Minium: Gry Boe Thrysøe Is "The Unsung Hero" of ODU Women's Soccer Team

By Harry Minium

NORFOLK, Va. –  The pandemic was raging when Gry Boe Thrysøe, then a 19-year-old Danish women’s soccer player, was trying to figure out where she would play collegiately in America. And that meant she would have to choose a new home remotely via Zoom.

She talked with coaches from half a dozen schools, but all it took was a couple of online meetings with Old Dominion Head Coach Angie Hind and Associate Head Coach Michelle Barr for her to be sold on the Monarchs.

“I could tell how nice they were but also how motivated they are to win,” said Gry (pronounced ‘Gree’). “I felt like I would be happy at ODU, that this would be a place where I could develop.

"I just had a feeling, this was the place for me.”

That proved to be true both for Gry and for ODU.

The Monarchs have won three championships in her four seasons (she sat out 2022 with a knee injury), and the fifth-year senior has developed a sterling reputation not only as a talented and unselfish player but also an outstanding student and team captain.

The 5-foot-7 midfielder has just four goals and three assists in 60 games, but two were game-winners and her worth isn’t measured by points, Hind said.

“She is the unsung hero of this team,” said Hind, whose Monarchs open Thursday at Georgetown before returning home Sunday for their first home game against William & Mary.

“She is one of the fittest players I’ve ever worked with, and she has an incredible defensive mentality to win the ball. She’s respectful to everyone and does so well in the classroom. She just epitomizes everything you want to see in a player.

“She’s a team player. She should get all-conference honors, but she doesn’t because in America, they don’t recognize defense. You need to score goals.”

Academically, she scored a near-perfect 3.99 grade point average in her first four years and graduated last spring with a double major in applied math and biostatistics. She is enrolled in ODU’s prestigious doctoral program in computational and applied math.

Last spring, she shared the ODU Female Scholar-Athlete of the Year award with Kiersten Donnelly, a swimmer who also had a 3.99 GPA.

It takes incredible dedication to play a varsity college sport, which in itself is almost like a full-time job, and also be near-perfect in the classroom.

“Gry is so smart but she also works very hard,” said Amy Lynch, ODU’s associate athletics director for academic services and student success. “She just does everything right.”

A trait that her teammates adore.

“She’s such a great example of how you should be as a person, an athlete and a player,” said Mia Serna, a junior midfielder from Leesburg, Virginia.

As one of three team captains, “she takes care of us,” added Andrea Balcazar Algarin, a senior midfielder from Mexico City, who is also a team captain.

“She’s almost like our Mom.”

Gry was raised in Klarup, Denmark, a village of about 5,000 people in the northern part of the country just outside of Aalborg, a city of 115,000 residents that is popular with tourists in part because of its lively night life. Vikings once roamed the nearby waters.

Gry said her childhood was largely ideal. Her father, Jacob Thrysøe, is an engineer and her mother, Anja Boe Espersen, a counselor. She played several sports as a child before becoming a full-time soccer player at age 11.

She took a gap year after high school and played club soccer for a year “while I tried to figure out what I wanted to do with my life,” she said.

She wasn’t quite good enough for pro soccer but wasn't ready to give up on her career. Yet she was also an outstanding high school student and wanted to continue her studies in college. 

But it's difficult to play a sport and attend college in Europe. There is nothing approximating American college athletics, where athletes play on a high level, on full-ride scholarships and receive academic tutoring.   

So she contacted with an agency that put here in touch with several American universities, including ODU. 

“The facilities here are so much better than what I saw in Europe,” she said. 

“The fact that we have our own locker room, our own field, that I can go see the trainer every day, that the gym is right here,” she said. “That’s not really common for a women’s club in Europe.”

She missed her parents, brother and sister, as well as her Danish culture, her first semester at ODU.

“That first semester, it was really hard,” she said. “The language, the people are so different. It was difficult to adjust to.

“Americans are much more friendly and open than Europeans. They’re so welcoming to strangers. That also took some time to get used to.

“But I really loved ODU from the first time I came on campus.”

The Monarchs have great potential this season. Top scorer Rhea Kijowski was a senior last season, but 10 of the top 11 scorers return – Gry, Algarin, Brooke Edwards, Yuliia Khrystiuk, Riley Mullen, Katie Lutz, Laura Klebek, Ashlynn Kulha, Grace Hillis and Katie McCormick.

Kulha, a 5-11 junior from Holly Springs, North Carolina, was the Sun Belt Defensive Player of the Year last season. Algarin, who had five points last season, was a first-team All-Sun Belt choice.

Gone is Sun Belt Goalkeeper of the Year Emily Bredek, but Erin Jones, a 5-10 graduate student from Carolina County, Virginia, pushed Bredek for starting time last season. She had a 0.934 goals against average in 674 minutes.

The Monarchs were impressive in an exhibition match with East Carolina in which neither team scored, but ODU dominated. The Pirates competed in the 2024 NCAA Tournament.

ODU’s non-league schedule is challenging. Georgetown was 13-4-4 and went to the NCAA Tournament. The Hoyas knocked ODU out of the 2023 NCAA Tournament.

Power 4 schools Maryland (August 24) and Virginia Tech (Sept. 4) play at ODU.

Liberty, which was 15-2-4 last season, plays at ODU on August 31.

ODU was picked to finish third in the Sun Belt, behind defending champion James Madison and Texas State. Hind said the league has improved immensely since ODU joined three years ago, especially the East Division. All seven East schools are picked to finish among the top 10.

“We’re getting better, but so is the Sun Belt,” she said.

Hind likes her team very much.

“For the first time since I’ve been here, we are a 50/50 team, meaning an even split between upper classmen and underclassmen,” she said. “Our depth is better. We’ve never been this strong, collectively.

“But we need to make sure that we get things right and that will take some time.”

Gry said after winning three conference titles in a row – one in Conference USA and two in the Sun Belt – that it hurt to not win the title last year.

“I definitely want to go out strong,” she said.

What she does after her playing career here ends here is undecided. It would take several years to finish her doctorate at ODU, “and I’m not sure I will be done playing soccer,” she said.

But completing her Master’s and doctoral degrees at ODU would set up her for a sweet career. So, she’s conflicted.

“Sport data analytics has become a big thing in sports, especially baseball,” she said. “Doing data analysis in sports would be a really cool thing.”

She has a boyfriend in America – Mao Wong, a soccer player at Lindsey Wilson University in Kentucky, whom she met while playing for a summer league team in Asheville, North Carolina.

“I’ll figure this all out when the season is over," she said. 

Given her academic and athletic resume, she could have entered the transfer portal and likely would have received offers from Power 4 schools.

“I never thought about entering the portal,” she said. “The culture here is so good. I love my team. I love my friends here. And I’m getting the opportunity to finish up my Master’s and start my doctorate.

“I’ve talked to a lot of people at other schools and I know what we have is so special. You don’t get that in many places.

“This is not just about playing soccer. My teammates, they are my best friends, and that’s really important being so far away from home.

“My teammates will be my lifelong friends. There’s no way I would have left them.”

Minium is ODU’s senior executive writer. Contact him at hminium@odu.edu or follow him on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram