by Hope Solo
April was going to cut twelve players before she named the final Olympic roster. She would keep two goalkeepers and make one an alternate. I felt I had a decent shot. I got my first start for the national team on April 5, 2000, against Iceland at Davidson College in North Carolina. The game was closed to the public. In a scheduling quirk, U.S. Soccer wanted back-to-back games with Iceland but felt it could only market one game, so the other was closed. At least I didn’t have to deal with the screaming throngs of Mia fans in my debut. A player from North Carolina who was on the Iceland roster lifted a ball right over me that could have been a disaster, but fortunately it bounced wide right of the goal. That was about the only threat. On offense, our team was ridiculously dominant, scoring 8 goals. I had my first appearance for the national team—known in soccer parlance as a cap—and my first shutout, even if no one saw it.
II.
The hotel in Portland was the nicest I’d ever been in. Security kept fans out of the lobby. It wasn’t just kids begging for autographs now. Professional autograph seekers were lined up trying to get signatures they would turn around and sell. Because I was wearing USA warm-ups, I was asked for my signature. But I knew I hadn’t done anything to earn the attention—I was just surfing in the wake of the ’99ers.
I was scheduled to play against Mexico in the Nike Cup on Cinco de Mayo. My family drove down from Washington for the game and attended a family dinner in a banquet room at the hotel. Well-dressed mothers and square-jawed fathers stood in groups and chatted about real estate and the Internet boom. My family stood out: Grandma Alice wearing her Hope shirt, my mother tasting every dessert and then asking for a doggie bag. They stood around awkwardly. Few of the other parents came up and introduced themselves. My family, I thought, does not fit in here. I fought the urge to hide.
For the game against Mexico, fans filled the stands at Portland’s Civic Stadium. I subbed for Siri in the second half, with a 4–0 lead. We were firmly in control, but in one sequence, Brandi let a ball through the back line, and I had to dive to make a save. Brandi turned around and yelled at me—“Come on, Hope!”—blaming me for not coming out for the ball.
It hadn’t been my mistake, but I didn’t argue. That was my mistake.
After the game, April called me in for a conversation about my status. She wanted to talk about the ball Brandi had missed, and our interaction. “That tells me that you’re not ready, Hope,” she said. “We all knew Brandi made a mistake. Yet you didn’t have the courage to call her out and yell back at her. You’re not ready to lead this defense.”
I knew then I wasn’t going to make the final cut. When the team went to Australia for a pre-Olympic tournament a few weeks later, I wasn’t on the traveling roster. I stayed behind in California to train. I was disappointed, but I understood April’s decision. I was gifted, competitive, fit, and determined. But I was still learning. I wasn’t polished. There was still a lot of work ahead of me.
After the final cutdowns, I went directly to the U-21 team. In Germany, a few days after my nineteenth birthday, we won the Nordic Cup.
Shortly after I was cut from the team, I received a letter from my dad.
Dear Baby Hope,
It is always so nice to hear from you, you make my day. I miss and love you. Well, Baby Hope, you are the greatest soccer player in the world! Pele comes second to you. Sorry you didn’t make the soccer team—that’s their fault. Now you get back to school—you lost a year. . . . You know you can hang with anyone in soccer now. We always knew Baby Hope was the best.
I have an idea, let’s have our own soccer team. You be the goalie. Cheryl will be our defender, she has bulldog in her. Marcus, Dave, and I will be strikers—we all have lead in our legs. Your mom will be a defender, she has bulldog too. She knows how to protect you in more ways than one. Teresa will be the cheerleader; she wouldn’t want to get dirty. Jeff can be a midfielder too and Christian has to play. When you are playing striker, Christian will be with you and you can set him up and he will score! Family team—wow.
I hope you don’t feel bad, Baby Hope. Just know you are loved and we all know you are the greatest. I miss you and don’t worry—you made our dream team in soccer.
Smile and be happy. Take care of your mom. Tell Marcus I love him.
Baby Hope, my thoughts and prayers are with you every day and night. I love you so much.
Dad
I laughed at the image my dad created—our family all playing soccer together. I knew he wanted me to remember who my lifelong teammates are.
As the Olympics drew closer, Michelle Akers retired. Based on the tension in camp between her and the other veterans, I suspected it wasn’t entirely her decision. And April made her choice on the goalkeeper: Siri Mullinix—fresh out of North Carolina—was named the starter over Bri. It was the most controversial decision April had to make, but Bri’s lack of fitness made it easier.
On September 28, I was back in Seattle when the United States lost in the Olympic final to Norway on a controversial goal in overtime. A shot bounced off a Norwegian player’s arm—normally, a play-stopping infraction—before she punched it in past Siri. The U.S. women had to settle for the silver medal. Bri admitted she was bitter over being benched. Later, she would tell reporters, “I personally still feel that if I was playing in the goal in the final we would have won it. I’m just a big-game player. When it’s on the line, I’ve been very successful.”
She was applauded for her fire and competitive drive.
III.
Back in Seattle, I felt like an outsider. While I’d been off pursuing my soccer dreams, college had gone on without me. My teammates had gotten closer to each other, bonding in the second half of freshman year. It seemed that a new social order had formed and everyone had been issued the organizational chart except me. Even Cheryl—now tight with our teammates Megan and Suz—had a personal life that didn’t include me. It hurt. I think some of the estrangement probably stemmed from jealousy. I knew other girls thought I was arrogant because of my national-team experience. I couldn’t even grab a clean T-shirt out of my drawer without hearing people talking about me behind my back. “Oh my God, she has to wear her national-team gear all the time. She thinks she’s so great.”
Wow, I thought. Be careful what you wish for. Once you reach a certain level, everything you do will be critiqued.
I didn’t feel like a different person. Through my experience with the national team, I’d been exposed to a lot, learned some lessons, and been challenged. I felt I’d grown up. But when I got back to school, I felt that I was behind and that everyone else had moved on without me. Even Cheryl. That was the most painful part. We were still like sisters—we always had been and always would be. Lesle and Amy still relied on Cheryl to find out what was going on with me in my personal life, but she had branched out and formed new relationships. I had new friends, too, like my teammate Malia Arrant, who was two years ahead of me. She and I were both tomboys, not interested in the sorority scene. But I was hurt by the growing distance between me and Cheryl. She wouldn’t tell me about certain things—a party she’d been to that I had missed. I know she was trying to protect my feelings, but it stung, because Cheryl was the one person I could always count on to tell me the truth.
I think Cheryl saw that soccer was becoming a career for me, and in many ways it was. I was working hard at it, and I was getting paid for my work. I suddenly had money—not just my college scholarship but per diem money from U.S. Soccer and grants from the U.S. Olympic Committee, which didn’t compromise my amateur status. I bought a Chevy Blazer, and now I could afford to go on spring break trips or snowboarding weekends like other UW kids. I felt rich, thanks to soccer.
Maybe Cheryl was right: I was more businesslike. I didn’t goof around and gossip as much as some of my teammates. I felt at the time that they didn’t take soccer as seriously as I did, didn’t view it as a potential career. Despite all that, w
e were functioning well as a team on the field. I started all twenty-one games for UW my sophomore year and set a school record for fewest goals allowed in a season. We won eighteen games and our first-ever Pac-10 championship, and made it all the way to the Sweet Sixteen of the NCAA Tournament. Lesle was named the Pac-10 Coach of the Year.
My father was still a fixture in the stands, one that by now everyone on the team accepted. Having unburdened myself to Lesle and Amy, I was less self-conscious about him. There even seemed to be a slight thawing in the relationship between the two sides of my family. Though my father remained ostracized by my other relatives, sometimes my mother would climb to the top of the stands and give him cookies or a cup of cocoa. She knew he was hungry. She understood that I needed my father in my life.
Once I got my own car, I gave him rides. He usually asked me to just drop him off by the side of the highway, near a freeway exit west of UW. But eventually he let me see the small tent that he lived in, deep in the woods. I learned that I needn’t have worried about running into him at the Union Gospel Men’s Shelter—he avoided the large homeless population downtown that filled the shelters, spilled out under freeway overpasses, and lined up outside the soup kitchens. Instead he survived on his monthly $67 social security check and by shoplifting at grocery stores. He said he preferred being out in the woods alone. Sometimes, after my games, I brought macaroni and cheese or picked up hero sandwiches and sat in a park with him, eating and talking about sports. I was finding I really enjoyed his company. I knew that I hated being judged by others, so I did my very best not to judge him but simply appreciate him. It wasn’t always easy, but I learned to embrace who he was.
My father’s behavior could still be troubling. Cheryl would sometimes give him a ride. Once, when Cheryl and I had to make a quick stop at our dorm, we left him in the car, and on our way back out, I saw him going through the console, pocketing her spare change. I was mortified, but Cheryl didn’t care. She figured it was the least she could do for him.
My dad doted on me and was interested in hearing about everything in my life—the national team, UW, my Husky teammates. In many ways we had a richer, more loving relationship than I had with my mother or brother. I became dependent on his advice and encouragement. The man who had been absent for so much of my life was now someone I relied upon. For better or for worse, he was family, and I was focusing on the “for better” part.
IV.
One day, my sister, Terry, showed up at my dorm. She was lugging a giant duffel bag and seemed almost hysterical. “Hope, you have to take this,” she said. “I don’t want it in my house.”
The bag was full of my father’s belongings, things he’d left at her house over the years. But now Terry was cutting my father out of her life and didn’t want any trace of him in her house. He had invited a woman over when Terry wasn’t home. So the next time he knocked on the door looking for a shower, Terry refused to let him in. At the time, my nephew was just a little boy, and Terry was concerned about protecting him. My father got upset and wrote her some threatening letters, saying that an “Italian vendetta” was on. After the second letter arrived, Terry called the police.
I was very angry. I thought she was overreacting, and I felt protective of him—his life was hard enough without his family turning on him. And now she had unloaded all of my father’s crap on me. I was living in a tiny dorm room with roommates, and I didn’t have any place to store his giant duffel.
But Terry was insistent. As she left, she warned me not to dare look in the bag.
I don’t like being arbitrarily told what to do. Of course I looked through the bag as soon as she left. There were some sweet mementos: my brother’s first home-run ball that he had given Dad the day he moved out of our house, a balsawood glider Marcus had painted for him, stones etched with portraits of my mom and Marcus, photos of me and Marcus, letters I had written him. But then there were also photo albums of naked women with disgusting letters that some of those women had written him. Many of them appeared to be prostitutes. It grossed me out, but I wasn’t going to abandon him.
IV.
In December, I rejoined the national team. We played Mexico in a game in Texas, and this time I subbed in the second half for Siri. I let in two goals, including one memorably bad one—I tried to clear a ball and miskicked it. I was too far out of the goal to get back to make the save, and Mexico took a 2–1 lead. Fortunately, Cindy Parlow scored twice later in the game to get us the win, but after the game I was still feeling a little shaky.
But April hadn’t given up on me. In January she named me to the traveling roster of a young team she was taking to China, for a two-game series with our longtime rivals. After my mishap against Mexico, I was determined to make a good impression. I was enjoying the trip. I felt that I got to know the veterans who were on the team, like Christie Pearce and Lorrie Fair. I was making some inroads and beginning to find a comfort level.
Early in the trip, April called me into her hotel room and told me to have a seat. I was very nervous. Was she going to tell me, again, that I wasn’t ready to start? “Hope,” she said. “I hear something is wrong with your father.”
My stomach flipped and my heart started pounding. I felt faint. I stood up to head toward the door and then sat back down—not wanting to be rude to April or hurt my standing with her but desperate to get away and call my mom. Did she mean Glenn or my dad? Had there been an accident?
“Your father,” April said, “has been accused of murder.”
PHOTOGRAPHS
With (clockwise from bottom left) Marcus, Dad, David, Terry, and Mom. My mother worked hard to make us all feel like a family.
July 30, 1981, the day I was born, with my mom and Marcus.
My father cradling his Baby Hope.
I idolized my dad, who I knew as Gerry—one of many names he went by.
I learned to walk by pulling myself up on Charlotte.
My dad and I forged an early connection through sports—he was my very first soccer coach, in Richland, Washington.
I was always a forward—and prolific goal scorer—on my youth and school teams.
Grandpa Pete was my father figure, standing by when I won Richland Homecoming Queen.
A rare family portrait at my high school graduation: Dad, Terry, me, Mom, and Marcus.
With Mom, Glenn, and Marcus in the kitchen on Hoxie.
Cheryl (left) and I weren’t angels—we definitely liked to party. Here we are in college with our friends Megan and Van.
Training with legend Briana Scurry in 2007 kept me focused: I needed to have my job on lockdown. (Julie Jacobson/Associated Press)
Despite my string of three 2007 World Cup shutouts, I was relegated to the bench against Brazil in the semifinal. I watched in horror as our team imploded. (Mark Ralston/AFP/Getty Images)
After I spoke up following Greg Ryan’s decision to bench me, the team treated me like a pariah and decided I couldn’t suit up for the “celebration tour.” (Kyle Ericson/Associated Press)
With Carli Lloyd, my best friend on the national team
and the one teammate who publicly supported me in 2007.
I’ve known Tina Ellertson since we were teammates at the University of Washington, but it was in St. Louis that we became friends for life.
My manager and partner in crime Whitney helped shepherd me through the post–World Cup craziness: here we are at the FIFA Ballon D’Or in Zurich, where I celebrated my Golden Glove Award as best goalkeeper in the World Cup.
CHAPTER SEVEN
“I Should Have Died a Long Time Ago . . .”
The day before I left for China, a grisly murder made headlines in Seattle. A forty-year-old real estate agent named Mike Emert was found dead in an upscale home for sale in Woodinville, an enclave northeast of the city. When the homeowner who had hired him returned, she found Emert’s body face down in an upstairs bathtub with th
e water still running. He had been stabbed more than twenty times and, judging by the trail of blood leading up the stairs, had been dragged from the lower floor up into the bathroom.
By nightfall, police had identified my father as a “person of interest” and had taken him into custody for questioning. I didn’t know it, but the night before our team left town, a detective knocked on Lesle’s door and asked for my address. He told her my father was implicated in a murder case. Lesle was shocked—she had gotten to know my dad a little, and she couldn’t believe the accusation, but her main concern was for me; she stalled the detective, telling him I was out of the country even though I wasn’t leaving until the next morning. Police called my mother’s home in Richland. They tracked down Marcus. They were on the hunt for any information they could find.
Of all the members of our family, I had had the most regular contact with my father, but I was six thousand miles away. Lesle and Amy were worried that either the police or the media would track me down in China, or that I would randomly find out—one of my teammates had a sister who was a Seattle cop. My coaches and family were eager to protect me as much as possible. Lesle called the team’s sports psychologist, who was with us in China, and explained the situation.
“Don’t tell Hope,” Lesle told her. “She doesn’t need to know about this until she gets home. We’re trying to keep it quiet on campus. But she might find out somehow, and I want you to be aware.”