Sisters and promising teenage soccer stars Alyssa and Gisele Thompson have signed with Nike to become the first high school athletes to ink name, image and likeness (NIL) deals with the sports apparel giant.
Specifics of the agreement have not been revealed, but their manager, Evan Sroka, did confirm a monetary multiyear year commitment between the Thompsons and Nike in an email to DailyMail.com.
Alyssa is a 17-year-old junior at Harvard-Westlake Upper School in Los Angeles, where Gisele, a 16-year-old sophomore, is her teammate.
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Sisters and promising teenage soccer stars Alyssa (right) and Gisele (left) Thompson have signed with Nike to become the first high school athletes to ink name, image and likeness (NIL) deals with the sports apparel giant
Alyssa (right) is a 17-year-old junior at Harvard-Westlake Upper School in Los Angeles, where Gisele (left), a 16-year-old sophomore, is her teammate
Alyssa (left) called her sister Gisele (right) her ‘favorite training partner’ in an Instagram post
The two have already committed to playing collegiately at Stanford after making major impacts on their respective US national teams.
While Gisele started as a defender for the U-17 squad that recently won the COCACAF championship in the Dominican Republic, Alyssa started at forward for the U-20 team that won gold in March in Santo Domingo, and she’s also a decorated sprinter, having won the Division 3 100-meter race on Saturday at the Southern Section track and field championships in LA.
‘They are definitely the real deal,’ their Harvard-Westlake coach Richard Simms told the Los Angeles Times in 2020. ‘The things they are doing are pretty unheard of.
‘They’ve been playing with boys since they were little,’ Simms continued. ‘Alyssa is one of the top goal scorers in the country. It’s crazy how much improvement they have because they’re so young.’
Remarkably, the two have been raised by parents who didn’t even play the sport as children, although they were active in athletics.
Their father, Mario, participated in football, basketball and track in high school and college, while their mother, Karen, ran cross country and played basketball in their youth.
‘I’m an educator and my kids weren’t going to be the tallest kids in the world but would have speed,’ said Mario, an elementary school principal who started them in soccer at the ages of 5 and 4. ‘We worked on them daily as kids and realized they were going to be good.’
Because of the encouragement – or perhaps, in spite of it – the two embraced the work, particularly because it brought them closer together. Alyssa referred to Gisele as her ‘favorite training partner’ in one Instagram post.
‘We work every day to get better,’ Alyssa told the LA Times in 2020. ‘We push each other a lot. I feel having her with me makes work easier because you have a partner to do it with.’
And their focus is not limited to the soccer field. The two also eliminated distractions at home, as well.
‘We don’t have TV,’ Alyssa told the Los Angeles Daily News last year.
‘Like, in the whole house,’ Gisele added.
The two have excellent playing alongside each other, in part, because Gisele knows how to take advantage of her sister’s sprinter speed.
‘I really like playing with Gisele,’ Alyssa told the Times in 2020. ‘Sometimes we play on the same side. We have a little sixth sense. We have each other’s back.’
‘I play midfield and give her free balls to make runs,’ Gisele added.
‘They’re certainly athletic with speed, quickness and agility,’ Alberto Bru, program director for Real So Cal, their youth club, told the Times in 2020. ‘What separates them is their drive, desire and motivation. There’s no doubt that you can get excited about them.’
Alyssa (No. 11) started for the U-20 US team that won gold in March in Santo Domingo
There’s a third Thompson sister, 10-year-old Zoe, who is also an elite soccer player, but there are no immediate plans for her to sign any NIL deal.
‘We’ll give it a few years,’ Sroka said.
Previous generations of students athletes did not have the chance to sign such deals for fear of losing their high school or NCAA eligibility. However, following the NCAA’s 2021 decision to permit NIL deals, as opposed to player salaries, the Thompsons are not risking their chance to play collegiately at Stanford.
The only stipulation, under California Interscholastic Federation (CIF) rules, is that the sisters are not allowed to wear any Harvard-Westlake uniforms or apparel in Nike’s marketing.
The Thompsons have already filmed one video for Nike after traveling to the company’s Oregon headquarters several weeks ago.
They’re hardly the first teenagers to sign with Nike, which famously inked a 18-year-old LeBron James and 14-year-old soccer prospect Freddy Adu in 2003.
Similarly, Nike also signed 13-year-old soccer prodigy Olivia Moultrie to a three-year deal in 2019.
What separates those deals from the Thompsons’ is that the two sisters were able to maintain their amateur eligibility, whereas James, Adu and Moultrie already had plans to jump into the pros as teenagers.
Olivia Moultrie #42 of the Portland Thorns during a game between OL Reign and Portland Thorns FC at Providence Park on March 27, 2021 in Portland. She was just 15 at the time