by Hope Solo
I didn’t watch the World Cup games as a fan. I didn’t have a poster of Mia Hamm on my wall. I watched like a player—I was planning to someday be on that roster. And a few weeks after the World Cup, I contributed in a small way to what was dubbed the Summer of Soccer. In late July, the U-18 national team reported for the Pan-American Games in Winnipeg, the first-ever inclusion of women’s soccer in the Pan-Am Games. Soccer was becoming more than just a distraction from my home life. For the first time, it felt like a full-time job.
I allowed only two goals in the Pan-American games, had shutouts in the semifinal and final matches, and my team won the gold medal. It was a great experience: the U.S. men’s team was full of up-and-coming young stars like Landon Donovan and DaMarcus Beasley. Goalkeeper coach Peter Muehler worked with both the men’s and women’s goalkeepers and had us train together. I trained with Tim Howard and Adin Brown, and Tim and I clicked on the field. After the final, Peter told me that my performance was the best he had seen by any goalkeeper of any gender. It meant a lot for me to hear his words of praise. He was so well respected in the U.S. Soccer hierarchy, and I knew he’d pass along his high opinion of me.
I flew through Seattle on my way home to Richland. My dad came and met me at Sea-Tac Airport, and waited with me for my connecting flight. He was thrilled to see my medal and stopped total strangers at the airport to tell them what I had accomplished. “My blond Italian goddess,” he said over and over. “You’re the greatest, Baby Hope. Never sell yourself short.”
V.
It was time to move to Seattle. I was finally leaving Richland—and my family—behind. My mother drove me over the mountains to help me move into my preseason dorm. We went early because soccer training camp was starting, so there weren’t a lot of other students around. I already felt lonely.
We pulled the boxes out of the back of the truck and started hauling them up in the dorm elevator. While my mom was upstairs, I pulled more stuff out of the truck and carried up a load, leaving some of my other possessions on the curb. When I came back down, I saw a man walking away with my small television. I stared after him in shock. “Mom!” I shouted to her as she came out of the dorm. “That man stole my TV.”
“Relax,” my mother said and she chased him down the street and got it back.
I felt like a country mouse! How was I going to function in a big city without Mom to rescue me? I felt very young and very dumb.
We rushed to unpack because I had to hurry off for the team’s preseason physicals. It was time to say good-bye, the moment I’d been waiting for my whole life. My mother looked at me and her eyes welled up with tears. To my surprise, I started crying too. I had never said good-bye to my mother in my whole life. It was my father who was always disappearing; our relationship was a never-ending good-bye. Mom was the one who had always been there. She was the one who had been left with two kids, the one who had to support us and deal with all our shit. She made sure we got to school, that we were fed, that we had the best basketball shoes and a way to get around. She wasn’t perfect, but she had tried her hardest. Despite all the harsh words and fights between us, she was my touchstone, the one I knew I could lash out at without fear of her walking out. I had been so obsessed with my father’s drama, had idolized and romanticized him so much, that I had taken my mother for granted. Now that I was saying good-bye, I realized I had never needed her more.
“I love you, Hope,” she said, hugging me.
“I love you, Mom,” I said.
It was true. I did love her.
VI.
Before my first UW game, my goalkeeper coach, Amy, and I headed out to the field early to warm up. My dad, hands shoved into the pockets of his rumpled trench coat, was waiting outside the gate to the stadium. “Hi, Dad,” I said and gave him a hug.
“Hi, Baby Hope,” he said. “You look good.”
“Thanks,” I said, awkwardly. “Well, gotta get to work.”
I went back to Amy.
“Who’s that?” she asked.
“Uh, that’s my dad,” I said, and left it at that.
When the game started, my dad went to sit high in the uppermost corner of the bleachers, as close to one goal as he could get. When my mother and grandparents arrived, they sat in the “family and friends” section at midfield.
And that’s pretty much how it went for my entire UW career—my family split into two sides, sitting in different places. My dad would come to games early; often waiting outside the fence when I arrived. He sat at the top of the stands, removed from everyone else. He would watch me intently and sometimes call out, “Let’s go, Baby Hope” at a quiet moment. He wanted to make me laugh, but I was determined to keep my serious game face. He wouldn’t mingle with the rest of my family—he knew how much animosity they still carried for him. He waited awkwardly for me after games while I visited with the others. I always felt pulled between the two halves of my family.
A big group from Richland made the trek over the mountains for every home game: Mom, Grandma Alice and Grandpa Pete, Aunt Susie, sometimes Marcus. Mary and Dick came to watch Cheryl, who had indeed made the team. Terry made the quick drive from Kirkland. My Richland family was unconditionally supportive, but they still hated the fact that I was a goalkeeper. They were sure that I was being punished in some way and that my true talents were being denied. Grandma Alice often wore a T-shirt with my photo on it, covered with buttons with soccer photos of me dating back to grade school. She responded to a fund-raising solicitation from our coaching staff with the following note: “I will only donate a penny for every shutout Hope registers, but I will donate $100 for every goal she scores.”
But Lesle and Amy couldn’t be bribed. They were thrilled to have a dominant goalkeeper. Still, they remained true to their word. I wasn’t handed the starting position. I had to earn it. I split time with a junior, Leslie Weeks. I started twelve games and quickly learned that playing against twenty-one-year-old girls was a huge leap from what I’d been doing. The speed of play was so much faster; the contact going up for a cross was brutal. The pressure was intense.
In my twelve games, I made seventy-seven saves, the fourth-highest total in school history. Against BYU, I made thirteen saves, one short of the school regular-season record. But for the first time in a very long time, I learned what it was like to lose. Our team wasn’t great. We finished fifth in the Pac-10 conference that year and didn’t make the playoffs. I’ve always enjoyed challenges, and I never regretted my decision to be at Washington, not once. When my grandparents celebrated their golden fiftieth wedding anniversary, I was able to be there—heading home for a quick trip with Cheryl. And I liked taking my own path, helping to build something new.
That fall was a period of huge adjustments. When I got to UW, I started weight training for the first time. I was living in the dorms and eating dorm food. I was no longer the skinny kid who graduated from Richland High. My body was changing. I did what I was told by the trainers. I always prided myself in being first in fitness, first in sprints, first in weight training. I was great at drills: I could go up and down, diving for balls a million times and never getting tired. I wanted to work hard, harder, the hardest. But it was a shock to see how quickly my body could change. I was self-conscious of my new muscles. I thought I looked ugly in dresses.
That wasn’t the only adjustment. That young, naive feeling I had while I watched a stranger carry off my television never fully went away. Back in Richland, I felt pretty savvy, but now my high-school rebellions seemed like childish stuff. At UW everyone seemed more comfortable socially and more stylish. Though I was still a good student, I was more self-conscious in class. I stopped speaking up. I was shocked by the constant partying, the random sex in the bedrooms at fraternity parties, the illegal drugs being exchanged—and the apparent ability of everyone to go crazy at night and then get up and go to class. My roommate was far more adept than I at juggling sports, studies,
and men. I really liked her—she was fun to hang with—but I was uncomfortable with her habits. It seemed there was always a man in our room. Sometimes I’d wake up in the middle of the night to the sounds of her having sex in the next bed. I’d lie in bed squeezing my eyes shut, pushing away memories of my father in that hotel room with the strange woman. I felt like a little child again, in a situation beyond my control. I was put off by my roommate’s lack of modesty and her disregard for privacy, but it seemed normal, so I never spoke up.
I just rolled over and pretended to be asleep.
VII.
The team activity for the week was to feed the homeless at the Union Gospel Mission Men’s Shelter in Seattle’s Pioneer Square. Lesle made sure we were involved in our community with regular activities, such as visiting kids at the Children’s Hospital and conducting soccer clinics at schools. I knew the community projects were important, but I just couldn’t do this outing. I’d seen those homeless men lining up outside Union Gospel, in rumpled coats and worn-out shoes. I knew I was probably the only one on my team who was willing to make contact with a homeless person without being forced by the team.
Plus, I was afraid of running into my father. So I just didn’t show up. They all got on the bus, and I stayed behind in my dorm and studied.
The next day, Lesle called me aside. “Hey, Hope,” she said. “That wasn’t an optional activity. Where were you?”
I swallowed hard. “I couldn’t go,” I said. “I didn’t want to see my dad.”
Lesle looked surprised. She and Amy had seen my dad at our games, had even exchanged brief hellos. But they had no idea that he was homeless. With my secret out in the open, I let the rest out. I told Lesle the whole story, the kidnapping, the erratic contact, his blue tarp in the woods. She listened. She let me talk, without interruption or judgment. “OK, Hope,” she said. “Next time we go to Union Gospel, you don’t have to go.”
The next time the team went down to Pioneer Square, I went to the library. My teammates thought I was getting a special privilege, that I thought I was too good to feed homeless people.
They didn’t know the truth. And Lesle didn’t explain.
CHAPTER SIX
The ’99ers
A horde of squealing Mia Hamm fans swarmed around me. They had signs. They had posters. They wielded sharpies like switch-blades. I was trying to get into the lobby of our hotel in Portland without my USA warm-ups being torn off my body. Hotel security was no match for the passion of those prepubescent girl soccer players, who pulled at us with their sticky hands. Some of my teammates and I formed a wedge and made it from the bus and through the revolving door into the lobby, which was cordoned off from the fans. Once inside the elevator, I exhaled. Safe at last. I was starting to get it. This U.S. women’s national team was a big deal.
I knew, of course, that winning the World Cup seven months earlier had elevated women’s soccer into the mainstream. I knew that Mia Hamm and Brandi Chastain had become household names. But what I didn’t know was that their rock-star aura had generated Beatles-level hysteria.
April Heinrichs, who knew me well from having recruited me at Virginia, had been named head coach of the national team in January 2000 after Tony DiCicco retired. Lesle had been right: I was going to be a national-team candidate no matter where I went to college. April called me in to her first training camp, and I joined the national-team players as they prepared for the Algarve Cup, an annual tournament played in Portugal. Though I didn’t make the squad that traveled there, she nevertheless invited me to join the team in Chula Vista, California, where we would live and train for the 2000 Olympics.
I was excited. Less than a year ago, during the World Cup, I had hoped to be on the national team. And now I was in the player pool. I withdrew from school for the spring quarter, with Lesle and Amy’s support—even though I would miss spring practice and possibly the fall season if I made the Olympic team. They knew how important this was. Back in Richland, a rumor was going around that I had withdrawn from school because I was pregnant.
I was one of the youngest players of the thirty in that camp. I roomed with another young player, Aly Wagner, who was from Santa Clara and a year older. Aly was good friends with veteran Tiffeny Milbrett, so I got to know Millie a little. I was full of confidence coming into camp. I didn’t idolize the national team players. I just wanted to compete with them. But when I got to Chula Vista, I was hit in the face by what a big deal the team was. Reporters and television crews were hovering. Fans crowded outside the training camp fence. And the skill and confidence level of the top players was daunting.
In one of my first practices, Brandi Chastain turned around and barked at me, “That’s your ball.”
Oh fuck, I thought. Brandi Chastain is yelling at me.
Brandi was always yelling. She had made the winning penalty kick at the World Cup and had triggered a national debate about how women athletes should behave with her bra-baring celebration that made the cover of every newspaper and magazine in the country. She had posed nude in Gear magazine. Her teammates called her Hollywood, for her skill at grabbing the spotlight, and I could tell it wasn’t always a term of endearment. I liked Brandi, but she intimidated me. She had a lot of opinions and a lot of advice—whether you asked for them or not.
When we were on the road, I roomed with Brandi, but I rarely saw her. She was so busy, rising early, coming back to the room late, locking herself in the bathroom to talk on the phone to her husband while I sat on my bed and studied for my UW independent-study classes.
As much as Brandi talked and yelled on the field and off, Joy Fawcett was the real leader of the defense. She was the smartest defender I ever played behind. She was very even-keeled and didn’t try to intimidate the young players, as I felt Brandi did. I loved playing with Joy.
Michelle Akers had helped me get ready for camp. She was also from Washington, and she came out to UW and did drills with me after I got my camp invitation from April. When I arrived at camp, Michelle was my partner in fitness tests. I was honored and in awe of her. I knew that she suffered from chronic fatigue syndrome and that every physical activity was a challenge for her.
Julie Foudy was the team leader off the field. She would meet with the media; she was the team voice. The quietest veteran was Kristine Lilly. The other players were always trying to set her up on dates and give her a makeover—her hair was too big and bushy. The team’s most famous player, Mia Hamm, was also pretty quiet—that is, unless she wanted to get her point across. In one practice game, I was playing with Mia, and I ran out at the top of the box to punt the ball: it went straight up in the air. Mia stopped playing and looked at me. “Do you want me to fucking head the ball? Then you need to fucking learn how to drop-kick it.”
Oh God, I thought. Now Mia Hamm is yelling at me.
I stayed behind after practice that day to work on my drop-kick. If I was going to play at that level, I couldn’t rely every time on my booming punt—I needed to perfect a lower-trajectory dropkick.
The veterans clearly felt invincible. They were taking full advantage of the success they’d had the summer before. Around the time I joined the team, they had successfully negotiated a new contract from the U.S. Soccer Federation, putting them on equal footing with the men’s national team and gaining more control over things like their victory tour. They had just helped found a new league—the Women’s United Soccer Association—that was scheduled to debut in the spring of 2001. They had fought a lot of battles together. I was just a kid, an outsider, and was kept out of the inner circle. The veterans were making decisions for the group on things like the new league and our contract. They didn’t seem interested in the younger players’ opinions—they just told us what had been decided.
The enduring image of the team was of best friends who would have two fillings for each other, but I quickly learned that there were cliques and jealousies. For the younger players, it
felt like joining a sorority, as though we were going through some sort of initiation process. There was tension surrounding Michelle’s chronic-fatigue issues, which prevented her from practicing all the time. I figured she was a star and deserved accommodations: not every top-level athlete should be treated exactly the same.
I just wanted to compete. April had only a few months to figure out her goalkeeper situation. When I joined the team in Chula Vista, I was surprised to see that Briana Scurry—one of the heroines of the ’99 team—wasn’t in championship form. Her uniform was tight on her. She exhausted easily. She had gained significant weight and as a consequence was suffering from terrible shin splints.
In the aftermath of the World Cup, all the ’99 players were awash in new opportunities: they were shooting commercials, endorsing products, making appearances, basking in their new fame. Mia had written a book. Brandi was in a Nike commercial with basketball star Kevin Garnett. Bri made appearances. Everyone agreed that this was great exposure for women’s soccer, uncharted territory for women athletes. But Bri had relaxed a little too much. She had, by her own admission, gone home and celebrated. She was confident that she could get her form back quickly, but she couldn’t. Diving for balls, running sprints, doing fitness tests—I was kicking her ass. So were the other two relatively inexperienced goalkeepers, Siri Mullinix and Jen Branam. We were all outperforming the legendary Briana Scurry.
I was shocked. I didn’t understand how you could relax so close to the Olympics—risking missing out on one of the great opportunities in sport. “We have a problem in that we have four good goalkeepers,” April told reporters. “We have one with a wealth of experience and three with little experience. . . . Hope knows we don’t guarantee playing time. But, at the same time, I have confidence in her.”