Several weeks before Shaw graduated from Tennessee with a degree in communications, the United States State Department issued a travel advisory for Spanish Town, warning American tourists not to visit, saying, “Violence and shootings occur regularly.”

It seems harsh to reduce the history of a place to a warning to stay away. Spanish Town is a former capital of Jamaica, home to one of the oldest Anglican churches outside England. But there was grim resonance for Shaw in what the advisory cautioned.

Three of her brothers have been shot to death. In August 2017, the day Shaw went to Tennessee from a junior college in Florida, one of her cousins was wounded in Spanish Town in a drive-by shooting but survived, Pensky said. A friend said that Shaw grew reluctant to answer her phone, fearing more bad news on the other end every time it rang.

“Her life could have gone a whole other way,” Pensky said.

At one point, Shaw briefly considered giving up soccer and returning home to her family. But, she said, the sport brought her comfort and solace.

“It frees me up,” she said. “I don’t think about nothing when I’m on the pitch other than I really want to win. I’m free, relaxed. I don’t really focus on anything. I use it as motivation to keep going.”

Fans may still be getting to know Shaw, but top clubs are not. Multiple news outlets reported on Thursday that she had signed a two-year contract with F.C. Girondins de Bordeaux in the thriving French women’s league. She has been on this path since elementary school, playing in her front yard, or in the street, in Spanish Town with her brothers and other boys from the neighborhood. It was a dangerous place, she has acknowledged. Sometimes while walking home from practice, she once told The Knoxville (Tenn.) News Sentinel, she would saunter into crime scenes. Yet amid the danger, she said, her sport provided an oasis.

At 7, she began playing pickup soccer against boys as old as 15 or 16. They believed in her, she said, and told her she would be the future of the troubled community. They did not try to hurt her when they played in the yard or in the street, she said. Still, she asked them “to play me rough” because she wanted to be familiar with the muscularity of soccer when she got older and the games became formal and meaningful.