Mackenzie George has come a long way to end up in Brooklyn.

Growing up in Northern California, she started her collegiate career with Cal Poly, but after a single season she decided to enter the transfer portal. “I played a lot my freshman year, but I didn’t enjoy the level at all. I wanted something more serious, a high level team and a high level conference…Once I was out of it, I was OUT of it. I needed something better. because I care too much about soccer for this.”

Tennessee saw her and came calling, but the move across the country was a big ask for a self-described “homebody.” Mackenzie didn’t want to leave her home state, her family, and “a bunch of animals.” Even after a visit to the campus, she was a hard no. It wasn’t until her father said “I think you should go there” that she changed her mind. “It ended up being freaking awesome! But it took a year of uncomfortableness to make it awesome.”

After finishing her degree at Tennessee, George decided to pursue her soccer career in, of all places, Iceland. Joining Fimleikafélag Hafnarfjarðar (FH) in 2023, she had to adjust to a whole new world. “It felt like living in a fever dream, it was unreal. It’s an island in the middle of nowhere, it’s freezing and smoke is coming out of the ground, there’s so few people and everyone knows each other.” But for such a small place, the love of soccer was rampant and Mackenzie embraced it. “It was very, VERY different. It was the most odd place I’ve ever lived.”

This season, she signed with Brooklyn FC, returning to her home country, but on the opposite coast from her native California. Coming to New York from Iceland was a massive change. “You come from this peaceful, quiet, extremely safe, extremely clean country and then come here and there’s people everywhere, it’s so loud, it’s kind of dirty, it was an extreme change. I’ve had to adapt.”

Adaptation to change has become a characteristic of George as she’s played her way around the world. “Every place I go, there’s something to learn from it.” From the west to the south, from rural international to one of the largest cities in the world, she’s always found space to learn and continue to grow, on and off the field. “Soccer is the constant, it’s always helped me adjust to these places. No matter where I live, I want the soccer to be good. It’s always helped me to adapt to new places. How life is going is how soccer is going. These places offer new things to learn, but soccer keeps it real.”

While Mackenzie has shined in the Brooklyn FC attack, this season has been a wild ride as the club was launching from scratch in one of the most complicated place in the world to launch an expansion side. “Nothing has been organized since we got here. We didn’t a place to play, a place to train, our living situation has been iffy at times…I’ve owned it, but it’s been a lot…The same challenges keep coming up. It’s not just an expansion team, it’s an expansion team in New York.”

Though the team started the season well, finishing the fall at the top of the table, the second half has been a bit of a nightmare. Since returning from the break, the team has a single win, Head Coach Jessica Silva left the club, and a trip to the playoffs now seems like an impossibility. Mackenzie offered her perspective on what happened this year. “I think in the first half, despite all the chaos, we said ‘Well, the least we can do is freaking win. Let’s go prove something, even though we don’t have a lot.’ Of course, we also had some luck on our side.” After midseason trip to Italy, the team returned to Brooklyn without a consistent place to train and the team just wasn’t as together as it had been. “We were just a little dysfunctional…and we all lacked a little bit of confidence in other. We lost a little bit of our edge, our grit, and we were tired. It was a mentally draining preseason, on top of a mentally draining fall, and I think it hit a lot of people.”

Where there was positive momentum in the first half, things began to go wrong. Wins turned into draws and draws turned into losses. “The energy shifted a lot and things were still chaotic. And we were also unlucky, we’d give up goals in the 93rd minute, things kept happening like that and I thought something would click and change…it’s unfortunate, but you can’t control everything.” Even as she said the words, the tone in her voice reads positive. While others might look at the results and get negative, Mackenzie’s positivity has bolstered her hope of future success. “It’s definitely been a positive thing, even though it seems really negative, it’s been good for me.”

In the last match the club played, with everything on the line, Spokane Zephyr managed to come back after Brooklyn went up 2-0 in the first half. After controlling the entire match, Brooklyn defender Tori Hansen earned a red card in the 71st minute. The resulting free kick ended in a goal for the visitors and then they got the equalizer in the 92nd minute. It was a hope-ending result in a must-win match and Mackenzie was honest when asked about it. “That was tough. I swear we’ve had that happen two or three times this spring already…We were pretty much killing it in the first half and we were taking it to them. I was sure we were going to win 4-0 and then it completely shifted. We got that red card and fell into that same pattern where they come back in the last minute and get a goal. That one was tough, that one hurt.” The second half of the season has been like that for Brooklyn FC, but magnitude of this loss was much greater. “It wasn’t just another game we lost in the last minute, it was pretty much the end of our chances for the playoffs, it didn’t feel good, but, in the end, you’ve got to swallow it and move forward. Hopefully next time, that game’s a win and we’re on the other side making it into the playoffs.”

With one match left to play, against the top-seeded Carolina Ascent, Brooklyn is basically playing out the schedule, without much hope of making the playoffs. “We’ve got nothing to lose. We’ll hope for the best, but there’s always next season.” Mackenzie is set to enter another offseason unsure of where she’ll play next season. She’s looking forward to a summer trip with her family to San Diego, but nothing else is set in stone and everything is in the air. Regardless of where she’s playing next year, while the setting may change, soccer will continue to be her constant.

- Dan Vaughn