Carson Pickett inspires young Denver soccer player with limb difference

Hayden Stine came away from a Denver Summit FC home opener with more than a memory of a scoreless night at Mile High Stadium. The 9-year-old, who was born without most of her right arm, met Carson Pickett and saw a professional player whose body looked more like her own than anyone she had watched on a soccer field before.

Hayden told CBS News that she wants to be a professional soccer player when she grows up, and said the encounter with Pickett made that goal feel possible. “Role models make you feel like you can do anything - just like them,” Hayden said. Her mother, Christina Hayden, said the effect was immediate, adding that Hayden’s confidence has “skyrocketed” since the meeting, both at school and on the soccer field.

Pickett’s presence carried weight because her path to visibility was hard-won. The Denver Summit FC defender and veteran left back said she spent years hiding her arm in pictures and avoiding conversations about her limb difference. She said her mother eventually told her she was missing both an opportunity and a purpose. Pickett later wrote that “the journey is a lot less about myself and a lot more about the hearts I can touch along the way.”

That transformation has turned Pickett into more than a player for Denver’s brand-new National Women’s Soccer League club. She said she wants to meet “all the kids, all the families, all the adults” she can, and she proved it by surprising Hayden at her team’s soccer practice after the stadium meeting. The connection between the two was personal, but it also showed the larger value of representation in youth sports, where children with limb differences rarely see elite athletes who reflect their own experience.

The stakes are higher than one uplifting moment. U.S. Soccer says Pickett became the first player with a limb difference to play for the U.S. Women’s National Team, earning her first cap on June 28, 2022, against Colombia. Denver Summit FC signed Pickett ahead of its inaugural 2026 season on a multi-year deal through 2027, and announced its roster on March 13 before opening its first NWSL campaign on March 14 at Bay FC.

For Hayden, the message was simple and lasting. She said she is now “up for it” if she can one day become a role model herself.