Rose Lavelle Suits Up to Build Gotham FC’s Future

Devon John Cafaro, Team Photographer for Gotham FC8 min readRose Lavelle is breaking down her outfit of the day, though it’s not the ensemble you’d expect from a professional athlete’s social media feed.“My hard hat, which is… something,” the Gotham FC midfielder says with a chuckle. She looks down to survey the rest of her mandatory construction-site-chic attire. “My gloves—gardener’s. My boots—too big. My vest—cool.”It’s a Tuesday afternoon in September, and Rose is the first of her teammates to tour the unfinished Etihad Park in Queens, New York, the stadium that Gotham will call home in 2028. Earlier that day, Gotham announced that Rose had signed a contract extension through 2029. In other words, she'll be back when this concrete floor is an actual soccer pitch.We weave past steel beams and through what will eventually become Gotham's tunnel to the pitch. From there, the grandstands rise around us, a preview of the 25,000-seat venue that will soon welcome Gotham's fans. Rose poses for photos, holding a jersey that says “2029.”A few days later, Gotham’s president of soccer operations, Yael Averbuch West, tells me she smiled when she saw the images of Rose in her hard hat. The look may be a departure from her usual uniform, but Averbuch West sees something fitting about it. As Gotham prepares to make another postseason run in pursuit of defending their 2025 National Women’s Soccer League title, Rose has become central to the club's plans.“She has been part of literally constructing this vision with us,” Averbuch West says. “She has been an instrumental part of the vision of the club and our aspirations and our ambition.”The roughly $780 million Etihad Park is being developed by Major League Soccer's New York City FC, which will share the stadium with Gotham beginning in 2028. It's a significant upgrade from Gotham's current arrangement at Sports Illustrated Stadium in Harrison, New Jersey, where the team uses the visitors' locker room and covers up the New York Red Bulls’ logos with its own banners. At Etihad Park, Gotham will have a locker room of its own, merchandise space in the team store, and digital signage and video boards that can be fully branded for Gotham on match days—no covering up another team's logos required.The move is another sign of just how much women's professional soccer has changed since Rose entered the NWSL nearly a decade ago. And in that time, Rose has changed, too. At 31, the once up-and-coming star has become a veteran helping set the standard for a club that has no plans to slow down.Then and NowThe NWSL is not the same league it was when Rose was drafted first overall by the now-defunct Boston Breakers in 2017, playing home games at a 2,500-seat facility at Harvard University. When I sit down with Rose after our stadium tour, she tells me it’s difficult to compare the things that mattered to her as a rookie to signing a contract extension now. “I think of the amount of support staff we had, it was so few—how many people were dedicated towards ticketing and marketing and all of that,” she says. “I notice that stuff a lot more now than I probably did at the time, because you don't know what you don't know.”Rose has come a long way since then. She won the 2019 World Cup with the U.S. Women’s National Team, earned Olympic gold in Paris in 2024, and navigated injuries and moves between NWSL clubs. She joined Gotham in 2024 and, after ankle surgery sidelined her for the start of her second season, returned to help the club win the 2025 NWSL championship, scoring the winning goal. In January, she was named U.S. Soccer's 2025 Female Player of the Year.On the field, Rose’s influence isn't always captured in goals or assists. Gotham rookie Andrea Kitahata calls her the club’s “quiet momentum-builder and tone-setter” for how she initiates the team's defensive press and creates attacking opportunities that may not show up on a stat sheet.Rose has learned plenty from USWNT veterans like Megan Rapinoe, Becky Sauerbrunn, Alex Morgan, Christen Press, and Tobin Heath, who showed her that there was no single way to command respect in a locker room. “Everybody led in their own way,” Rose says. “Everybody's leadership style might have looked different, but it wasn't any more or less impactful than the other.”Courtesy Gotham FCNow, the younger players in Gotham’s locker room are learning from Rose—especially since her 2025 ankle surgery, the first of her career, which forced her to find new ways to contribute off the field.She initially thought surgery would be a straightforward fix. “I think I thought you get surgery to fix it, and when you're off the table, you’re fixed, and it's smooth sailing. And it was not smooth sailing at all,” she says. She pauses. “Yeah, it was really painful! It was really painful.”The physical recovery was only part of the challenge. Rose says the mental toll of rehabbing—and the uncertainty that came with it—tested her in ways she hadn't anticipated. “It taught me I had a whole ’nother level of mental grind and fortitude that I could battle through,” she says. “I think you learn the most about yourself in the tough moments. I mean, it was hard—but I made it through, and I feel like I gained so much.”The Rose EffectRose has never been the loudest voice in the locker room, but recent years have taught her that she doesn’t need to be.Ahead of the 2025 season, Rose told Averbuch West that she would be more intentional about creating the change she wanted to see within the club. “When you're Rose Lavelle, you are a leader, whether you choose to be or not,” Averbuch West says. “It doesn't have to come in big speeches in front of the group. It’s not going to be that. But it's the little things she does behind the scenes, the little connections with players—pulling someone aside, talking on the field.”Her teammates take cues from her, Averbuch West says. If Gotham is down a goal at halftime, they look to Rose to gauge how she's responding. If Rose is inspired, they’re inspired. And Rose has become increasingly intentional about the example she sets. “She's been very proactive during her time here to share really constructive feedback with us, and to also be part of creating a locker room culture that I think the players at this point are really enjoying,” Averbuch West says.Rose may not be the type to deliver a rousing team speech, but she has no problem commanding a room when the occasion calls for it. Take the weekly Crumbl Cookies guessing game that became a team ritual during Gotham's preseason training camp in Spain. The premise: Guess the cookie chain's flavors of the week. The stakes: Bragging rights, apparently. (According to Kitahata, hardly anyone actually eats the cookies—“unless it’s Biscoff, in which case Rose will always go for Biscoff.”)“Obviously, we had some cheaters in there,” Kitahata jokes. “Rose made sure that she held everyone accountable, made sure no one's looking it up on their phone.”And Rose isn’t exactly a quiet participant. “She's in the meal room screaming out,” Kitahata recalls, imitating Rose’s clues: “Blank, blank, blank, blank. It's four words. Figure it out, guys!”Devon John Cafaro, Team Photographer for Gotham FCShe’s equally serious about her teammates’ recovery. During a July road trip to Portland, Rose took Kitahata, still navigating her first professional season, along for a day of mental and physical recovery. They got coffee, browsed the shelves at Powell's Books, and headed to a sauna and cold plunge. A stickler for her recovery routine, Rose insisted they stay submerged up to their necks in the icy water for four minutes. “I'm like, ‘Rose. Rose, I'm freezing!’” Kitahata recalls. But Rose wouldn't budge. “I love that she always holds me accountable for my recovery.” They finished the day with sushi.Rose is the teammate you want to run into when you’re having a bad day, because she notices, Kitahata says. “Even with a look, she's like, ‘Oh my god, what's wrong? Do we need to go get coffee?’ … It’s very rare to find someone of her stardom that is just so willing to give to the team.”Rose has become more conscious of how much she'll miss these moments someday. “I'm such a painfully nostalgic person,” she says. “It's like, debilitating sometimes, honestly.”It's the everyday moments with her teammates that seem to stick with her most. “I was thinking the other day, having moments in the locker room where we have this shared playlist that we're playing, and we're all dancing to it. And I was like, ‘How many grown adults get to dance with their friends in the locker room?’” she says. “It’s little things like that that it's so easy to take for granted, because we get to do it literally every single day, but something that I think is just so special.”It's also clear how much she values the life she's built at Gotham, and how much she wants to keep being part of it. “I love my life off-field. I love my life on-field. I think we have such an incredible group of players and staff that we get to work with and learn from each day,” she says. “I just felt so content, but also challenged in a way that I felt like I was going to be happily growing.”A New Home Field For Gotham, the move to Queens isn't just about having a place to call its own. It's also an opportunity to reach a bigger audience. Despite winning two NWSL championships in three seasons, Gotham has struggled to fill the stands in New Jersey consistently. But when the club hosted the Washington Spirit at Citi Field, home of the New York Mets, for its Queens Classic in July, the sellout crowd of 42,175 offered a glimpse of what might be possible across the street at Etihad Park.The move isn't without its complications. Gotham has deep roots in New Jersey, and some longtime supporters are disappointed to see the club leave. “I was a little sad at first that the team was moving,” says Lindsey Smith, 37, a New Jersey resident and five-year season ticket holder. “But this is so much bigger than a location to me. As someone who wants to make women's sports accessible, I'm very excited for Gotham to move to Queens.”Smith’s friend Krista Tonnesen, 37, has been attending Gotham matches regularly since 2021. An Astoria resident, that has meant long trips home after night games, sometimes with 40-minute waits between PATH trains. She's thrilled to have Gotham in her borough, and hopeful that the shorter trip will bring more fans into the stands. “The players and the team deserve better,” she says. “I really think moving to New York will turn that around.”Rose says the atmosphere at the Queens Classic, where she scored the game's only goal, left an impression on her. “To think that we could be playing in front of a crowd and atmosphere like that, every single home game, I think it'll just add that much more to what we're building,” she says.Back at Etihad Park, as we make our way through the unfinished concrete hallways, I ask Rose if she can picture what it'll be like when Gotham finally takes the field here. “I see the vision,” she says.Amanda Lucci is the director of special projects at Women’s Health, where she works on multi-platform brand initiatives and social media strategy. She also leads the sports and athletes vertical, traveling to cover the Paris Olympics, Women’s World Cup, WNBA Finals, and NCAA Final Four for WH. She has nearly 15 years of experience writing, editing, and managing social media for national and international publications and is also a NASM-certified personal trainer. A proud native of Pittsburgh, PA, she is a graduate of Ohio University’s E.W. Scripps School of Journalism. Follow her on Instagram @alucci.