Breakaway

by Alex Morgan

  Abby was a threat the whole game too. The Italian goalkeeper was small—five-four—and Abby’s five-eleven. So you can only imagine how powerful Abby seemed as she headed toward the goal time and again. It was a strong second half for us—we outshot them the whole time—and when the whistle finally blew, we’d kept the score 1–0.

  The United States was going to the World Cup! It hadn’t been easy, but we’d made it.

  Don’t Stop Believing

  After we’d all hugged and congratulated the Italian team, Abby stood on the field and thanked the fans who’d braved the cold to watch us play. She mentioned that we’d never lost belief in ourselves, despite our twisty road, and that resilience and never giving up had seen us through. She is so right. Never, ever lose faith in yourself or your dreams. And never lose that fighting spirit that will make you reach your goals. If you’re a fighter, you’ll win.

  CHAPTER 28

  * * *

  I had reached so many of my goals by Christmas of 2010. I had graduated college early, had played for the national team, and was poised to go to the World Cup. It wasn’t guaranteed—Pia would name the team in May after a training camp—but I was feeling good about it. I was happier than I’d been in my life, but I knew that there was so much more still to do.

  That’s the thing about goal setting. You’re really never done! But that’s the fun of it. If you’re a competitive, driven person, you always have another mountain to climb. Enjoy it. Your passion for what you’re doing will push you forward and through all the ups and downs. And all the hard work will be worth it.

  That’s what I was telling myself as I faced my next challenge: the WPS college draft. Women’s Professional Soccer was the US professional soccer league in place right after I graduated. There had been another league before it—the Women’s United Soccer Association—but that had folded in 2003. The WPS had formed in March 2009 with seven teams, but it was down to six teams now. It hadn’t been an easy few years—only two sponsors came to the league at first, the schedules were strange with an odd number of teams, and they were losing more money than they were making.

  But its existence is what counted. US women’s soccer players needed a league to give ourselves a presence. It was important for young girls to be able to see that women were out there playing soccer and making a living from it. I remember turning on the TV when I was a kid and never seeing women. It was all baseball players and NBA stars. They weren’t my idols, though—Mia Hamm and Kristine Lilly and the amazing women in the 1999 World Cup were. Communities needed the presence of professional teams to show girls that they, too, can be female athletes.

  The collegiate WPS draft was on January 14, 2011. Each team looked at a pool of college players and took turns choosing whom they’d like to play for them. That day, I was on a flight to China for the Four Nations Tournament, which is an annual tournament that’s been hosted by China since 1998. In 2011, few planes offered Wi-Fi, so all I could do was sit and wonder what was happening and whether I’d been chosen. As the hours ticked by, I knew a decision had been made, but I wouldn’t learn what it was till I landed.

  As I walked toward baggage claim after the flight, I saw our team’s press officer, Aaron Heifetz. I knew something was up.

  “Alex, you were the number-one collegiate pick,” he said with a huge smile on his face. “You’ll be playing for the Western New York Flash.”

  I couldn’t believe it. I was the number-one pick in the draft for a professional women’s soccer team. Not only would I be able to play through the winter, but I’d be part of a real league, playing with and against my senior national teammates on US soil. It was a great feeling.

  • • •

  The Flash started practices that winter in Rochester. That’s Abby’s hometown, and it was a really supportive community, but winters in Rochester are rough! It’s one of the coldest and snowiest places in America, and I knew that practicing outdoors was going to be a big change from playing in California.

  I was joined on the team by a few friendly faces, including Yael Averbuch, with whom I’d played on the national team. But what was really fun was how many international players there were. Christine Sinclair was one of the best forwards in Canada; Marta Vieira da Silva was a Brazilian superstar; and there were top players from Australia, Portugal, and more. I’d learned so much from playing against international players, but playing with them was going to be a new experience entirely.

  We started the preseason in March and regular games in April. I scored the first goal in the team’s inaugural game against Atlanta and a total of four goals in fourteen games. All in all, it was shaping up to be a very promising season.

  Money Isn’t Everything

  If you want to succeed at something and make your dreams come true, you can’t do it for money or fame. Money comes and goes, and if you watch reality TV, you know how fleeting fame can be. My starting salary with the Western New York Flash was a fraction of what a Major League Baseball rookie makes, and we often had only a few thousand fans in the stands. And TV coverage? Didn’t happen. But I loved playing professionally because it was my passion, and it showed girls everywhere that women can play sports. So pursue your goals because you want them, not because you think it’s going to make you rich or famous. It’s what’s in your heart that counts, not what’s in your pockets or on TV.

  CHAPTER 29

  * * *

  The announcement of who would be on the World Cup team was set for early May 2011. To say I was nervous would be an under­statement. I’d wanted to go to the World Cup as long as I could remember. It was the biggest stage in soccer, and I’d worked my whole life for it.

  I did have a good feeling. I’d really proven myself in the CONCACAF tournament, especially with my late-game goal in the first game against Italy. But I knew Pia’s decision wasn’t just about one goal. She looked at game performance over the last three years, watched videos from dozens of WPS games, evaluated the players at training camps, and had to look at the balance of the team. She couldn’t have ten strikers, for example.

  Finally, May rolled around, and twenty-one players were named. I was among them! I felt my heart swell with pride and joy. I was going to the World Cup! At twenty-one, I was the youngest player on the team, but all of us were professional players, and twelve of us were new to the World Cup. I definitely wouldn’t feel like the new kid.

  I was excited to play more with the veterans. This would be the fourth World Cup for Christie Rampone, our cocaptain. (Abby is the other captain.) I’d watched her play in 1999! And Abby and Shannon Boxx were on their third World Cups. But what was so exciting was the balance of the team—everybody brought something different. As Pia said in her announcement about who’d made the cut, “We have people who organize defensively, people who can step up when it really matters, people who are good in the air, people who are fighters, and tricky ones as well.” It really made me think about teamwork and the nature of a team. You’re in something together, and you all have to contribute based on your individual talents. As you go after your goal, you are nothing without your team.

  We had a few international games ahead of us—two friendly games against Japan in mid-May—and then we were meeting Mexico in an exhibition send-off match in early June. We’d fly to Austria for training camp in mid-June, and then it would all start June 28 in Germany.

  Fifty days till the World Cup. Fifty days till the grandest event in all of soccer. And while I was excited every single one of those days, my life couldn’t have been busier.

  Pia wanted the national team to be together as much as possible, so she set up a camp in Florida. When we weren’t with our club teams, we were expected to be at camp training, getting to know our teammates and mentally preparing for the World Cup.

  But on the weekends, I’d fly to Buffalo or somewhere else in the country to play for the Flash. I’d play, then say good-bye to my teammates and get
back on a plane for Florida.

  If you’ve spent a lot of time traveling, you know how stressful it can be. You have to pack carefully, dash to the airport, wait in lines, and hope your luggage gets to your destination at the same time you do. Now, imagine doing that twice a week, sometimes three or four times! Often I forgot what time zone I was living in.

  Most of the national team was doing this, too, since almost everyone played on a club team. So while I wasn’t alone, that didn’t make it any easier. I felt stretched so thin, like I was living two different lives.

  But I was doing it for the sake of something great, and that was the World Cup. Realizing that made all the stress worthwhile.

  Make Sacrifices

  When you’re chasing after your dreams, you may have to skip important events in your life because of your commitments. You might have debate tournaments every weekend, so you miss a school dance, leaving behind what feels like a huge part of your high school experience. But pursuing your goals often necessitates making sacrifices, so it’s something you just have to learn to deal with. That was the case for me in early 2011. Personal time just didn’t happen—I’d had to let it go to meet my soccer commitments. If you’re going through something like this, just know that it’s probably not permanent, and keep the big picture in mind: You’re going after your goals.

  CHAPTER 30

  * * *

  June 28 arrived, and we were all on pins and needles. We were set to play our first game against North Korea, and while we didn’t think it was going to be a terribly difficult game, we weren’t taking anything for granted.

  Unfortunately, I wasn’t on the starting roster. My late-game save in the qualifying game against Italy hadn’t yet convinced Pia that I was suited to be a starter. At that point, my strength lay in last-minute heroics.

  But it was okay. Pia had always taught us to accept our roles on the team, whatever they were. Mine was to come off the bench and make an immediate impact. She wanted me to run at the opponent’s defenders and tire them out. I knew that when Pia felt the team needed me as a starter, she’d put me in.

  When you’re pursuing your dreams, sometimes you just have to accept the role you play on a team and realize you may not always—or ever—be the star. If you play gymnastics, you may not win an individual competition, but your team might win overall. Never forget that your contributions helped that happen. Winning may be your dream, but if it’s tied to a team, sometimes you have to take a backseat to the group as a whole. That was me at the start of the World Cup.

  • • •

  The entire Cup was being held in nine cities in Germany. The way the tournament works is that the sixteen teams in the tournament play in several rounds, the first being the group stage. There are four groups consisting of four teams, and each team plays three games within their group. You get points in each game—three points for a win, one for a draw, and none for a loss. The two teams with the most points at the end of the group stage advance to the knockout stage: the quarterfinals, then the semi­finals, then the finals. There are no ties in these games. You play till you win, and if you lose, you go home.

  The night of June 28 in Dresden, Germany, was hot and steamy. As I sat on the sidelines and listened to the starting whistle blow, I felt so great. This was a huge sporting event and the culmination of so many of my dreams, and I was there.

  The first half was scoreless, but midway through the second half we got on the board. Abby made a terrific pass to Lauren Cheney, and she headed the ball into the left side of the goal. And then North Korea went on the attack—they made a great shot from about twenty-five feet that would have gone in if it hadn’t hit the top of the goalpost. Goal averted! We were so relieved.

  The first half came and went, and I got more and more eager to get into the game. Soon, I told myself. Then, in the seventy-fourth minute, I got my chance. One of our four forwards, Amy Rodriguez, had just made a fantastic shot that forced a save, but Pia decided to pull her out of the game. It was my turn to shake things up. I stood up, just a little nervous and a lot excited, and I adjusted my pink headband. Lucky thirteen, here you go.

  When Amy approached the sideline, I broke into a run, darting across the field. I made it. I was about to turn twenty-two years old, and I was playing in the World Cup.

  Just one minute later we were on the board again. Rachel Buehler, who was also making her World Cup debut, caught a pass from Carli Lloyd and kicked it right past three Korean defenders to get it over the line. GOAL!

  North Korea couldn’t come back after that, so we finished the game with a final score of 2–0. It was a thrilling start to my first World Cup, and I couldn’t have been happier that I’d been on the field to see us clinch the victory.

  • • •

  With a 3–0 victory against Colombia in our next game in the group stage, we secured our spot in the quarter­finals. In the group stage of the World Cup, if you win two games, you’re in. But the victory was bittersweet. It was my twenty-second birthday, and I hadn’t been given the chance to play.

  I was subbed in at halftime for our next game against Sweden, though. We lost 2–1, which was a disappointment because it ended our twenty-year unbeaten streak in the group stage, but we couldn’t dwell on it too long—we were still going to the quarterfinals.

  And that’s where our real test would begin. . . .

  Move On

  After the game against Colombia, I was a little more morose than I usually am. I’d wanted to play on my birthday so badly, and I felt overlooked. I needed twenty-four hours to get over my disappointment, which was always my rule. You get twenty-four hours to sulk and feel sorry for yourself, but after the day is over, you move on and look forward. I think this is a good rule—twenty-four hours is actually a long time! You can do a lot of sulking in a day. Feel your pain, then move on to bigger and better things.

  CHAPTER 31

  * * *

  If someone had told me what our quarterfinal game against Brazil was going to be like, I’m not sure I would have been so laid-back about our loss to Sweden. Even Pia was relaxed!

  “I thought it was a good game today: entertaining but also tactically pretty interesting,” Pia said in an interview after the Sweden game. “I think we’ll get stronger, and it will be inspiring to play against Brazil.” See? Confident and chill. Whew! The Brazil game was anything but.

  Unless you’ve been living in a cave, you know how important soccer is to Brazil. You can go to a town there that has fewer than one hundred people and no running water—but they’ll have a soccer field. Their superstar forward, Marta Vieira da Silva, who was my Flash teammate (just called “Marta” because in Brazil all footballers use only their first names), had been the FIFA player of the year five years running. But Brazil had never won a major tournament. In fact, they’d lost to us in the Olympic gold-medal game twice. Long story short, they had something to prove.

  It started off well—no, really well—when Shannon Boxx crossed the ball over to Abby within the first minute and a half of play, and one of the Brazilian players accidentally knocked it in.

  “It’s in! It’s in!” I heard a few girls yell from the sidelines. Pia threw her hands up and jumped into the air.

  Kicking the ball into your own team’s goal is called an own goal, and it’s always awful when it happens. I mean, awful to the person who does it. For us it was great!

  But that own goal must have strengthened Brazil’s resolve to make us suffer. I wasn’t a starter, so I was sitting on the sidelines for that first half, watching them get more and more aggressive as the game went on. They didn’t take any shots on goal in the first twenty minutes, but then, bam, they took four in less than ten minutes. We went into halftime with the edge—the score was still 1–0—but the lead felt really fragile.

  At halftime Pia worked as hard as possible to pump us up.

  “We all know how Brazil plays,�
�� she said. “We can’t give up any stupid fouls. We know their antics—they’ll make the most of them. And they will dive for balls. They will claw their way back. We need to control the tempo of the game, and we need to keep the ball!”

  She could not have been more right. In the sixty-fifth minute, the tide of the game suddenly turned. Marta and Rachel Buehler were battling it out inside our penalty box, with Rachel doing a great job of holding Marta back from scoring. With Rachel right there, Marta shot for the goal—and missed. She fell to the ground and began rolling around, supposedly in pain. Aha! These were the antics Pia had mentioned.

  The whistle blew, and we all couldn’t believe it when Rachel was given a red card.

  “What? No way!” yelled Pia. We were shocked. A red card? How was it possible that Rachel was leaving the game on a penalty none of us had seen? We found out later the referee had ruled that Rachel had fouled Marta in the penalty box, so Brazil was given a penalty kick.

  The kicker belted it . . . and Hope Solo knocked it away. Amazing!

  But then the whistle blew again, and the referee pulled out a yellow card and waved it at Hope. What? We questioned the ref immediately.

  “The goalkeeper moved off the goal line before the shot was made. Brazil gets to take another penalty kick,” she responded.