While taking part in a pickup soccer game underneath San Diego’s Coronado Bridge in Barrio Logan, the last person I expected to show up was Christina Burkenroad.
On a summer break after her European season in 2019, and months before becoming one of the most recognizable names in Mexican women’s soccer, the forward didn’t step into the session as an ego-filled celebrity, but instead as just another local on the rugged concrete floor.
I knew she had UEFA Women’s Champions League minutes. I saw first-hand the footwork and intelligence that embarrassed numerous men’s players on that balmy June day, but little did I know about how it all started. How, when it all began, that the money had run dry.
A decade before emerging as a star for Monterrey (commonly known as Rayadas), Burkenroad was living in a car by a beach during her junior year of high school. She had bounced around between hotels and spare rooms across San Diego as housing became an obstacle for the teenager and her single father, who struggled with mental health issues and finding work.
During this time, Christina searched for comfort in unhealthy behaviors like drinking and drugs. In order to make ends meet, she turned to stealing. This period in her youth was “chaotic,” as she described it, but amid the day-to-day insecurity, there was one constant for the young Mexican-American girl who refused to give up on a dream: soccer.
“My sanctuary, it was my safe place, and it was the only consistency in my life,” the three-time Liga MX Femenil champion and Mexico international to ESPN. “If I didn’t have it, I have no idea where my life would have ended up.”
Where she’s ended up is being one of the most celebrated players in Liga MX Femenil, the top flight of women’s soccer in Mexico. As a marquee name for Rayadas, Burkenroad has also developed a deeper connection to the birth country of her mother, who died of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) when Christina was 4 years old.
On a purely sporting level, there’s much to be said about the goal-scoring ability of the 32-year-old who is fighting for another championship in the playoffs that kicked off this week. Heading into the ongoing quarterfinals, Burkenroad has momentum after closing out the last match of the regular season with two goals, including a dramatic game winner in the 98th minute.
But that’s just part of her inspiring story.
‘Worried about what I was going to eat … worried about where I was going to stay’
At first, things were positive.
When describing her early years, she paints a sun-soaked picture with visits to the ocean with her surf-loving father. Just like him, she also picked up surfing, learning to traverse the unpredictable waves life threw at her. But for her dad, the rip currents of raising a family — which also consisted of a step-son and son of his own, both of whom were older than Christina and had already moved out by the time the family experienced homelessness — by himself became too much.
The family wasn’t the same without their mother.
“I think depression just really got the best of [him],” Burkenroad said of her father. “He started to get really burnt out from work and taking care of three kids. It was a lot.”
While she was in grade school, the family drove across the country to move in with relatives in North Carolina for support, but her father missed the ocean back home. When Christina was a young teenager, they returned to San Diego with little to no financial foundation.
“The money just ended up running out,” she said of being evicted from their apartment when she was a junior in high school, leading to the moments in which they slept in an old SUV by the beach. The car itself was also later taken away.
On the field, through the beautiful game that matched the scenic coastal backdrop, she found solace.
The athletic and tall Burkenroad played a number of sports alongside surfing, but fell in love with soccer. Wanting to emulate one of her older brothers who played on weekends, she constantly had a ball at her feet while on the sideline of his youth games. Eager to keep pace, she later played with him and on boys teams in North Carolina.
“I loved it and it just felt so natural,” Burkenroad said.
After she enrolled at Mission Bay High School in San Diego as a freshman, a math teacher reached out to varsity coach Jorge Palacios about a student who wouldn’t stop talking about the sport.
“One of the first questions I asked is what was her soccer experience,” Palacios said to ESPN, learning that it was limited to rec league. That’s not great, he remembers thinking about the player who not only made the varsity team as a freshman, but “was pretty much our leading scorer for the next four years.”
For the two-time all-league player of the year, 90-minute games and a reliable practice schedule gave her structure. Dreams of becoming a professional were only faintly materializing, but Burkenroad began to notice that she literally couldn’t afford to have the same benefits that her teammates had. She also kept the reality of her off-the-field life quiet.
“I definitely made some decisions to cover up the pain of what was actually happening to me,” she said. “I wanted to go pro. I always knew I wanted to play in college. Whenever I looked at the normal kids that were going to college, playing soccer, going pro, it’s like they had a really normal life.
“I was worried about what I was going to eat, or I was worried about where I was going to stay, so my priorities were just completely different.”
A high schooler drinking, taking drugs and stealing, Burkenroad one day woke up and realized that wasn’t the path she wanted to take or who she wanted to be. A personal mantra of “better every day” guided her.
“I know what I want so bad, so I’m going to do anything I can to get that, and so I started changing my habits,” she said. “I started reaching out to people and telling my friends the reality of what was happening in my life.”
Finding a home
Burkenroad couldn’t do it alone; she also needed her “angel on earth,” Stacey Haerr.
“There was one time where I was just at a low, low, low, low, I don’t remember if I was doing a lot of drugs, or just ran out of money, I don’t remember exactly, but [Haerr] finally said, ‘No, you’re coming to live with us,'” Burkenroad said.
Haerr knew her from a young age. Burkenroad was once a close friend of one of Haerr’s children before family difficulties led to the Burkenroads moving to North Carolina. Haerr made a promise to herself that if Burkenroad returned, she wouldn’t pass on the opportunity to help her.
“She just kept seeing me around the neighborhood,” Burkenroad said of Haerr. “She’d see me at a little Mexican restaurant, and we’d just be there at the same time, and she knew something was wrong.”
During a vulnerable moment of her junior year, Burkenroad called Haerr. Burkenroad stood on a street corner with a garbage bag full of clothes when Haerr took her in. Burkenroad would occasionally stay with other relatives and a teammate, but she now knew she had a bed to sleep in no matter what.
“I didn’t realize she was protecting the information about her being homeless,” Haerr said. “I really didn’t know a lot about what was happening in her life. I found out after the fact that she and her dad were, you know, living in their car and really struggling, and he was struggling with mental health.
“I just provided a place that she could always come back to. She had a home, she had a bedroom, she had clothes there, she had pictures on the walls. I think she had just gone so long without having a home.”
As Burkenroad began to be more transparent about her life, the local newspaper took notice after including her as an up-and-coming name to watch. An article about her upbringing soon followed.
“It was really an emotional thing, because the secret was going to come out, because Christina told her story,” Haerr said. “Her coaches were like, ‘Holy s—, we didn’t even know she was homeless.'”
The school and the community then became additional sources of support. A bank account was opened for her with donations, which meant Burkenroad no longer had to steal.
On the pitch, the plaudits continued with a record-setting 93 goals scored across her run at Mission Bay. During her senior year, the attacker was selected as the player of the year in her league for a second time. Her off-field situation meant that she couldn’t fully focus on college applications or getting recruited, but a local coach recognized that one of the city’s top soccer players had yet to be signed by the summer before she was to start college. He contacted a colleague at Cal State Fullerton and told the university coach that he needed to watch Burkenroad.
Her high school coach, Palacios, also reached out.
“I remember having a conversation with him about it, and telling them he’d be a fool not to offer her something,” Palacios said.
By her senior year at Fullerton, Burkenroad earned accolades as a member of the 2015 All-West Region First Team and a two-time Big West Conference Tournament MVP. She also made history as the first-ever player at the school to earn a hat trick in the Big West Tournament. For her angel on earth, there was never any doubt about what she could achieve.
“That was what she lived and breathed, was soccer,” Haerr said. “It was her religion.
“That’s the thing that saved her … she would say to me here and there, ‘I’m here because you helped me.’ No, this is you, this is all you.”
‘She’s proof you can overcome things’
Although the waves of any professional career are often turbulent, Burkenroad is now occupying a more tranquil space since joining Rayadas in 2020. In Mexico, she’s seen personal growth that’s permeated through the pitch and outside of the lines of her soccer structure.
“I finally feel for the first time in my life that — and I think the growth came from recognizing it — I’m allowed to feel comfortable in a place,” said the San Diegan. “I think before this, there was always some sort of chaos, or I was so far from home, or it was almost like chaos and a chaotic life was normal for me.”
Similar to her penchant for darting runs into open space on the field, Burkenroad roamed in the early stages of her professional career.
Drafted by the NWSL‘s Orlando Pride in 2016, she admitted that she wasn’t emotionally ready for the league. She did well in training, but when competing with icons like Alex Morgan and Marta for minutes, she didn’t get the opportunities she wanted and asked for a transfer in 2017.
That year, she landed in Norway at IK Grand Bodø, but was dispirited by her frigid surroundings and was “still working on my self worth.” She moved to Czechia a year later, where there were signs of progress with AC Prague, earning Champions League minutes, but that spell was cut short when her season was canceled at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Scrolling through Instagram in 2020, with no team to call home, Burkenroad received a DM that changed her trajectory.
“Do you want to play in Mexico,” read the unexpected text from a stranger who would go on to become her agent.
With Rayadas, her rapid sprints have been altered and remolded, thereby allowing her to reach a new dimension. Often on the move, the self-described “runner” learned that she had to be comfortable with the ball at her feet in a more technical-driven league.
She decided to no longer stray as much as she once did, both on and off the field. Instead, there had to be patience in a more central role as a traditional No. 9. Burkenroad still considers herself a “free nine” that can drift when she pleases, but there’s now a fine-tuned balance for the player who has scored 100-plus goals for the Mexican club.
“She’s very calm and she’s centered,” Kat McDonald, a close friend and former teammate of Burkenroad’s, said to ESPN. “[When] she scores a goal, she’s fiery and all that, but she’s not on the field having temper tantrums if things aren’t going her way. I feel like she’s that striker, that kind of just is waiting for a moment, then checking in and going to get the ball, very going with the flow of the game and trying to find her way to break through.”
Three league titles have followed. Another could be added this winter for the club’s leading goal scorer. At the international level, she’s earned call-ups to the Mexican women’s national team, a dream for the Mexican-American who “spoke it to existence,” and she’s in the battle for roster spots as they prepare for World Cup qualification.
“It’s beautiful. It’s kind of crazy how it happened, but it was supposed to happen that way for her,” McDonald said of Burkenroad’s career. “How can someone be so consistent, that grew up in a way that was so inconsistent?”
“She’s proof that you can overcome things,” added Palacios. “She’s done that her entire life.”
Burkenroad is at peace. According to Haerr, when the soccer star visits San Diego, she meets up with her father, who is now in a much better state. Haerr considers Burkenroad to be her “chosen daughter,” noting “I’m kind of a person here on earth to play that role,” while also recognizing that Burkenroad is still very connected to her Tijuana-born mother.
On Dia de los Muertos, the Rayadas forward built an altar for the very first time in honor of the Mexican holiday that remembers relatives and friends who have passed on. In the middle of the altar, Burkenroad placed a photo of her mom with a young Christina by her side.
Thanks to her community, her family and chosen family, and of course soccer, she’s found a stable sanctuary that her younger self would be proud of.
“I’ve really grown into myself where I love just having a, quote-unquote, boring life. I come home, I just recover, I rest. I’m in a relationship that I love, and for the first time, I’m letting love in my life,” Burkenroad said. “I finally just feel like I’m growing into exactly who I wanted to be as a kid.”
