PORTLAND, Ore. — It was a splashy announcement that was impossible to ignore: Olivia Moultrie, a 13-year-old soccer player, had gone pro.

She doesn’t have a team to play for at the moment but, with the help of her new sports agent, she turned down a scholarship at UNC and signed a multi-year contract with Nike worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.

It was an unprecedented move. Not since Lindsey Horan skipped college to play for Paris Saint-Germain had an American female taken a similar path, but Moultrie made her decision far younger and in much more unusual circumstances. Because of her minor status, she's not allowed to play overseas. Whether she might soon be playing in the National Women's Soccer League is just as uncertain. It could be years before she has a professional club team.

But the big announcement of Moultrie as the youngest American girl to become a pro soccer player happened in February. Now it's late April and the question becomes: So, what comes next?

Moultrie has been training with the Portland Thorns senior team alongside the likes of Horan and Tobin Heath, despite being part of the club's youth academy. An eventual debut in the NWSL seems like the next logical step – but it won't be happening anytime soon.

The NWSL doesn't actually have any specific rules against an American minor playing in the league. As written, the NWSL's competition rules only cite age as a factor for non-contract replacement players and foreign players – neither can be minors.

But there is a reluctance from the NWSL front office, which for now consists mainly of president Amanda Duffy acting as de facto commissioner, in allowing a minor to compete in the league. It’s sort of an unwritten rule: Players are expected to play in college before they arrive in the NWSL. Even Mallory Pugh and Tierna Davidson, who departed from the usual mold, had been in college for some period of time before leaving to play in the NWSL.

It may seem like a double standard. In MLS, teenage boys have the same opportunities as anyone else, and the “play your kids” movement has made the league better and more valuable in the global market. Alphonso Davies was 15 years old when he made his debut for the Vancouver Whitecaps and, by the time he was 17, Bayern Munich paid a $22 million fee to sign him. Players like him are cropping up constantly – this year, 16-year-old Gianluca Busio has scored three goals in seven games for Sporting Kansas City.

But the NWSL may not be the right environment for teenagers – at least not yet. The compensation in the NWSL – a minimum of $16,538 and a max of $46,200 – is still paltry compared to MLS. The training environments and housing situations are inconsistent across the league too, as the recent controversy around Sky Blue FC's poor conditions show.

View photos Olivia Moultrie, 13, turned pro as Nike's newest soccer endorser. (Nike/AP) More

Besides, it may be too soon to worry about whether Moultrie will be allowed to play in the NWSL. No one knows if she’s even good enough for the league yet and player development isn't always a straight line – being a great 13-year-old isn't always predictive of future success. The clichéd warnings of what happened to Freddy Adu serve as the warning that patience is needed with teenagers.

The Moultrie hype train may have left the station with the Nike announcement, but it probably ought to slow down. She has a lot of growing to do before she can resemble what fans of American soccer hope for, and Moultrie's family and her representation have determined that Portland is the right place for that growth to happen.