by Hope Solo
He made me comfortable. He didn’t pass judgment—not on my family or my background or my father. He had his own rocky past and complicated family matters. He’d grown up in West Seattle, also from a broken home. Though his parents eventually reconciled, his father had been physical with his mother when Adrian was young, which made him protective of the women in his life. For a time, he and his mother were homeless, moving from vacant room to vacant room in the hotel where his mother worked as a maid. As a kid, he had taken a swing at his vice principal, and had been in and out of reform schools. But he was resilient.
When my father met Adrian, they had an immediate connection, a recognition of mutual street smarts. My dad tested him, tried to get Adrian to do him favors like cash his check or give him a ride somewhere. Adrian called him on his bullshit, and a respect developed. They talked sports and joked around.
For a long, long time Adrian and I insisted—to outsiders and to each other—that we were just friends. We were strongly attracted to each other, but we were in denial about it, both so wrapped up with our own lives and busy schedules. We were afraid to commit, pushing each other away every time we got too close, establishing a pattern that would last for years.
II.
In 2001, before my junior year of college, I was named to the preseason list of candidates for the Hermann Trophy, the award given to the nation’s outstanding collegiate soccer player. Just making the list was an honor—goalkeepers were rarely considered for the award. Lesle made sure that everyone—on our team, at UW, and on the outside—knew that the nomination was a testament to how important I was to the Huskies.
The season before, UW had won its first-ever Pac-10 conference championship. Eight of our games had been decided by one goal, and five of those were shutouts. That team had been special, a blue-collar group. We had great senior leadership in Malia Arrant, Theresa Wagner, and Tami Bennett. I looked up to those upperclassmen and followed their lead. I may have stopped a lot of shots, but it was a collaborative effort. We finished the season ranked number three in the nation. UW soccer was on the map, and I had helped put it there. That was a great feeling.
Also on the Hermann Trophy list was my good friend Aly Wagner and a relatively unknown player named Abby Wambach from the University of Florida. Abby was a year older than me but hadn’t yet been in the national-team pool. She was a raw, powerful player whose first significant national-team play was in the Nordic Cup in 2001 with our under-twenty-one team. Our coach, Jerry Smith, Brandi Chastain’s husband, picked her. I didn’t know much about Abby before training camp for the Nordic Cup, where we were roommates. She was rough around the edges but had great athleticism. At the Nordic Cup, she made an instant impact, scoring three goals but also drawing two yellow cards, which forced her to sit out our championship victory over Sweden. That was Abby in a nutshell: great ability combined with a power and force rarely seen in women’s soccer. She sometimes ran right through opponents and intimidated them with her strength.
That September, Abby and I were among April’s call-ups for the Nike U.S. Women’s Cup training camp. The team was a blend of veterans, who had just finished their inaugural WUSA season, and young players. Five of us were interrupting our college seasons to play for the national team: a sign that the national team was serious about targeting the next generation of players and giving us meaningful playing time. I felt a bond with those other collegiate players who were being pulled out of school to play for the national team. Unlike my UW teammates, they lived the same dual life I did and understood the aspects of college life that we surrendered—the football games and parties and the ability to make weekend plans. Like me, they were packing up textbooks along with their cleats, saying good-bye to boyfriends and best friends, again and again. For us, soccer wasn’t just a fun pastime. It was also our job.
I’d been in camp a few weeks when I tore my right groin in training. I flew home immediately to start my rehabilitation. I’d already missed two UW games and wanted to be ready to play for the Huskies for the rest of my junior year. Doctors told me the injury would keep me out for three weeks, but I didn’t miss a game. It was the first significant injury I had suffered during college, the first time I had a Toradol shot to combat the pain. But I didn’t want to miss any more UW games. I taped up the injury and played out the rest of the season, even though I was unable to kick with my right foot. The good news was that I found out I had a pretty decent left foot.
Despite my limited mobility, I had another good season. I made sixty-eight saves and helped the Huskies to a 12–4–1 record, second place in our conference. We were a good team, with a talented freshman class and more top recruits in the pipeline. One of our new players was Tina Frimpong, who had been a Washington high school sensation, one year behind me. Though Lesle had recruited Tina hard, she committed to Santa Clara. When she became pregnant at eighteen, Santa Clara was no longer an option, and she opted for UW, closer to her hometown of Vancouver, Washington. She missed the 2000 season and her daughter MacKenzie was born in March 2001; six months later, Tina was playing for us. MacKenzie’s dad, Brad Ellertson, transferred to UW from Washington State, and they were working hard to be a family. I had so much respect for the way Tina was juggling her life to keep playing soccer despite the difficulties. We weren’t particularly close then; I never could have predicted that a decade later she would be one of the most important people in my life.
Our team lost in the second round of the NCAA tournament that year, bounced yet again by Christine Sinclair and Portland. I didn’t win the Hermann Trophy, but I got a consolation prize: I was named the Pac-10 player of the year, the first Washington player to receive the award and the first-ever goalkeeper.
III.
In February of my junior year, the U-21 national team was in Chihuahua, Mexico, playing against Mexico’s senior team. Their star, Maribel Dominguez, took a free kick with ten minutes to play in a scoreless game. She sailed the ball toward the far post, and as I dove to block it, I hit the post and felt myself get caught on something. As the ball went into the net, my body lurched in a circle, still attached to the pole, and I thudded to the ground.
My teammates were shouting, “Get up, Hope! Get up!” They were running into the goal to get the ball—eager to tie the game—while I lay motionless, unable to move. Something was terribly wrong. I looked down to make sure my arm was still there because I couldn’t feel it—was it still dangling from the post? The arm was there and I didn’t see anything wrong. There wasn’t any blood. There was no tear in the jersey. When I lifted up my jersey sleeve I gasped. A hole gaped in my forearm; the muscle and tendons were hanging out. I could see the yellow of the fat, the white of my bone, the maroon rippled texture of the muscle. My forearm had gotten caught on a hook on the inside of the goalpost and had been ripped wide open. I panicked, fearing that the insides of my arm were going to fall out. I took my filthy goalkeeper glove and covered the hole and sprinted off the field, with my defender, Natalie Spilger, running along beside me, screaming. On the sideline, my goalkeeper coach took one look at my arm and had to sit down. I turned paper white and went into shock.
Our team doctor went with me to a nearby hospital, where she made sure everything was disinfected and safe, then stitched up the jagged gash. It was hideous—my arm looked like a Frankenstein body part, connected to the rest of me by giant stitches.
That night in my hotel room, I couldn’t sleep. My forearm was throbbing with pain, the sutures oozing. I couldn’t feel my fingers and remembered the medical staff’s concern about nerve damage. Would I ever be able to use my arm again? I started to panic. It was hard to breathe. What if my career was over? What would I do with my life? Could a rusty hook on a Mexican goalpost end all that? If I couldn’t play, who was I?
I needed to escape the weight I felt on my chest, so I slid out of bed, down to the floor, as I had when I was a little girl saying my prayers for Grandma Alice. And down there on the co
ol tile floor in Mexico, I felt a sense of calm come over me. My inner confidence, the flame that I could always turn up on the soccer field, flared inside me. There was more to me than just being a soccer player. I had made myself into a great player. I could make myself into something else if I needed to. I had other talents. Even without soccer, I could make my way in the world.
I breathed in the earthy smell of the clay tile. “Hope,” I said loud enough to wake up my roommate, “you’re going to be OK.”
IV.
My dad’s new home at Hilltop was conveniently located near downtown Seattle, so I started to use it as my crash pad. In 2002, during my last full year at UW, I juggled international trips to Portugal for the Algarve Cup and to Iceland for another Nordic Cup championship. My arm healed and, aside from a nasty purple scar, was as good as new. I crammed through my classes to make sure I would graduate on time. And I earned money by coaching youth goalkeepers. Sleep was at a premium, so whenever I could, I went to see my dad. He’d make me some instant ramen noodles or fried rice and let me nap.
Free from the worry of whether he had enough to eat or where he was sleeping, my father was becoming the devoted father Marcus and I had always longed for. He now wanted to make sure we had enough to eat. Mark took him shopping and taught him how to pick good produce. My dad learned how to stretch what money he had—for example, by making sure a box of Satsuma oranges had some oranges he had “borrowed” from another box. He wrote letters and called to tell us how much he loved us. Marcus had season tickets to the Seattle Seahawks, and when he went to games, Dad would babysit Marcus’s golden retriever, Henry. He loved that dog—they would go to a park, and Henry would try to chase the squirrels, pulling my dad on the leash. “Just ignore them, Henry,” my dad would plead, talking to the dog the way he once talked to squirrels he lived with in the woods.
My father delighted in my accomplishments.
May 10, 2002
Well, Baby Hope, you threw out the first pitch at the Seattle Mariners and Boston Red Sox game, on this Friday night, a packed house.
You got your sign from the catcher, Ben Davis, and you shook him off. You wanted to throw your fastball, catcher laughed, you laughed, the crowd was going wild as you shook him off.
Now you are ready and you wind up and throw your fastball, it bounces up to the plate. Crowd goes ooooh and you put both hands up to wave to the crowd. They love you, Baby Hope.
So many memories and joy you have given your family. Thanks, you are the greatest. Love you,
Dad
V.
Lesle tried to schedule spring games in players’ hometowns when possible. That was exciting when a team member was from California or Hawaii. But nobody wanted to go to Richland, except Cheryl and me. In March of my junior year, I got to go home. It was windy and cold, and tumbleweeds blew across the street. Our teammates laughed—many were from pretty suburbs in California or Colorado, and they couldn’t get over how desolate and unsophisticated Richland was. Hanford had been declared one of the most toxic sites in America, which didn’t make it more appealing. Whatever. I might be living in hip Seattle and running around the globe to play soccer, but that Columbia riverbank dust is in my soul.
My whole family came to the game, including my mother. And I was so proud to see her. After several attempts, my mom stopped drinking on Halloween of 2000. She had tried quitting on her own, then in an outpatient rehab, but nothing lasted. But when she started attending Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, she stopped cold turkey. She was adjusting to her new life: she and Glenn had lost a lot of their hard-partying river friends. We stopped attending traditional annual events, like a big New Year’s party. My grandparents made sure not to drink when Mom was around—and they loved their evening martini. Glenn stopped social drinking. Everyone supported her, and I started to see a real change in her. She seemed so much happier.
“Mom,” I said, giving her a hug when we came to Richland. “I am so proud of you.”
I had to laugh when Mr. Potter, the Richland athletic director—the same guy who had kicked me off the basketball team—came up to greet me with an embrace. I stiffened. “Don’t act like you were a part of this, Mr. Potter,” I said. I wasn’t going to be a phony just to let him feel important.
VI.
Lesle believed our team would become stronger by being tested in tough nonconference games. We usually played powerhouses like Portland and Santa Clara. In my senior year, though, she outdid herself: she scheduled us in the Carolina Classic tournament in September, playing Duke and North Carolina. Those were two of the top teams in the country, but we were making our mark nationally: ranked number eleven to start the season. We lost both Carolina Classic games; I missed them both because I was with the national team for a game against Scotland in Columbus, Ohio. I got the start, and was replaced by Bri in the second half. Abby didn’t start but came off the bench to score a hat trick (three goals in one game)—probably the moment she became indispensable to the national team.
I didn’t know it, but that was the last game I would play for the national team for the next two and a half years. April was still encouraging and supportive, but Bri had regained her form and, having learned the hard way, was determined not to let go of the starting spot again.
I wanted to make the most of my senior year at UW. Our team had partied too much the year before, and the seniors decided to have a “dry” season. I didn’t think it was a good idea—I didn’t feel like policing the younger players, and I knew the rule would definitely get broken. Hell, we broke it ourselves—with senior-only parties in which we were sworn to secrecy about drinking. Not surprisingly, the younger players broke the rule too. The new players were struggling to balance the partying side of college with the hard work of soccer. I felt they were out of control, lacking focus and commitment. Still, the “dry” rule that everyone was ignoring became too big a distraction—too much energy and time went into trying to figure out how to handle violations.
It wasn’t where our attention needed to be. On the field, our team was struggling. Our ambitious schedule hurt us: we lost eight games, seven to ranked opponents. We had a lot of talent, but everyone seemed to be pointing fingers rather than scoring goals. I was a captain, but I felt ineffective. I had one foot in the national-team camp and couldn’t give the UW issues my complete attention. And I was frustrated by what I saw. In one team meeting, a freshman started to argue with Lesle about a formation she was implementing. I stood up. “This isn’t fucking high school,” I shouted. “Why don’t you listen to someone who knows about the game?”
I stormed out. It wasn’t an appropriate reaction for a senior captain, but I resented having a know-it-all freshman take over the meeting. When I had been a younger player, I looked up to our juniors and seniors. But now our team seemed irreparably broken. When we lost to UCLA in our final home weekend, I was disappointed. My senior season hadn’t gone as I had hoped. No happy ending.
Lesle gave me a hug after the game. “I’m glad you have Adrian,” she said. “I know you need someone to lean on away from the team.”
When selections were made for the NCAA postseason tournament, UW was left out. The selection committee didn’t consider our strength of schedule. They just saw all the losses. Portland, led by Christine Sinclair, won the national championship. I ended my career at UW with every school goalkeeper record, including my eighteen shutouts, 325 saves, and a goals-against average of 1.02. But statistics never mattered to me. The important thing was that—finally—I had learned to become a goalkeeper.
Not long after I first put on the purple UW jersey—choosing number 18 so that I could keep my options with a number a field player would wear—my goalkeeper coach, Amy, handed me a note that said, “A goalkeeper cannot win a game. A goalkeeper saves it.” I made those words my computer screen-saver.
In high school, I had been the forward who won games. It was a huge mental adjustment to le
arn that my job was to save games. To be patient in goal. To anticipate what was needed. Amy taught me the nuances of being a goalkeeper. Before, I would stand in goal, the ball would come toward me, and I’d use my athletic ability to make the save. But thanks to Amy’s tutelage and my time with the national team, I was becoming a much better tactical goalkeeper. I learned how to read my opponents’ runs toward goal, how to position my defenders, how to see the angles. I learned when to come off my line and when to stay back, how to start a counterattack, how to anticipate and predict what was happening in front of me.
Amy—all five foot four of her—had to know the game to compete as a goalkeeper on the national team. She taught me that side and how to incorporate it with my athleticism. The intellectual side also made goalkeeping so much more interesting. It wasn’t just ninety minutes of waiting for my defense to make a mistake. It was ninety minutes of tactics and strategy. The personality traits that had been shaped by my childhood—resilience and toughness—were assets at the position.
It had taken eight years, but I was finally a real goalkeeper.
VII.
In February of my senior year, Adrian and I flew to Atlanta for the WUSA draft. The professional league was starting its third season, and I was among the top players in the country, invited to attend the draft in person. I had already chosen an agent, Richard Motzkin, who represented high-profile players on the men’s side, such as Landon Donovan and Alexi Lalas. And I had a deal in the works with Nike.
I knew I would have to leave my West Coast comfort zone to play in the WUSA. As expected, my friend Aly Wagner, who played at Santa Clara, was the first pick, going to San Diego. I knew the next three teams choosing were all on the East Coast. Christie Welsh went to New York with the second pick. The buzz in the draft room was that Boston—with a new coach Pia Sundhage—would select me with the third pick. But the Breakers took another player from Santa Clara, Devvyn Hawkins. My name was called on the fourth pick—I was going to play for the Philadelphia Charge. Philadelphia, Boston—it was all the same to me. I would have to move to the other side of the country. Away from my family, and away from Adrian.