The ultimate teammate: Mizzou midfielder brings unique perspective to the pitch

COLUMBIA, Mo. (KMIZ)

Mizzou midfielder Hailey Chambliss knows what it means to be the ultimate team player.

"She just wants to compete," Tiger soccer coach Stefanie Golan said. "We're utilizing her off the bench and, you know, sometimes players want to be the one who starts...I think she does a great job of like watching what's going on in the game and as it settles, seeing how she can make an impact."

As the Tigers are in the middle of Southeastern Conference play, Chambliss has embraced her role as one of the key pieces that helps bind her team together, both on and off the field.

"All she wants is to make an impact and, you know, she gets excited for others when it happens for them," Golan said.

When she's not working to make an impact on the field, she's definitely making one on the sidelines. The Eureka, Missouri native is one of the loudest players on the bench, consistently cheering on her teammates' successes and picking them up in their failures.

She helps the 11 players that take the pitch together act as one, cohesive unit.

All the while, Chambliss has her own 12th man on the sidelines.

Oakley Townsend is Chambliss' biggest cheerleader and an honorary member of the MU soccer team.

"She's very sassy, she's very clingy, she's awesome. She's pretty much always happy," Chambliss said. "It's like something I never expected her to be a part of." 

After transferring to Mizzou from Missouri State in January, a surprise ended up coming the then-junior's way in the spring, as she found out she was pregnant.

"I found out on April Fool's Day," Chambliss said. "I wanted to keep it a secret for a while."

The midfielder took the news to her head coach, Stefanie Golan.

"It was the last day of the spring and I'm up in the office after we're done with everything and I get a text from Hailey that says are you around? I said yeah and she said is anybody else up there? I said no and she said can I come and talk to you," Golan said.

"I went in and told Stefanie because that was like the only person I felt like comfortable going to right away," Chambliss explained.

"She starts crying and says we found out that we're we're expecting a baby, and my first question was, are you OK? And she already knew one, we plan to raise this child together. I want to do this my way. she didn't want to, she didn't want the news to spread," Coach Golan said.

"She was awesome. I mean she kept it a secret from everyone. I found out that she didn't tell anyone until I told the girls," Chambliss said. "That was the first time."

The Missouri native decided to take a pink shirt season and gave birth to Oakley in November of 2024.

Becoming a mother changed her world and her perspective.

"I feel like I realized that soccer isn't that big of a deal. Like, you know, you have a bad practice like that sucks. But I mean, then you go home and like okay, she doesn't care what I just did. She didn't even know I played a game today," Chambliss said.

However, her new role as a mother did not change her love of the game that she grew up with.

After having Oakley, Chambliss knew she wanted to return to the pitch with her Tiger team in 2025. However, the journey would be far from easy.

"I feel like my biggest thing was like getting back in shape because there's a difference between like soccer shape and then like Mizzou soccer shape," she said.

During the offseason, Chambliss would make the 3.5 hour trip from Joplin, Missouri to Columbia and spend days training. Her dad would watch Oakley, while she got into 'Mizzou soccer shape'. Then, following a hard day's work, she'd get in the car with her daughter, once again, and make the 3.5 hour trip home.

Even though the offseason workouts were hard and sometimes felt un-doable, Chambliss was fueled by a different kind of fire.

"It's from the lack of what I could do while I was pregnant," she said. "You took it for granted and now you don't."

Ahead of the 2025 season, Chambliss returned to Columbia, primed to make an impact in her senior season.

"Strong women can do anything that they set their minds to," Golan said.

Just eight months postpartum, Chambliss earned the fruit of all her labor, scoring two goals in one game against Youngstown State near the start of the season.

"Every minute that you're spending on the soccer piece, you feel a little guilt that you're not spending that with your daughter. Then, you know, when you're spending the time with your daughter, oh, should I be investing in this  piece?" Coach Golan said. "When you're able to show, man, I'm doing both parts at a at a really high level, it's a kind of sweet reward." 

Chambliss' journey as a soccer player and as a mother are uniquely intertwined, as Oakley is just as much a part of the Mizzou soccer family, as her mom is. In fact, game-in and game-out, Chambliss' biggest cheerleader can be found on the sideline.

"Maybe one day she'll play for Mizzou soccer. A girl can hope. Maybe she won't like soccer, but we'll see," she said.

Chambliss said the experience that her daughter is getting, at such a young age, is unlike anything she could've imagined. She's growing up surrounded by strong women, who are all chasing their dreams.

"I think even though she doesn't realize it, she'll be able to look back on it and it'll be really cool," Chambliss said.

While Oakley is likely to take plenty of lessons from her time inside locker rooms and around Tiger soccer as she grows up, the team can also take plenty of lessons from her.

"Everyone is someone's baby," Chambliss said. "Whenever you're nice to people, it's like that's how I would hope everyone would treat Oakley as she gets older."