Women's Sports Imagines

Mallory Swanson- My Sister!

Background: Evie (pronounced ee-vee) Pugh (17) is Mallory Swanson's (26) younger sister. She was drafted to Chicago and lives with Mal and her husband, Dansby. She was insanely excited to live with her sister again. They are one of the best duos the NWSL has ever seen. Being sisters, roommates, and best friends means they're incredibly close. They're also both incredibly protective of the other. Sometimes they can be a little too protective.

3rd POV

It's a tough, back and forth game between the Portland Thorns and the Chicago Redstars. Tied 2-2 in the 81st minute. They'd gone down 0-2 pretty early, but in the first 5 minutes of the second half, Mal scored off an assist from Evie, and Evie scored off an assist from Mal. 

Now, Evie sends a perfect diagonal through ball to Mal who was side by side with Kelli Hubly. Evie hustles to get up there for a cross of potential rebound and cuts across Becky Sauerbrunn. Out of nowhere, Kelli smashes into Mal and nearly flips her; Mal hitting the ground hard. The ref's whistle screams loudly, calling the foul. The tackle alone was enough to send Evie into a rage, but when she watches Kelli stand over Mal and basically brag about fouling her. Somehow, someway Evie made her way over to the center back. 

As the ref pulls out his yellow card (which should be a red card since Kelli was the last defender and her foul denied Mal of an obvious goal scoring opportunity) Evie 2-arm shoves Kelli to the ground, standing over her like the Thorn had just done to her sister. The ref blows the whistle in short, loud tweets.

"If you wanted your ass on the ground, you should have asked sooner." She stands over the 5'9" defender, smirking. 

Of course, more players from each team crowd around as Kelli pops up onto her feet, talking shit back to Evie, who despite being 6 whole inches smaller at a solid 5'3", gets right up in Kelli's face in return. They go chest to chest as the ref still tries to gain control. Thorns players step in between the 2, facing Kelli, trying to get her removed from the center. Evie feels arms wrap around her and physically pick her up off the ground, taking her away. 

"Alyssa! Stop that!" She yells at the goalkeeper. 

"You need to calm down."

"She hurt my sister!" 

"I know that, but you also are about to get your second yellow."

"I don't care!"

"Hey," Alyssa sets her on the ground and stands between her and the commotion, "calm down. You're going to miss the next game already, we don't need additional suspensions. Mal's okay. You know she is because you went to Hubly before you went to her."

"She's been taking cheap shots at us and at Cari the whole game. She's done that shit for years."

"Evie, you're going to take a deep breath, accept your card, and walk into the locker room silently. Got it?"

"But-"

"Evie."

"Fine."

She turns around to accept her yellow, not acknowledging the ref or any other player and walking straight to the locker room. One of the assistant coaches follows her to get her tracker out and talk to her. She sits in her locker and is happy to see that after VAR review, Hubly gets a straight red. She tries to complain but even her own teammates won't back her up. Evie is happy she didn't cause her team to play a man down for the next 10-20 minutes, including added time. 

"Where's Mal?" She asks as they take the tracker.

"They took her to the training room. She's fine. Hit the ground hard, but that's it. Might be sore for a couple of days and then back to normal by midweek." The coach explains. "At what point did you realize you were going to get a second yellow?"