Still Becoming: Jessica De Fillipo

Feb 28, 2023

When a player starts collecting milestones, they begin to look like a destination.

For Jess De Filippo, they are better understood as markers.

Not proof that she has arrived, but evidence of everywhere she has been.

At 25, De Filippo has already lived through enough versions of her football career to make a neat narrative tempting. Canada youth international. Arkansas standout. Professional in Spain and Germany. Vancouver Rise champion.

But watching her now, there is little sense that she sees herself as a finished player.

There is something fitting about the number on Jessica De Filippo’s back.

11.

It is the number she wore at Arkansas. It is the number she wears now for Vancouver Rise. And, in a way, it represents where she is in her career: not quite finished becoming the player she wants to be.

Maybe that is what makes No. 11 such a fitting number. It has stayed with her while almost everything else has changed.

De Filippo's rise did not happen linearly.

At the University of Arkansas, her junior season in 2021 was interrupted by an ACL injury after she started the team's first nine games. She finished with two goals and three assists.

The following year looked completely different.

As a senior, she started all 22 matches, scored 12 goals and recorded 32 points. She led Arkansas in goals, points and shots, then carried that form into the NCAA Tournament, where she scored six times and finished as the tournament's leading scorer.

From the outside, that kind of season can make development look inevitable.

It wasn't.

There was a season spent trying to get back onto the field before there was a season where everything seemed to come together. There were different systems, different countries and different expectations.

After college, De Filippo moved to Spain and then Germany, experiencing professional football before eventually returning to British Columbia.

By the time she joined Vancouver Rise for the NSL's inaugural season, she had already learned that progress doesn't always look like moving forward.

Sometimes it looks like starting again.

When Vancouver announced De Filippo ahead of the inaugural season, then-sporting director Stephanie Labbé spoke about wanting to see her “grow in our environment.”

There is something revealing about that choice of language.

Vancouver wasn't presenting De Filippo as the finished article. The club saw the player she was, but also the player she could become.

Then she made that distinction difficult to maintain.

In 2025, De Filippo scored seven goals and added three assists across 25 appearances. She scored a stoppage-time equalizer against AFC Toronto, found the winner against Toronto while Vancouver played with 10 players and produced a 35-yard strike against Calgary that earned Goal of the Week.

By the end of the season, she wasn’t just Vancouver's Offensive MVP, she was also a champion.

For a player entering a new league with a new club, it would have been easy for the story to end there.

Instead, that season seems to have created a new question.

What happens when everyone expects more?

A breakout can be liberating because there is nothing to defend.

The next season is different.

Now there is a reputation and expectations. A good season becomes the standard rather than the surprise.

De Filippo's 2026 campaign has required her to operate inside that new reality.

She scored her first goal of the season against Halifax and followed it with the winner against Montréal. By August, she’s become the league’s leading scorer with 9 goals and two assists.

Her influence increasingly extends beyond the final touch. She can drop into midfield, hold the ball under pressure, pull defenders away or make the movement that allows someone else to attack the space.

It is a quieter kind of development.

One that doesn't always produce a goal or an assist.

But it is often the difference between being a player who can score and a player who can shape a game.

There is a temptation to look at De Filippo's résumé and decide what she is.

Her career has been shaped as much by adaptation as achievement.

Each stage has asked her to become slightly different.

She has already proved that she can perform.

Now she is learning how much more she can influence.

That process will inevitably include quiet games, missed chances and moments when things don't quite work. It will also include the goals that make people remember her name.

Both belong to the same story.

And perhaps that is the most interesting thing about watching Jess De Filippo at Vancouver Rise right now.

No. 11 has followed her this far.

There is no reason to think the number—or the player wearing it—has finished growing just yet.