by Hope Solo
Bob wanted to hear all about the Olympics. “You’ve got to bring me that gold medal—I want to see it,” he said.
“I’ll bring it next time,” I promised.
“I miss you,” he said giving me a long hug. “You have to come see me more often.”
As we left the house that day, Adrian’s father told his son something that was an echo of what my father had once told me. “Adrian, don’t lose this one. You two have to figure it out.”
But we hadn’t figured it out. I was seeing Jesse, Adrian was seeing someone else. We were never ready to commit.
I told Pia I had to leave the tour. I told Jesse I had to go to Adrian. “You need to do what you need to do,” Jesse said.
And what I needed to do was be with Adrian. I flew west for another funeral. I brought my gold medal, even though it was too late.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Unprofessional Professionals
The air was icy. I shivered as I glanced over at Kristine Lilly. We were standing on a New York City sidewalk on the Today show to promote the launch of the WPS, our new professional league. Why the producers picked us to promote the league, I’m not quite sure. But there we were, the longtime legend and the newly minted gold medalist making nice, with no one but the two of us aware of the tension.
We took the same car service to the set and didn’t speak a word to each other. Matt Lauer tried to put a soccer ball under Kristine’s belly to illustrate how pregnant she had been a few months earlier. Meredith Vieira asked about the 2008 Olympic gold medal performance. “It’s been quite a year,” I said, thinking back to the hellfire I had walked through just twelve months before. “It’s a perfect time to kickstart a new league.”
That was an overly optimistic statement. It really wasn’t a perfect time to start a new league. Or even a good time. The economy was bad and about to get a lot worse, but the WPS had already been postponed for the ’07 World Cup and the ’08 Olympics.
It was a strange launch, straight into the headwind of a recession. We had only seven teams, with the promise of an eighth. Some owners weren’t fully committed—AEG, a major player in Major League Soccer, only agreed to run the L.A. Sol short-term and was looking to sell. Some of the proposed teams, such as the one in Dallas, never materialized. The league’s goals were modest, and commissioner Tonya Antonucci didn’t make big pronouncements. Still, every story written about the league was slathered in a thick coat of skepticism—the WUSA had failed even with players like Mia Hamm, the economy was terrible, and the league had a low-budget feel. When the uniforms were unveiled—during New York’s Fashion Week, no less—the kits included a skirt-like wrap. The goalkeeper jerseys were hot pink, and the shorts were padded, the kind of gear parents might buy at the Sports Basement for their twelve-year-old daughter. The whole thing screamed girly marketing, as though Sepp Blatter—the FIFA president who once said women soccer players should wear tight shorts to get attention—was the mastermind.
“There’s no way in hell I’m wearing that,” I said when I saw the goalkeeper uniform.
That got me in trouble with league officials. I was dissing a product being pushed by Puma, the league’s only major sponsor. No one wanted to do anything that would upset Puma, including standing up for what was right. But our owner, Jeff Cooper, stood by me. He bought real goalkeeper jerseys—Puma brand—and had them fitted and numbered for us. The league was furious with him, but he wanted the players to be happy and feel professional. “Go ahead and fine me,” he said.
I loved playing for Jeff. He was the black sheep of the league because he said what he thought, because he argued, and because he stood up for his players. I felt incredibly loyal to him. I also became close friends with our general manager, Tim Owens, and his family, who made me feel at home in St. Louis. I liked our coach, Jorge Barcellos, who had coached Brazil at the Olympics. I had a terrific contract. I lived downtown—exactly where I was warned not to settle. It was gritty but interesting: I lived in a hip loft, met diverse types of people, and walked to St. Louis Cardinals baseball games. That year we had only four national-team games after the March Algarve Cup, so I had a lot of time to explore my new home.
We didn’t have a dominant personality who overwhelmed the team. Chups, Tina, and I were the national-team players on our team. Jill Loyden was my backup. We had an eclectic mix. I became close friends with Kia McNeill. Brazil’s Daniela—whom I’d played with in Sweden—was our best offensive player.
One of the best things was the growing friendship between Tina and me. I’d known her for years, first at UW and later with the national team. I was scarred by the fact that she had never stood up for me in China, but in St. Louis, we bonded. I got to know and love her daughters, Mackenzie and Mya—I became their aunt Hope. Tina and I started to work seriously on soccer together: she had embraced her switch to defense and wanted to be the best defender she could be. She asked me a lot of questions. We spent hours together on the field, working on defensive strategy.
That season we finally talked about what had happened at the 2007 World Cup. “When I think back on my life, I’ll always remember that,” she said. “Of you rocking back and forth and crying in that room and me thinking, No one deserves this. I just didn’t know what to do, Hope. It was awful.” We cried talking about it. Tina and I were a lot alike, both outsiders for different reasons.
“Hope, you’re a strong person,” Tina said. “You’re a truth-teller. People aren’t comfortable with that.”
The WPS officials sure didn’t seem comfortable with it. They seemed more concerned about pleasing Puma and twisting our schedule to get a TV contract than doing what was right on the field. I was happy in St. Louis, but I wasn’t happy with WPS: they kept saying they were the best in the world, but I’d played overseas. I’d seen how other leagues operated. The officiating was terrible, the uniforms were lame, and the disparity in pay was enormous. I wasn’t terribly optimistic about the future.
II.
The most important thing that happened to my soccer career in 2009 wasn’t the launch of the WPS. It was the arrival of Paul Rogers in my life. After the 2008 Olympics, Phil Wheddon left to become the women’s head coach at Syracuse. Paul was hired as our new goalkeeper coach and came to Portugal with us that March. He had worked at Florida State for my old Philadelphia Charge coach, Mark Krikorian, and FSU made it to the NCAA Final Four two years in a row. A really great goalkeeper coach is a rarity: I knew because I’d had dozens of them by then. Paul was English, arrogant, confident, and demanding. I loved him. He immediately told me I sucked. He told Nicole Barnhart the same thing. Who is this guy? I thought, looking at Barnie.
And then Paul set about correcting our bad habits. We broke down film—not just game footage but practice film. We examined tiny technical details like our balance, our first steps, the weight distribution in our feet, how far out our elbows were. It was the kind of intricate examination I’d never been exposed to before.
Barnie and I could see all our faults, right there on film. It wasn’t pleasant. Wow! I thought. We really do suck.
But then Paul set about building us back up. He worked at a different level than anyone who had ever coached me: he could spot little things, like balancing too much on my toes, or exactly at what spot in my dive my arms started to reach out. Barnie and I started to get better. I was thrilled. I had a gold medal, but I also had new goals. I knew there was so much more I could do, and I had finally found the coach who could take my work ethic and desire for instruction and push me harder than I had ever been pushed.
In that first tournament with Paul, I had three shutouts in the Algarve Cup, and was named the MVP. Later, when I was named U.S. Soccer female player of the year for 2009, I made sure that I thanked Paul “for helping me think about the position in a more sophisticated way, both technically and tactically.”
When I got back from Portugal, I told Jeff that Paul was the b
est goalkeeper coach I’d ever worked with, and Jeff hired him right away. Jeff wanted what was best for his players—all the more reason to be loyal to him.
III.
That spring we finally spread my dad’s ashes, close to the anniversary of his birthday. As a family, we hiked to waterfalls up near the Snoqualmie Pass that I always hated to drive alone. We all came: Marcus and Debbie, with Johnny in a backpack, Terry, Jeff, and their son Christian, Mom, and Adrian. We took turns carrying Johnny. We had Blue and Leo with us, and we hiked through the spring snow to a bridge over a swollen mountain stream.
In the months after my father died, we had learned more about him. Marcus had gone through his papers and requested his naval records. My father had been in the navy during the Lebanon crisis in 1958. A year later, he received an honorable discharge because he contracted tuberculosis; he was treated with chemotherapy, and received full disability. While he was on disability, he worked as a machine operator at the Department of Motor Vehicles in Dorchester, Massachusetts. There was proof that he had played semipro football in Massachusetts. When he was twenty-six, he requested a name change from Beyers to Solo. And then the trail stopped.
Why did he change his name? What was he doing in Massachusetts? Why was he so determined to keep his history a mystery? I was never going to know the answer.
We stopped at the wooden rail and poured the ashes—mixed with flower petals—down into the clear water of the Cascades runoff. We watched the petals float away to some unknown destination. “Thanks, Dad,” I whispered. “You made me who I am.”
IV.
My fears about the solvency of the new league were well-founded. Our season ended in the semifinals, with a loss to eventual champion Sky Blue, who beat the L.A. Sol—Marta’s team. The Sol had the best regular-season record, but a few months later had shut down operations. AEG hadn’t been able to find a buyer, and folded it up. All the Sol players entered a dispersal draft. Shannon Boxx ended up on our team, as did Japan’s Aya Miyama, who became a close friend of mine. Aya said she had heard a lot about me when she was with the Sol.
“Hope, you’re not what I expected,” Aya told me. “The players on the Sol described you in a way that doesn’t match how you really are.”
Just a few weeks into our second season, Jeff called a meeting. His business partners had defaulted on their contract to fund the team through the season, so Jeff told us he had no choice but to pull the plug. As of June 1, we were all free agents; my awesome three-year contract wasn’t going to be honored. I immediately signed with the Atlanta Beat, as did Tina, Chups, Aya, and a few of our other players. But I only played one game with Atlanta before leaving the country to go to the men’s World Cup in South Africa.
Kia and I traveled with Team Up, a program affiliated with the Right to Play organization, reaching out to young people in the slums of Soweto, using soccer as a bridge for HIV-prevention education. We went to villages, met kids, and played soccer with them. I loved laughing and joking with them as they tried to get a shot past me. I was overwhelmed by their excitement at receiving a simple T-shirt or one of the bracelets I’d brought to give away. I was inspired by these children who were so knowledgeable about the HIV virus and prevention and so determined to make a difference in their communities.
I had never been to a men’s World Cup. Over the years, I had become friendly with Landon Donovan—we had the same agent—and I knew several of the other players, including goalkeeper Tim Howard. I attended all three of the U.S. games in group play, and also saw Spain, South Africa, Argentina, and the Netherlands play—seven games in seven days. The atmosphere was unbelievable—I enjoyed meeting the locals, blowing the vuvuzelas (plastic horns), experiencing the international excitement. I saw why the World Cup was often called the world’s best sporting event, and I swore I’d never miss another.
But the games were only the second-best part of my trip. I’ve traveled the world playing soccer, but those moments with kids on the dirt fields in Soweto were among the most profound experiences I’ve ever had. I saw the full power of what a sport could do, how it could unite people and change the world. I asked the kids what they wanted to do when they grew up. Their dreams were very real and very specific. But one little girl said, “I don’t have any dreams.”
I hugged her. She broke my heart. By the end of our interaction, she told me that she did have a dream. “To teach everybody about safe sex,” she said.
I was proud of her for dreaming to make a difference in the world. On that trip, I realized that I—too—could make a difference.
V.
When I got back to Atlanta, our team still hadn’t won a game. I arrived in time to play in the All-Star game in Atlanta: I was on a team captained by Abby Wambach—she picked her roster, and Marta picked the other team. It was a fun day, but not much else about the league was fun as that second season wound down.
Our team was playing in Boston one night in August, and the people behind the net were being obnoxious. I was accustomed to being booed and heckled in visiting stadiums—there were always references to 2007 and Bri. I figured it was better for the women’s game if it wasn’t all ponytails and smiley faces. If people wanted to view me as a villain, I didn’t care. I actually liked the edginess it brought to my game, the knowledge that they viewed me as a threat.
But that night, the members of a Breakers fan club called the Riptide went way too far. The heckling became incredibly racist: they shouted taunts about “eating sushi” to my Japanese teammate, Aya, and yelled slurs in fake Japanese accents. They said horrible things to Kia and to Eniola Aluko, who was born in Nigeria. With only a couple of thousand people in attendance, the jeers echoed around the stadium and were impossible to ignore. It was ugly, and it made me sick. I was so pissed off that I left after the game without signing autographs. Later I went on Twitter and explained why I hadn’t stuck around, that a few fans had ruined it for everyone:
To all the Boston fans and especially the young children that I didn’t sign autographs for I’m sorry. I will not stand for . . .
an organization who can so blatantly disrespect the athletes that come to play. Perhaps the WPS or Boston themselves . . .
can finally take a stance to the profanity, racism and crude remarks that are made by their so called ‘fan club.’
To the true fans, I hope to catch you at the next game. Thanks for your support and love for the game.
MY COMMENTS CREATED an uproar. The Boston fans posted hateful things on soccer blogs and to my Twitter account. The Boston team denied that anything racist had taken place. It started to feel like a cover-up. I was accused of lying and being a prima donna who couldn’t handle heckling. But when a handful of Boston fans wrote letters to the team saying they had to walk out of the game with their children because the language and behavior was so inappropriate, an apology was sent to our team.
A week later our coach was fired and James Galanis was brought in as interim coach. The owner asked me for a recommendation, and the first person I thought of was James, whom I had met through Carli. He knew how to push me and when to back off. A few weeks later, we were playing the Washington Freedom. Both teams needed a win to get into the playoffs. It was the craziest officiating I’d ever seen: calls were changed for no reason and goals disallowed. We lost 1–0, a result completely gifted to Washington by the center ref, who appeared in awe of Abby. I thought she might ask Abby to autograph the red card she pulled out of her pocket to show one of our players. I couldn’t stand it. The league was a joke. The officiating, rather than getting better, seemed to be getting worse.
THAT NIGHT I vented on Twitter, willing to accept the standard $250 fine for criticizing officials:
It’s official, the refs are straight bad. Its clear the league wanted DC in playoffs. I have truly never seen anything like this. It’s sad. . . .
We play with 10, DC with 12 . . . I am done playing in a league where t
he game is no longer in control of the players.
Multiple choice question. Why did the refs call back our goal? Is it A) Free kick taken before the whistle B) Indirect not direct C) Offsides D) Foul
Those are all the reasons we heard so I think E is the only one that makes sense.
E) We just want Washington to win regardless.
Twitter gave me the ability to talk directly to fans. The WPS, which had encouraged players to tweet, didn’t love Twitter so much anymore.
League officials slapped me with a one-game suspension, eight hours of community service, and a $2,500 fine. When Tony DiCicco had ripped the officiating a year earlier, he was fined $200. When high-profile players like Kate Markgraf and Pearcie said things about the refs, they were barely disciplined. The league was acting out of desperation. It was clearly falling apart: its commissioner had just been forced out, and several teams were on the brink of shutting down. But don’t say anything’s wrong! Just smile and keep on playing!
The season was over. I didn’t know if there would be another one. But I had bigger concerns than whether the WPS was going to survive. My entire career was at risk.
V.
My right shoulder had been throbbing and aching for years, the result of more than a decade of abuse—hard landings on dives, bone-rattling contact with players and the turf. I was the Queen of Advil, but I refused to give in to the pain. After Portugal in 2009, I had an MRI because doctors suspected I had a torn ligament in my elbow. Turned out I did have an injured elbow, but the doctor was most concerned about my shoulder: he said it was disintegrating, that there was nothing holding it together.
“My shoulder is the least of my worries,” I told him. “I’ve been living with that pain for years.”
They told me surgery to repair my elbow would require twelve-months of recovery, so I decided not to have that operation because I wouldn’t be ready for the World Cup. So I just plodded ahead. My shoulder got worse and worse as the year progressed, until it was screaming at me with every dive and every block.