Finding Your Fit: Meggie Dougherty Howard’s Winding Road to Angel City

If there’s one lesson Angel City midfielder Meggie Dougherty Howard has learned in her seven years in the NWSL, it’s the importance of being yourself, both on and off the field.

“I think I've learned to try to stay as true to myself as I can, regardless of what team or system I might be playing on,” she says. Sometimes that’s meant accepting that she wasn’t the right fit for the team she was with—but when she has found a good fit, as she seems to have done with Angel City, “it’s so refreshing,” she says.

ACFC is Dougherty Howard’s fourth NWSL club. She was drafted by the Washington Spirit out of the University of Florida—where she was a four-year starter and was named SEC Tournament MVP in her senior year after scoring the game- and championship-winning goal—in 2017. She was a regular starter from her rookie NWSL season, tallying 68 appearances, typically as a deeper-lying midfielder, before being traded to Orlando in 2021.

Orlando was closer to Dougherty Howard’s hometown of Largo, Florida, on the Gulf Coast, but she landed there in what was to be a difficult period for the Pride, who found little success on the field while moving through five head coaches, including two interim coaches, in two years. She did, however, get to know two of her now-teammates, Sydney Leroux and Ali Riley.

The now-28-year-old also says she grew through that adversity, learning by example from older teammates like fellow midfielder Erika Tymrak. “She was so good, regardless of what her situation was at the time,” Dougherty Howard says of Tymrak. “Just showing up every day, trying to make herself better, trying to make everyone else better. And that's something I looked at and was like, ‘I want to really take this on board.’”

Dougherty Howard played most recently for the San Diego Wave, where she signed in free agency and stayed for just a year before being traded north to LA. The Wave’s direct attacking style had little room for a ball-playing midfielder like her, so while getting traded is always disruptive, she’s happy with where she ended up.

“From a soccer standpoint, it feels like such a better fit for the type of player I am,” she says. “Being in an environment that emphasizes and enjoys keeping the ball and that being the identity—building into that and bringing what I can bring into that environment, has been enjoyable.”

That fit has been on display since Week 1, when the team suffered an unlucky loss despite outplaying Bay FC. Playing in a midfield trio alongside Amandine Henry and Kennedy Fuller, Dougherty Howard was a key contributor as both a distributor and in making attempts on goal herself. She led the team in shots, shots on target, and shots from inside the box—including the two best attempts of the game—and sat behind only defender Sarah Gorden in passes into the final third.

Over the course of her career, Dougherty Howard has played various roles in the central midfield, but says that at Angel City, she’d like to lean into her attacking side a little more. “I think I have a good shot,” she says. “I’d like to be able to use that a little bit more in games like I do in training. I think I can be a little more dangerous shooting myself and also trying to find final-third passes.”

Now one of the more experienced players on her team, Dougherty Howard tries to lead by example the same way she’s seen other players do. “The way we want to play aligns really well with my personal identity as a player and the things that I love about the game,” she says. “Trying to enforce those things on a daily basis and committing to it, I think, as an older player, has a trickle-down effect—buying into what we're doing and trying to get everyone on board, because the way we want to play is so team-oriented.”

The league has grown and changed tremendously—and sometimes painfully—since her rookie season, and through those changes, she’s gained an appreciation for a positive approach to leadership. “I try to have more of a positive spin on things and be encouraging to people,” she says. “I don't think negativity really gets the job done in most cases. I try to come more from a place of encouragement and belief.”