SHP Alumna Tierna Davidson Wins Olympic Gold

US women’s national team (USWNT) center-back Tierna Davidson (SHP ’16) helped Team USA secure the gold medal after a nail-biting 1-0 win over Brazil. With a scoreless, but brutal, first half of play, the game-winning goal came in the 57th minute, remaining unchallenged through the final whistle.

 

This marks the 25-year-old soccer star’s second time playing in the Olympics. Davidson played on the USWNT at the 2021 summer Tokyo Olympics where the team ultimately cinched bronze.

 

During her high school career at Sacred Heart Preparatory (SHP), Davidson’s three seasons remain unparalleled for SHP soccer: each year her team advanced to Central Coast Section Championship games, twice capturing section titles. She led her college alma mater Stanford University to the 2017 NCAA Championship and was the youngest player on the champion USA team at the 2019 FIFA Women’s World Cup in France. Tierna was signed to NJ/NY Gotham FC in January after playing for the Chicago Red Stars the prior five seasons.

 

“We are so excited and, of course, extremely proud of Tierna,” said her father, Greg Davidson, who is also a math teacher at SHP. “To fight back from her injuries and challenges during the past couple of years is quite impressive and says a lot about her.”

 

This is the second Olympic gold medal won by an SHP alumnae in eight years—water polo player KK Clark (SHP ’08) brought home the gold in the 2016 Rio de Janeiro summer Olympics.

 

Davidson joined at least six other Sacred Heart Network schools’ alumnae on Team USA at the 2024 Paris Olympics—Stone Ridge School of the Sacred Heart in Bethesda, Maryland alumnae Katie Ledecky, Phoebe Bacon, and Erin Gemmell, all swimmers; Sacred Heart Greenwich’s Isabella Russekoff in equestrian and Beth Yeager in field hockey; and Daisy Mazzio-Manson of Newton Country Day School of the Sacred Heart in rowing.