This is Part 2 of a three-part series sitting down with Dallas Trinity FC’s newest arrivals ahead of Saturday’s match against Brooklyn FC at the Cotton Bowl. [Read Part 1 on defender Lauren Flynn here.] Part 3 features midfielder Heather Stainbrook on Saturday morning.
Tyler McCamey knows what it feels like to earn a championship. Her senior year at Princeton, she captained the Tigers to the Ivy League double—regular season and tournament titles in the same year, a first in program history. She also knows what it’s like to sit on a championship bench and collect hardware she didn’t play for.
When Brooklyn FC kicks off Saturday at 4 p.m., McCamey will be competing with Sam Estrada for the starting goalkeeper spot. What she wants is simple: the chance to earn a trophy the way she did at Princeton.
The Captain Who Sat on Championship Benches
Tyler McCamey didn’t set out to be a goalkeeper. In middle school, around seventh grade, her coach suggested she try it. “I think at the time we were still young enough where there wasn’t really a solid goalkeeper, switching in and out at games,” McCamey said. “And so he was like, let’s put you with this coach and see how it goes. And just kind of stuck after that.”
At Princeton, she co-captained the Tigers alongside her best friend Heather MacNab through a senior season that delivered the program’s first Ivy League regular season title since 2018 and its first-ever tournament championship. She started all 17 matches, posted eight shutouts, and led the league in goals against average.
“I think my senior year, when we won the Ivy double, it definitely started out pretty interesting, but some of my favorite memories ever are from that season,” McCamey said. “It was such an honor to be captain with one of my best friends, beating Brown in the regular season, that was a fun game to be in. Winning the Ivy double for the first time was really exciting. We had such a great group. And once we kind of got rolling, every game was super fun.”
Her teammate and co-captain praised her during the tournament run, telling the Daily Princetonian that Princeton’s defense had “the best goalkeeper in the country” behind them. Those championships felt different than what would come later. “The Ivy double was something that we had worked for all season; we had worked for the four years I’d been there. It was my team as a captain,” McCamey said. “So that definitely felt a lot more like we did everything, and I was a part of everything to earn it.”
What came next in the NWSL was different. In April, NY/NJ Gotham called while she was working on a paper in the library. They needed a short-term injury replacement, and she flew to Los Angeles to meet the team on the road the following Wednesday. “It was just a crazy call, and one of those things where I was like, I can’t say no to this,” McCamey said. “It was kind of out of nowhere.”
She spent three months with Gotham, sitting behind Ann-Katrin Berger and learning from one of the world’s elite goalkeepers. “She’s one of the best, I think she’s arguably the best right now in the world,” McCamey said. “She is very even-keeled, calm, cool, collected. Definitely a really hard worker. I think she’s one of those players that you learn a lot just from being around her, just from being in the training session with her. Just watching what she does. She’s so clean, so efficient, and effective. She’s very collected and composed with her feet.”
In June, Gotham won the CONCACAF W Champions Cup in Mexico City. Twenty thousand fans packed the stadium. The atmosphere was electric, intense, unlike anything McCamey had experienced. “The first time when we came onto the pitch, and the starting lineup was getting called out, people were booing our starters,” she said. “And I remember being like, this is different. This is a little bit more serious and intense. It was really fun, and it was such a cool experience just to be a part of that group and to be with those players. And then obviously to win it in such a crazy environment too, it was really exciting.”
After her contract with Gotham ended in June, she tried to arrange a placement overseas. That fell through. Instead, she spent three weeks in July training with North Carolina Courage, working under Nathan Thackeray while the team dealt with international call-ups.
“The Courage asked me to come in during that summer window time. Most teams tend to bring in people just to fill those spaces when they’ve got players on international duty,” she said. “So I was in there for three weeks with him, really just trying to get good reps in. He’s a very personal guy. I think he’s pretty funny. As soon as you go in, it feels like a space that is very safe for you to be a part of, is very safe for you to make mistakes, and to kind of figure things out. It was a really solid group.”
Then, Kansas City called in September, needing a third-string keeper. Her agent sold it honestly. “He gave me a call, and he was like, worst case scenario, you’re going to win a couple championships,” McCamey said. “And so I was like, there are definitely worse places to be.” The Current won the NWSL Shield with the league’s best record. McCamey sat again. More hardware without playing a competitive minute.
She got the trophies and the t-shirts, but sitting on the bench left her with complicated feelings about hardware she didn’t play for. “I don’t really think of them as mine,” she said. “Everyone was super inviting and welcoming. But I think they’re really great things to aspire to. I think it’s very fun to say I won the Shield, but I know that I didn’t put in all the work that it took to actually achieve those things. I think I am so fortunate to have been in this position, and thank goodness you guys are so awesome and so good, and I get to be here, but it felt very much like good timing more than it felt this is my title that I get to wave around.” She aspires to someday return to the NWSL and prove herself. “Hopefully I’ll have an opportunity to go back and earn them outright,” she said.
When Trinity called, that familiarity with Thackeray mattered. The philosophy she’d learned in those three weeks at North Carolina was coming to Dallas. She arrived in town in early January and threw herself into everything. The team book club. The Bible study, though the storm has disrupted some of that. She tried Texas barbecue, and it exceeded expectations. “I went into the Uptown area, Terry Black’s, the barbecue restaurant. I was there the other weekend. Really, really good,” she said. “So good that my clothes smelled like barbecue two days after. So it’s legit when that happens.”
She’s exploring the food scene and wants to check out the stockyards. “I’ve heard amazing things about Tex-Mex, Mexican food here. We tried Torchy’s Tacos the other night. That was pretty good, but there’s a few other places that have been recommended to me.”
Off the field, she’s working on her cooking skills, hobbies, and staying connected. “I love a good book,” she said. “I do a lot of recovery stuff. Watching a show with the roommates is always nice downtime, catching up with friends. It’s hard and weird being away from all your close college friends all of a sudden. And a bunch of them are still playing, which is fun, so it’s easy to chat with them. But I’m trying to get more into cooking. I was never really a big cook, but now there’s plenty of time to do it, so I’m trying to get better at it.”
She’s most excited to play alongside Caroline Kelly, a teammate from Kansas City’s reserve team the previous summer. “She was actually with me on the KC2 team the summer before, so I’ve known her for a little while, and she’s a good friend of mine,” McCamey said. “I think she’s a great athlete, a really awesome player, so I’m excited. We always had a good time that summer on the pitch, and we still do, so I’m excited to play with her.”
Now she’s competing with Estrada for the starting spot. Her training mentality reflects what she learned sitting behind elite keepers. “I think it’s really important, at least for me, to take training reps really seriously,” she said. “I really hate to form any bad habits. So I try to take training as seriously as someone might take a game, to make sure I’m taking the reps that I know I might be seeing in a game-time scenario.”
Goalkeeping is very different from playing in the outfield ten, and McCamey understands that. “I think there’s a unique amount of pressure being in goal. So getting yourself comfortable sitting with that pressure and how you can perform under those circumstances, I think that is probably something I do need more than the other ten.”
The opportunity at Trinity is clear. “It’s hard for goalkeepers to compete for starting spots right out of college, basically,” she said. “So I think it presents a really exciting opportunity.”
At 24, she’s collected championships. Now she wants to earn one the way she did at Princeton.
Tomorrow: Part 3 features midfielder Heather Stainbrook, who followed the loan pathway from Washington Spirit to Dallas.