Alex Morgan Books in Order

If you want the core Kicks story: Saving the Team → Sabotage Season → Win or Lose
If you want the middle books, when the team gets tested: Hat Trick → Shaken Up → Settle the Score → Under Pressure
If you want the final stretch: Switching Goals → Homecoming → Fans in the Stands
If you want Alex Morgan's real-life story: Breakaway

Alex Morgan was born in San Dimas, California, on July 2, 1989, and grew up nearby in Diamond Bar with her parents and two older sisters. She was a multi-sport kid first, happy to bounce between basketball, softball, volleyball, dance, and whatever else gave her a chance to compete.

That broad start mattered.

Morgan did not come up through soccer in the usual hyper-focused way. She played youth soccer with her dad and moved into club soccer in her early teens, later than many elite players. That helped give her path a slightly different shape. She was catching up, but she was also learning fast, and that mix of urgency and confidence stayed with her.

At UC Berkeley, where she majored in political economy, she became one of Cal's main attacking players and helped the Bears reach the NCAA tournament in each of her four seasons, including two trips to the second round. In 2008 she helped the United States win the FIFA U-20 Women's World Cup and scored the winning goal in the final against Korea DPR.

Her rise from there was quick.

Morgan joined her first senior national team camp at the end of 2009 and earned her first cap in 2010. A stoppage-time goal against Italy later that year helped send the United States to the 2011 Women's World Cup, and that tournament made her a familiar face to a lot of fans. She was the youngest player on the U.S. squad, scored in both the semifinal and the final, won Olympic gold in London in 2012, and later added Women's World Cup titles in 2015 and 2019. When she retired from professional soccer in September 2024, she had 224 caps and 123 goals for the national team.

Her club career was busy too. Morgan was the first overall pick in the 2011 Women's Professional Soccer draft, won titles with Western New York and Portland, spent time with Lyon and Tottenham, and later became a central figure for San Diego Wave FC. In 2022 she won the NWSL Golden Boot, another reminder that even deep into her career she could still change games in a hurry.

Morgan's move into books made sense. In 2012 she signed on to create The Kicks, a middle-grade series built around girls' soccer, friendship, confidence, and teamwork. Starting with Saving the Team, the books follow Devin Burke and her friends through messy practices, rivalries, school stress, and the kind of everyday drama that feels huge when you're twelve. Readers who like the series usually like that balance. Books such as Sabotage Season, Switching Goals, and Fans in the Stands care about scores and championships, but they also make room for moving to a new town, feeling left out, dealing with nerves, and learning how to be a good teammate. The series later inspired a live-action TV adaptation.

She also wrote Breakaway, a memoir for younger readers that traces her path from Southern California fields to the highest level of the sport. It works well beside the fiction because the same ideas keep surfacing: persistence, confidence, teamwork, and the belief that girls' sports deserve to be taken seriously. These days Morgan is still close to the game, just in a different role. She lives in San Diego with her husband, former pro soccer player Servando Carrasco, and their children. After retiring, she became a minority investor in San Diego Wave FC, and she has also put time into TOGETHXR and the Alex Morgan Foundation.