Kelli Hubly (born August 9, 1994) is an American professional soccer player who plays as a defender for National Women's Soccer League (NWSL) club

Portland Thorns FC The Portland Thorns FC is an American professional women's soccer team based in Portland, Oregon. Established in 2012, the team began play in 2013 in the then-eight-team National Women's Soccer League (NWSL), which receives support from the Uni ...

. With the Thorns, Hubly won the 2017 NWSL Championship, the 2021 NWSL Shield, and other awards.

Early years

Hubly was born in

Elk Grove Village Elk Grove Village is a village in Cook and DuPage counties in the U.S. state of Illinois. Per the 2020 census, the population was 32,812. Located northwest of Chicago along the Golden Corridor, the Village of Elk Grove Village was incorpora ...

Illinois Illinois ( ) is a state in the Midwestern United States. Its largest metropolitan areas include the Chicago metropolitan area, and the Metro East section, of Greater St. Louis. Other smaller metropolitan areas include, Peoria and Rockf ...

and attended Elk Grove High School. Growing up she played for the club Sockers F.C. in Chicago, winning the 2010 and 2011 Illinois Cup Championships and the U.S. Youth Soccer Regional Championship in 2011.

College

Hubly played at the

University of Kentucky The University of Kentucky (UK, UKY, or U of K) is a public land-grant research university in Lexington, Kentucky. Founded in 1865 by John Bryan Bowman as the Agricultural and Mechanical College of Kentucky, the university is one of the state ...

her first three years (2012-2014) of college, making the All-Freshman Team of the

Southeastern Conference The Southeastern Conference (SEC) is an American college athletic conference whose member institutions are located primarily in the South Central and Southeastern United States. Its fourteen members include the flagship public universities o ...

(SEC) in 2012, winning the SEC's Freshman of the Week award on October 15, 2012, and making Top Drawer Soccer's National Team of the Week on October 8, 2013. In 2014 she helped the Wildcats advance to the SEC championship game. In 2015 she transferred to

DePaul University DePaul University is a private, Catholic research university in Chicago, Illinois. Founded by the Vincentians in 1898, the university takes its name from the 17th-century French priest Saint Vincent de Paul. In 1998, it became the largest Ca ...

, red-shirting that year due to NCAA transfer rules. She played the following year (2016), leading the

Big East Conference The Big East Conference is a collegiate athletic conference that competes in NCAA Division I in ten men's sports and twelve women's sports. Headquartered in New York City, the eleven full-member schools are primarily located in Northeast and ...

in assists and assists per game, and graduated in 2017.

Club career

Hubly was eligible but not drafted in the 2017 NWSL College Draft. Hubly joined the Portland Thorns as a temporary national team replacement player in 2017. Coming on for the last few minutes, Hubly made her first team debut on July 15, 2017, in a 1-0 win over the

North Carolina Courage The North Carolina Courage is a professional women's soccer team based in Cary, North Carolina. It was founded on January 9, 2017, after Stephen Malik acquired National Women's Soccer League (NWSL) franchise rights from the Western New York ...

. That fall, she won the 2017 NWSL Championship with the Thorns. She earned her first professional start on March 24, 2018, against the Courage. After playing every minute of the first four games of the 2018 NWSL season due to an injury to usual starter

Emily Menges Emily Townsend Menges (born July 28, 1992) is an American professional soccer player who plays as a defender in the National Women's Soccer League (NWSL) for Portland Thorns FC, with whom she won the 2016 and 2021 NWSL Shield and also the 20 ...

, Hubly was signed by the Thorns on April 27, 2018, to a long-term contract. Hubly was a key member and frequent starter for the Thorns teams that won the 2020 Fall Series (Community Shield),

2021 NWSL Challenge Cup The 2021 NWSL Challenge Cup was a league cup tournament that took place during the 2021 National Women's Soccer League season. It began on April 9 and ended May 8, one week before the start of the regular season. It was the second iteration of t ...

2021 Women's International Champions Cup The 2021 International Champions Cup Women's Tournament was a friendly tournament of women's association football matches. It was the third edition of the Women's International Champions Cup and took place in Portland, Oregon, United States, f ...

, and 2021 NWSL Shield. In the

2022 NWSL Season The 2022 National Women's Soccer League season was the tenth season of the National Women's Soccer League, the top division of women's soccer in the United States. Including the NWSL's two professional predecessors, Women's Professional Soccer ( ...

, Hubly played in every minute of every game for the Portland Thorns and was included in the 2022 NWSL Best XI Second Team.

International

Hubly was a member of the U.S. Women's National Team at the U-15, U-17, and U-18 levels.

Honors and awards

Portland Thorns FC * NWSL Champions:

2017 File:2017 Events Collage V2.png, From top left, clockwise: The War Against ISIS at the Battle of Mosul (2016-2017); aftermath of the Manchester Arena bombing; The Solar eclipse of August 21, 2017 ("Great American Eclipse"); North Korea tests a s ...

2022 File:2022 collage V1.png, Clockwise, from top left: Road junction at Yamato-Saidaiji Station several hours after the assassination of Shinzo Abe; Anti-government protest in Sri Lanka in front of the Presidential Secretariat; The global monkeypo ...

NWSL Shield The NWSL Shield is an annual award given to the National Women's Soccer League (NWSL) team with the best regular season record as determined by the NWSL points system. The NWSL Shield has been awarded annually since 2013 and is recognized as a ...

: 2021 *

NWSL Challenge Cup The NWSL Challenge Cup, currently known as the UKG NWSL Challenge Cup for sponsorship reasons, is an annual tournament organized by the National Women's Soccer League (NWSL), the top-tier women's league in the United States soccer league system. T ...

2021 File:2021 collage V2.png, From top left, clockwise: the James Webb Space Telescope was launched in 2021; Protesters in Yangon, Myanmar following the coup d'état; A civil demonstration against the October 2021 coup in Sudan; Crowd shortly after t ...

* NWSL Community Shield:

2020 2020 was heavily defined by the COVID-19 pandemic, which led to global social and economic disruption, mass cancellations and postponements of events, worldwide lockdowns and the largest economic recession since the Great Depression in t ...

Women's International Champions Cup The Women's International Champions Cup (WICC) is an annual club women's soccer invitational tournament in the United States. Launched by Relevent Sports Group in 2018, it features four American and European women's soccer teams competing for the ...

Individual * NWSL Second XI:

* Southeastern Conference All-Freshman Team: 2012

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Hubly, Kelli 1994 births Living people American women's soccer players DePaul Blue Demons women's soccer players Kentucky Wildcats women's soccer players National Women's Soccer League players People from Elk Grove Village, Illinois Portland Thorns FC players Soccer players from Cook County, Illinois Soccer players from DuPage County, Illinois Women's association football defenders