Becky played twenty games for the Freedom during that 2009 season; she even scored the first goal in franchise history. Then she promptly joined a professional team in Norway, spending a few months playing for Røa IL, a club based just outside of Oslo. Then she went back to the WPS and spent another season with the Freedom—anything she could do to keep playing, keep improving, and keep alive her dream of getting one more shot at the National Team.
Finally, in 2010, the call came.
Again, an injury created the need for Becky to be called up to the National Team. She joined the squad during its training camp for the CONCACAF Women’s World Cup Qualifying Tournament, the event that determined which teams would advance to the 2011 FIFA Women’s World Cup. Becky wound up playing one match in the qualifying event and appearing in five games over the course of the 2010 season. Playing time was limited, but she remained undeterred. She was on the US roster. As it turned out, she was there to stay.
Becky may have been disappointed when she was released from the National Team in 2008, but she was never disheartened. She used those two years to work on her game, committed to becoming the kind of player no National Team coach would ever again be able to send down.
She knew that the National Team staff was coming to those WPS games, watching her and tracking her progress. Remember, her style is not one that is going to catch someone’s eye in the stands or the press box. You have to be looking for her in order to notice the many ways she is affecting a game. As Tim Boul learned when he first watched her J. B. Marine team in that Peoria tournament, the more of Becky you see, the more impressed you are.
“I’m someone who grows on you over time,” Becky said.
In 2011, Becky appeared in twelve games for the US Women’s National Team. The one game she played in the World Cup that summer was the semifinal against France, when she stepped in to start in place Rachel Buehler (now Rachel Van Hollebeke), who had been suspended for a game after receiving a red card.
“Who does that?” Steve Swanson wondered years later. “To come into the semifinal of the World Cup, without having played in the entire tournament, and play that caliber of game? That was unbelievable in that kind of environment.”
She took another step forward in 2012, playing in twenty-two games and making nine starts. Becky played only thirty-eight minutes in the London Olympics, but those were critical minutes. She came off the bench in the closing minutes of both the semifinal and championship games and helped the United States take home the gold medal.
Slowly, over several seasons, Becky grew into an indispensable player for the National Team. She evolved from someone who could hang with the best players at an ODP camp to someone who belonged with the best players in the world. She’s grown from someone who made the team into someone who now makes the team go. She’s gone from a replacement part to a key contributor to an impact player to co-captain of the world champion US Women’s National Team.
In announcing her selection of Becky and Carli Lloyd as co-captains, head coach Jill Ellis described them as “two extremely professional players in both game and training environments” and noted that they both “embody the DNA of this program.”
Like DNA itself, Becky’s true contributions can be tough to map out clearly enough for the naked eye to appreciate. Minutes Played might not be the most glamorous of statistical categories—no fantasy soccer leagues factor that into their scoring systems—but those figures do tell a big part of Becky’s story. You can’t help your team if you’re not out on the field. The fact that she is out there, for more minutes than practically any of her teammates, speaks to Becky’s most important impact: Her teammates can always count on her to be there, to have their backs, and to make the steady, unspectacular, but absolutely essential plays that provide the foundation for winning teams.
“Becky will tell you that she’s an ordinary person who has achieved extraordinary results,” Coach Swanson said. “That has everything to do with the kind of person she is.”
CHAPTER 11
ULTIMATE GOALS
There are a handful of moments in American sports history that will live forever.
Go ask your grandparents if they remember where they were when Bobby Thomson hit his “Shot Heard ’Round the World,” the home run that lifted the New York Giants past the Brooklyn Dodgers and to the 1951 National League pennant.
Ask your parents what they were doing when Mike Eruzione scored his game-winning goal against the Russians in 1980, making everyone in America, hockey fan or not, believe in a Miracle on Ice.
Some moments are made of such magic and improbability that they can never be forgotten by anyone who witnessed them with their own eyes and ears and heart: Kirk Gibson’s “I don’t believe what I just saw” home run and his fist-pumping limp around the bases in the 1988 World Series. Christian Laettner’s turnaround shot at the buzzer against Kentucky in 1992. Rocky still standing at the final bell in his first fight against Apollo Creed.
Okay, that last one is from a movie. It isn’t real. But moments like these often seem like they were scripted by Hollywood screenwriters, like they were dipped in gooey drama and preserved in some perfect candy shell and frozen in time. They are the only true reality TV.
Becky Sauerbrunn has a moment like that. It was Saturday, July 10, 1999, and she was on the floor of her family room, back home in Olivette. Her father was in his usual spot—his rocking chair. Becky had recently turned fourteen, and her life that summer of 1999 was consumed with soccer, playing it and watching the US Women’s National Team try to win the Women’s World Cup at home on American soil.
The United States and China were at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, California, facing off in the World Cup final. More than ninety thousand fans were in the stands, a crowd larger than had ever gathered to watch a women’s sporting event in America. After regulation time, the teams had played to a scoreless draw.
The score remained 0–0 at the conclusion of extra time. The game and the World Cup would come down to penalty kicks.
Becky lay on the floor, her head in her hands, four feet from the television set, enthralled by the drama that was unfolding before her eyes. She watched as Xie Huilin opened the shoot-out with a goal for China, was transfixed when Carla Overbeck scored to tie the game, 1–1.
Another shot for China, another goal.
Another shot for the US, another goal, this one by Joy Fawcett, a defensive player who had played every minute of the tournament for the US
Briana Scurry, the goalkeeper for Team USA, stopped Liu Ying on China’s next shot. The US took the lead when Kristine Lilly scored on her third-round attempt.
The two teams traded goals in the fourth round; then Sun Wen scored on China’s fifth shot. Both teams had scored four goals by the time Brandi Chastain strode forward and purposefully placed the ball on the white circle in the middle of the field, twelve yards in front of the goal.
Becky could barely breathe. Few of the forty million people watching on TV probably could. She was glued to the screen as Chastain set up for the shot. In case anyone had forgotten, the announcer on ABC reminded everyone that four months earlier, in the final of the Algarve Cup, Chastain had missed a penalty kick, and the United States lost that game to China, by one goal.
Chastain made her approach. Then the right-footed kicker blasted a shot with her left foot that found its way into the right side of China’s goal. She immediately ripped off her game jersey (a move popular with many men playing at that time) and, in her black sports bra, dropped to her knees, fists clenched in celebration, providing the moment many fans will never forget. It was the image captured on the covers of Sports Illustrated and Newsweek.
But it’s not what Becky remembers most.
She jumped to her feet and watched as the tide of white jerseys swept onto the field and swallowed up Brandi Chastain. Becky had witnessed a level of elation she had never seen before, never even knew existed. Even as a teenage spectator 1,800 miles away, it was a moment tha
t would change her life.
“That game was so big for me,” Becky said. “The look of joy on their faces knowing they had won. It was such a close match, so competitive, such a high level of play, so many people watching. They were just so happy. I knew right then that I needed to feel what they were feeling, that I wanted to know what it felt to win something that big.”
In the aftermath of perhaps the most exciting moment in the history of women’s sports in America, Becky had found herself a new goal.
And unlike pretty much everyone else who has ever seen such a moment and dreamed what it might be like to live something like it, Becky actually got to experience it for herself. More than once.
She felt it first on the podium after winning the 2012 Olympics. Officials from the Games were about to hand out the gold medals when it dawned on Becky that she was having a once-in-a-lifetime feeling. But she was wrong.
She had it again, three years later, after winning the 2015 Women’s World Cup. She found herself running around the field inside BC Place, the arena in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, where the US had just defeated Japan, 5–2, to win the World Cup. Her parents were up in the stands, just as they always were, watching their daughter do what she loved most in the world. Her brothers were there, too, cheering on their little sister; she’d come a long way from those roller-hockey games on the street in front of their house. Tim and Jennifer Boul, her J. B. Marine former coaches, were there, watching with Becky’s family (a far more exotic trip than that first one to Peoria so many years earlier). Her college coach—one of the coaches responsible for her making that first U-16 national team—was there, on the sidelines, sharing in this glorious accomplishment.
Becky was soaking it all up. She and Meghan Klingenberg—her teammate and partner on defense and one of her closest friends—carried an American flag together as they circled the stadium in celebration.
“I was thinking, ‘Can you believe this? We did it!’ ” Becky said, smiling at the memory.
The world of women’s soccer changed in the US in the wake of that World Cup, just as there had been a dramatic uptick in participation after that summer of 1999. More kids were playing in rec leagues across the country, more schools were adding girls’ soccer to their athletic departments.
The Sauerbrunns certainly noticed it. St. Louis had always been a soccer town, but suddenly people who had never paid attention to women’s soccer in their lives were coming up to Jane and Scott to talk about what Becky and her team had done.
Tim Boul noticed it, too. Once, he was working his way through the aisles of a local grocery store, wearing his Team USA replica sweatshirt, the one emblazoned with Becky’s name and the number 4. An older gentleman, maybe eighty years old, spotted the sweatshirt and stopped Tim to talk.
“Are you Becky Sauerbrunn’s father?” he asked.
“No,” Tim said. “I coached her back in club ball.”
Tim was giggling to himself over the attention he was getting thanks to Becky’s accomplishments, when he heard a voice behind him. Another man had heard the exchange, and as Tim turned toward him he heard, “Hey! Good job not screwing her up.”
What is most special to Becky is when she sees the young girls who have taken up the game. So many of them play soccer now, it’s rare when there aren’t enough girls to field a team and a girl has to find a spot on a boys’ team just to have the chance to play.
“Seeing these young girls playing makes me so happy,” Becky said. “These girls don’t have any idea where the ceiling might be for them.”
Becky loves the opportunities she has to interact with the youngest generation of soccer-playing girls. She remembers how cool it was when she first had the chance to meet Brandi Chastain in person, how excited she was—and she was already a member of the U-19s by that time. So every chance she gets, Becky stops to talk with the girls, to answer their questions and sign autographs for them if they ask. She’s nearly missed many a team bus leaving a game or a training facility, because she’s been making sure she signs for and speaks to every last child waiting for her.
Her commitment to the future of the sport, though, goes beyond autographs and answering questions. Becky and several teammates decided to tackle the issue of inequality, hoping to be able to resolve it before future generations of girls ever have to face it.
In late March 2016, five members of the US Women’s National Team—Carli Lloyd, Hope Solo, Alex Morgan, Megan Rapinoe, and Becky—filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, claiming that their team’s players are paid significantly less to do their jobs than their counterparts on the men’s National Team. Becky announced the initiative that morning to her thousands of followers on Twitter.
Wage inequality in the workplace is not an issue exclusive to soccer. Women have been waging a fight for fairness in the workplace for decades, and the issue of equal pay elbowed its way into the conversation for many candidates running for president during their 2016 primary and general election campaigns. Hours after the news broke that a complaint had been filed, Hillary Clinton responded with a tweet of her own, noting, “Every woman deserves equal pay.” It’s a societal issue that affects women across all industries at all levels. And the members of the US Women’s National Team wanted to do their part to bring attention to this important problem.
“The scope of this fight goes beyond women’s soccer,” Becky said. “Every day, I question why there is even an argument anymore. Why do people fight so hard against this principle? Why is it so threatening to so many people?”
The US Women’s National Team players had a strong point they wanted to make clear. They were contractually obligated to play a minimum of twenty “friendlies” a year—exhibition games, or matches played in preparation for an upcoming tournament. They would be paid a certain amount for winning each friendly and a lesser amount if they lost.
Sounds fair, right? It does until you hear their argument that the US men’s team gets paid the same rate, win or lose. And that they got paid considerably more than the women’s team.
The women didn’t bring this case to point out how much more successful their program has been than the men’s (though that point is inarguable and undeniable). They brought the case to show that men and women were being paid at different rates by the same employer—the US Soccer Federation—for doing the same job, regardless of the fact that revenues (money generated by the programs through things like television contracts, jersey sales, and tickets to games) actually show that the women’s team makes more money than the men.
Make no mistake: Women’s soccer established itself in 2015 as a major player on the American sports scene. When actor Tom Hanks is cheering you on in his social media accounts, stirring his thirteen million Twitter followers to support you, you’re officially big-time. (In one tweet, Hanks singled out Becky, saying “Thank you, Becks!” presumably for her role in leading the National Team to the knockout round of the 2015 Women’s World Cup.)
Twenty-three million people watched that World Cup final. Only seventeen million watched the men’s World Cup final the summer before (granted, the audience would have been much larger had the US men been in the final—which they never have been). Game 7 of the 2014 World Series drew only a slightly larger TV audience than the Women’s World Cup, and ratings for Game 6 of the 2015 NBA Finals were virtually identical.
Becky and her teammates gratefully acknowledge the opportunities created for them by the members of the ’99ers—Brandi Chastain, Mia Hamm, and Julie Foudy. In the fifteen years following that monumental moment at the Rose Bowl, participation in girls’ soccer at the high-school level grew by more than 45 percent (according to the National Federation of State High School Associations). Volleyball was up nearly 13 percent; fast-pitch softball was up about 7 percent.
Girls’ soccer is growing, and leaders of the National Team felt it was their obligation to take the lead on the issue of equal pay for equal play.
“Ask any athle
te what their ultimate goal is, and that would be to leave their sport better than they found it,” Becky said. “It goes beyond winning a gold medal or playing for a world championship. I am so proud to be a part of this group of women who are bringing this issue to light. It is a legacy that any member of our team would be proud to leave behind.”
The women of the National Team take seriously their relationship with the next generation of girls’ soccer players and women’s soccer fans. They always have, dating back well before they took their fight for equality public. Just before leaving for Canada and the 2015 World Cup, the US Women’s National Team launched its #SheBelieves campaign. They posted an open letter, signed by everyone on the team, on the US Soccer website, addressed to young girls everywhere:
You, with your cleats on and a ball at your feet.
You, with your nose in a book and a dream in your head.
You, with your hand in the air, asking question after question after question.
Listen up, ladies: we believe in you.
We believe in your dreams, in your goals, and in your ability to reach them. It might be an uphill battle, and you will get knocked down, but it’s your battle. Own it. Fight it. Never give up on it.
You got this!
As a team, your team, we feel your energy. We read your tweets, see your photos on Instagram, follow as you share your brilliant minds, and hear when you cheer from the stands.
We believe we will be at the top of the podium after that final whistle blows. We never let anyone tell us otherwise. Don’t let the tired clichés and stereotypes make you doubt what you are meant to be: the best.
You support us and show us the way. Now it’s time to turn it around and let you know we have your back. We are going to give everything to reach our goals and we want you to do that, too.
We want you to believe you can be the best: the best athlete, the best student, the best doctor, lawyer, teacher, writer. We want you to be the best you.
Becky Sauerbrunn Page 5