How One Class Turned a Soccer Mom Into a World Cup Photographer

Irish Maliborski's camera used to point at whichever of her two sons happened to be on the soccer field. This summer, it pointed at the stars of the FIFA World Cup. Over four weeks, Maliborski covered 14 matches across three states, credentialed alongside photographers from ESPN, Fox Sports and Telemundo.

As big as the moment was, the World Cup was never part of her plan. That was earning a college degree at Montclair State University – until a single photojournalism class, and a professor who refused to let her doubt herself, put her on a path she never imagined.

"My long-time goal or practical goal has always been law school and becoming a human rights attorney, but photography ended up opening a door I never expected," Maliborski says.

How it Started, How It's Going

"I love getting photos of the goalkeepers because both of my boys are keepers. I also love capturing celebrations and the feeling of defeat after a goalkeeper concedes a goal, but I especially love when I can capture both in the same frame. There’s so much emotion in that one moment.”

Sideline Beginnings

Maliborski takes one class at a time at Montclair, while working full time in a medical recovery firm and caring for her family. She earned an associate degree at Bergen Community College two decades ago, and returned to school in 2022 to study Jurisprudence, Law and Society. 

Her photography started small: pictures of her boys on the soccer field in their hometown of Pompton Lakes, until she eventually turned her camera to the New York Red Bulls.

When she returned to school, she took a photojournalism class with Associate Professor Thomas Franklin, who saw something in Maliborski's photography that, by her own account, she didn't see in herself.

Franklin says she has "desire" and what photographers call "giddy up" – energy and motivation that doesn't need to be taught.

As the 2026 FIFA World Cup arrived on U.S. soil – soccer's biggest American moment in a generation, with a new wave of fans swept up by Ted Lasso riding alongside it – Maliborski decided to chase a credential of her own.

"I knew this was a chance I might never get back. So, I made a difficult decision: I dropped the American Constitutional Law class I had been looking forward to taking, and chose the World Cup instead," she says.

Franklin connected her directly to NJ News Wire, a new statewide news-sharing network built and run by the Center for Cooperative Media at Montclair's College of Communication and Media.

NJ News Wire lets member newsrooms across New Jersey republish from a shared pool of stories and draw on a statewide photo library – a library Franklin himself helped build, in part by hiring Montclair students and alumni to shoot for it.

At the World Cup, the photographers who normally cover rival Major League Soccer teams found themselves on the same side for once. "We got to know each other, talked about our experiences, helped each other along the way, and really bonded," she says.

“I think that’s probably what made the World Cup so meaningful to me. It wasn’t just about photographing the games. There were moments where I was experiencing it as a photographer, a soccer fan, a mom of two goalkeepers. I was surrounded by photographers from some of the countries all over the world’s largest media organizations who cover the biggest sporting events on the planet," Maliborski says. 

"And there I was: a freelance photographer who started by taking pictures of my kids' soccer games."