’s Top 100 list of young gymnasts by the time she was eight.
After deciding to drop gymnastics for football, as the demands to compete in both sports at a high level proved too much, the highly-touted USA attacking midfielder is now poised to take the next big leap in her career at the FIFA U-20 Women’s World Cup Poland 2026™.
The Angel City star scored twice in the 2025 CONCACAF Women’s U-20 Championship as the Stars and Stripes reached the semi-finals to punch their ticket for the global showpiece.
She is now eagerly awaiting the draw at EC1 Cultural Center in Lodz on Friday, where USA will find out who they will face in the group stage in their quest to win a fourth title and first since 2012.
Fuller has plenty of international experience, having starred at the FIFA U-17 Women’s World Cup Dominican Republic 2024™, where she scored four goals – and registered three assists – to help USA secure a third-place finish, picking up the the adidas Silver Boot as the tournament’s second-best scorer in the process.
Ahead of the draw, Fuller spoke to FIFA about her gymnastics background, the move up from the U-17s to U-20s and why she wants to face Spain at Poland 2026, if selected.
Kennedy Fuller: I started doing gymnastics when I was very little. My parents put me in it to focus on balance, co-ordination and flexibility, which are super-important as an athlete. I loved picking out leotards, making my own dance routines and all of that. It was so fun but it got to the point when I was doing gymnastics and soccer. I would go to school and do four hours of gymnastics and then an hour and a half of soccer. That got to be way too much as school started picking up and soccer became more competitive and the gymnastics meets became extremely demanding.
So I had to pick between soccer and gymnastics and the one of the biggest things I loved about soccer was having the feeling of having your team behind you and being able to [experience] the wins and losses with your team.
I was a state champion gymnast in my fifth-grade year and it was so fun. I was able to compete against the best in Texas and I ended up placing really well so that was a super cool experience. After that tournament, I took a year in Xcel gymnastics which was competitive but not as much of a time commitment. It was still becoming too much so I quit and focused on soccer.
Gymnastics really helped me as you have to have a lot mental toughness when you do it as you are constantly failing and failing until you get it, which is really hard as an athlete as you want to be perfect and get it right every time. So it was good for me as I learned every time I fell or messed up my routine.
International experience is something you can’t buy and it’s so important as a young player aspiring to be on the full team. [USA senior coach] Emma Hayes values a lot of the youth tournaments and getting in as many youth games as possible and that is something I really admire about her. I have been fortunate to be able to play in a World Cup, Concacaf tournaments, qualifiers and a bunch of friendlies and [I’ve gained a lot of] knowledge through the different opponents as obviously the opponents are not the same. Teams we play in Concacaf are very different to the ones we play in the World Cup.
It has been great. Vicky [Jepson] is our coach and I can’t say enough good things about her. She is a players’ coach which is so important, she has brought in and implemented the importance of the team and chemistry and how close we all are… and also buying into the journey because it is a journey. She says, ‘What we do is hard and we have to find joy in what we do’ and she really implements that every single camp. Being able to learn under her has been such a big privilege.
Also the U-20s is such a different game than the U-17s. There is a huge jump in level because in the U-17s we didn’t have many pros or college players and some of us were just in a club environment and now we have a lot of professional athletes and high-level college players.
Being part of such a prestigious programme, going out in the semi-finals was really difficult for the team. It was a huge learning experience for us. A lot of players got their first international caps and their first goals and assists so we took a lot of positives out of it as well. But at the same time, it lit a fire under us of, ‘Even if we don’t win, we want to be hard to beat.’ We felt the game [against Canada] we didn’t play to expectations but at the same time we learned so much. Since then we have done really well in our international friendlies and domestic camps as well.
Being able to continue on this journey with the U-20s is such a privilege. Obviously the goal is Poland and when Vicky picks the team, she will pick the best players she thinks and our job is to hopefully make her life difficult so we’re looking forward to it from a personal perspective. If I make the roster, I’m hoping we play Spain again at some point as they were our first loss in the U-17 Women’s World Cup and I want to get back!
I’ve always said that Marta is the GOAT (greatest of all time) of the game and to be able to meet her when she remembered who I was [was incredible] because she is someone I would write book reports on and have posters of on my walls. So to be able to have that experience with her with some of my best friends at the game, they were all freaking out… That is one of the great thing about the NWSL is we are able to enter the league at 16, 17, 18 and get to play with some of the players we looked up to our entire lives. It’s a beautiful part of the game and I hope everyone would react to meeting Marta like that as she deserves that.
