When Nobody Was Watching

by Carli Lloyd

  “They will be talking about you, Ms. Lloyd.”

  I want to believe him. I do believe him.

  I get off the phone and think about how I’ve gotten through every other disappointment and challenge in my career: By going back to work. By working when nobody is watching, and then working some more. You don’t back off. You don’t pay attention to negativity in your head. You refuse to give in. That is what’s going to set me free and get me fully engaged in this tournament.

  There are, potentially, four single-elimination games left in our World Cup. I replace the loop of self-criticism in my head with something different:

  It is not how you start that matters, it’s how you finish.

  I walk through the tunnel in Commonwealth Stadium before we take on Colombia in the round-of-sixteen, holding hands with a little kid in a bright yellow shirt and red shorts. My World Cup starts now. I am ready. You can see it plainly on my face, because I don’t do fake.

  1

  Beginnings

  FOURTEEN MILES EAST OF THE LIBERTY BELL, the small, blue-collar community of Delran, New Jersey, stretches along U.S. Route 130, a busy run of road with an abundance of diners, car lots, and chain restaurants, long on neon and short on charm. Its name comes from the first three letters of DEL-aware River and RAN-cocas Creek, both of which flow through the area on their way to Delaware Bay. If you want a quaint, moneyed town, there are a number of them to choose from in the area, but keep on driving because that is not Delran. My family has a modest neighborhood colonial that sits diagonally, on the corner of Black Baron Drive and Parry Road, offering a side yard that is big enough to practice free kicks. There is a curb out front and two parks just down the street, and I don’t need a whole lot more.

  From as early as I can remember, I am a kid in motion. I want to be active and to play sports, and I definitely do not mind taking risks. The kitchen counter isn’t just a place for my mother to prepare her flank steak or meat loaf—it’s a climbing platform. One time I scramble onto it and stand up, just to take in the view. I somehow get my eyelid caught on a cabinet door. Not an easy feat to pull off, but I do it. I slice up my eyelid enough that we have to go to the emergency room to get stitches. My eyelids have not gone near a cabinet door since.

  I keep pushing limits. In first or second grade, I take swimming lessons at the YMCA in nearby Moorestown. I’m not sure what stroke we are working on at the time, but during one lesson I get in over my head and drop below the surface. My mother sees my head disappear and springs out of the bleachers and dives in to get me. She is in street clothes, and she makes a quality save. I keep up with the lessons and get to be a good swimmer. I join a team and love competing in the meets, but diving into a cold pool first thing in the morning for training isn’t really my thing. I decide the chlorinated world isn’t for me.

  Just about every other sport, though, I am all over. The Philadelphia sports teams are just across the Delaware River, and I root for all of them. I love the Phillies’ slugging catcher, Darren Daulton, and want to wear number 10 because that’s the number he wears. I love Lenny Dykstra’s grit, and the edgy brilliance of the Sixers’ Allen Iverson, and the punishing power of the Flyers’ Eric Lindros. I don’t see the world through a prism of gender. I have zero interest in being a girlie girl. I don’t have a Barbie collection; I have baseball cards and Matchbox cars. As soon as my parents think I am old enough I become our lawn-care person. I love mowing the lawn because I want to be like my father. I hate it when my parents make me wear a dress or skirt to church or school. I want to wear sports clothes, clothing that will allow me to play in case a game breaks out someplace. For my school picture in fifth grade at Millbridge Elementary, I wear blue-and-purple overalls, with a blue-and-purple shark watch and my black-and-blue indoor soccer shoes. You will never find a ribbon or bow on me.

  Nor do I have one on the day I get in some big trouble at Millbridge. During recess a bunch of boys are heaving rocks across a blacktop parking lot at the back of the school grounds, aiming for a tree line on the other side. On the other side of the tree line are some houses. I am a shortstop. I can make the throw to first from deep in the hole, and I figure I have as good an arm as the rest of them, so I join in, firing a few rocks of my own. It isn’t the best idea, since airborne rocks on playgrounds rarely lead to anything good. I clear the blacktop easily with my tosses, an accomplishment that earns me my first and only trip to the principal’s office.

  Otherwise, I do a good job of staying out of trouble and not getting caught by the authorities. Mrs. Goodwin is one of my favorite teachers, and it’s good that I like her so much because I have her six different times in middle and high school. In American Literature class in eleventh grade, she turns away for a moment and something possesses me to throw a Nerd from the back of the class. The Nerd hits her in the shoulder. She’s the nicest person, but now she is ticked off, and you can’t blame her.

  “Who threw that?” she demands to know.

  I am terrified, already ridden with guilt. I do not cop to it; I am too afraid of the consequences. I don’t fully expunge my guilt until years later.

  “Remember when you got hit by the Nerd, Mrs. Goodwin?” I say. “That was me. I am sorry.” She laughs and accepts my confession.

  In high school, late one night, a bunch of friends pile into my car—actually my mother’s car, a Chrysler Town and Country minivan—and take a spin around the school track. We’re laughing all the way around and then go back to regulation roads with no Delran police cars in sight. That is it for my wild life of crime.

  Willfulness, however, has been a part of my makeup for a long time. I pick my battles and fight them with vigor. When my parents say no, it isn’t the end of the conversation—it’s the start of a debate. I love Fruity Pebbles and Fruit Rollups as a kid, but I am a seriously picky eater otherwise. I become very adept at the scoop-and-sneak technique. If my mother serves me food that isn’t acceptable, I wrap up the offending items—asparagus, beets, and my mother’s meat loaf are at the top of the list—into a napkin, excuse myself, and then go to the bathroom, where I flush the evidence down the toilet. (I am a very healthy eater these days and am appalled at much of what I did as a kid, but isn’t that what growing up is supposed to be about?)

  My parents, Steve and Pam Lloyd, work hard to provide for my brother, my sister, and me. Dad manages his machine shop, and Mom is a paralegal secretary. We are a long way from wealthy, but we have everything we need, and, limited means or not, my parents do everything they can to support all of us, especially my soccer. I play basketball and softball too, but from the time I start kicking a soccer ball at age five it is my favorite thing to do. One of the greatest thrills of my whole childhood is when my parents buy me my first pair of Copa soccer shoes. I am nine years old, and when I put them on for the first time I don’t feel like a kid imposter anymore. I feel legit. They are black leather, and they are my pride and joy. I clean them after every game and practice, meticulously applying leather conditioner. I want them to stay new-looking. I want them to last forever.

  I am that way with all my stuff. My room is purple, my favorite color, and always tidy. I dust the shelves and my trophies and plaques and make my bed, and I can’t stand having stuff strewn around on the floor. I keep my money in my piggybank and always know how much is in there. I keep careful track of my special blanket and my teddy bear. I lay out my clothes the night before school, and my uniform the night before games, with my autographed photo of former U.S. men’s team player Cobi Jones and a poster of Ronaldinho as my inspiration. By the time I am in eighth grade I am doing all my own laundry because I want to make sure my uniform is just so.

  I don’t like order. I love order.

  I am like that in all areas of my life. I am the queen of to-do lists. At my desk in school, the pencils are sharpened and lined up, the notebooks and textbooks and handouts neatly stacked. My soccer bag isn’t a jumble of water bottles and pre-wrap and stinky old shin guards. It is cl
ean and well organized, everything in its place, no fishing expeditions required. I have no idea that being a professional soccer player will ever be a career option—I think it would be cool to be an FBI agent—but even as a little girl I take soccer seriously. Nobody ever has to tell me to practice because it is all I want to do.

  The first team I play on is the Delran Dynamite. I am tiny and fast and play up front. Teaming up with my friends Kim and Michelle, we may not quite be dynamite, but we are pretty good. Michelle’s mom, Karen Thornton, is the coach, and my dad is the assistant coach. Mrs. Thornton does most of the talking and motivating. My dad is on the quiet side, which I appreciate, because you run across so many coaches who scream at referees and their players and act like complete jackasses. He likes to set up his chair by the corner flag. My dad is always there, and it is great that he is.

  Mrs. Thornton is an experienced coach who has been around sports her whole life. She teaches us and motivates us and exhorts us to have fun; she is positive without being smothering.

  “Carli internalized everything,” Mrs. Thornton says years later. “I only had to say something once and then she went out and did it. She was the first one at practice every time, with the ball under her arm, ready to go. She was never one of those kids who sang songs on the bench. She was there to play and play her best.”

  During one Dynamite game, we fall behind in the first half, and at halftime Mrs. Thornton pumps us up with her best Herb Brooks–type, “this moment is yours” speech. We are still behind with five minutes to play, trying our best in our gold-and-white uniforms, but not breaking through when Mrs. Thornton ramps up the urgency.

  “Somebody’s got to get one!” Mrs. Thornton says. Kim, our goalkeeper, makes a stop and rolls the ball out. I come back and get it. I dribble past one opponent, then another. I pass midfield and get into some open space, then elude another defender. Nearing the box, I beat the last defender who has a chance to stop me and bang a shot past the goalkeeper. On the sideline, Mrs. Thornton throws up her arms and shouts her delight. I am eleven years old at the time, and beyond ecstatic, not merely because I’ve scored a goal but because all the time and effort I’ve put into practice has paid off, a tangible reward for a thrill that will never get old.

  I don’t need a team or even a field to practice. How many times as a kid do I head out to Black Baron Drive with my soccer ball and tap the ball against the curb? A thousand? Ten thousand? I don’t know. I just know it’s a whole lot. I hit the ball again and again, trying hard to keep control even as it caroms back hard off the concrete. The cracks in the curb are my goalposts. I shoot righty. I shoot lefty. The asphalt isn’t good for the cover of my ball. The repetition is very good for my ball skills.

  When I need competition, my ball and I make the short trek through the neighborhood to Vermes Field, named for Peter Vermes, a former member of the U.S. Men’s National Team who is from Delran, or Don Deutsch Soccer Complex, named for a man who did as much as anyone to promote and grow youth soccer in Delran. I find lots of soccer balls that people have kicked into the woods and don’t mind scavenging for them. The more soccer balls I have, the more of them I can kick. There are always boys and men from the neighborhood playing at the fields. Many of them are Turkish. I hop in and play with them all the time. I love playing free soccer. I learn to solve problems on the field, figure things out, get comfortable with the ball on my foot against good competition.

  I don’t know it at the time, but this is the best thing I ever could’ve done for my development as a soccer player. There is so much to be gained from playing this sort of soccer, unconstrained by constant whistles and overzealous coaches hollering to do this and or do that. A good coach is indispensable, but for me the best way to learn is to be in the laboratory on my own, free to create and experiment, finding different ways to beat somebody off the dribble or tighten up my touches. Soccer has come a long way in the United States, but I believe our young players are overcoached, from too young an age. There is too much organization and not enough intuition and creativity. The more we encourage kids to just go out and play pickup games, the more they will love it and the faster they will improve.

  Competition, and wanting to get better, is what drives me, so I make the difficult decision to leave the Dynamite, a town team, for a nearby club team. Soccer starts to take over my life, in a good way. My role model is my first cousin, Jaime Bula, who is a star soccer, basketball, and softball player who gets a college scholarship. Jaime is five years older than me. I don’t have an older sister, but I don’t need one with Jaime in the family. She is who I want to be in life. I think, If I can ever be as good an athlete as Jaime, that would be a dream come true. She isn’t just a great athlete. She is a great person. Treats everybody the right way. She is as tough as she can be as a competitor, and as nice as she can be when the game is over. In college she suffers a devastating knee injury and grinds through a nine-month rehab process and makes it back for the start of the soccer season. She does it with total heart and perseverance. I am in awe of Jaime’s will and drive.

  It teaches me a wonderful lesson: there is no substitute for hard work. Talent is great. Who doesn’t want to have talent? But it’s the people who work the hardest and are committed to do the most with the talents they are given who are going to get places.

  I go after things the same way Jaime does, especially in school. I am not the world’s greatest student. Other kids often seem to pick things up more quickly, but I do all my work, and do it the best way I know how. The effort produces good grades, even though I remain insecure about myself as a student all the way through. When I take tests, whether multiple-choice or true/false, I tend to doubt my answers, and I agonize over whether I have gotten them right.

  Perfection is my goal, and that can work for you and against you. It’s great to have high standards, because I don’t think you ever get anywhere in life trying to be average or just good. On the other side, you can torment yourself along the way if you have impossibly high expectations. You can make the journey hard and joyless if you never allow yourself a few moments of contentment because you are pushing so hard to do even better. This is the line I walk constantly, and it’s thinner than the shoelaces of my Copas.

  “Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor, the enemy of the people,” the writer Anne Lamott once said. “It will keep you cramped and insane your whole life.”

  Even in soccer, as I move up in age and competition levels, there are doubts and insecurities. I make New Jersey’s Olympic Development Program (ODP) team, and then the ODP Region I team, made up of the top players from thirteen states.

  When I first get to the Region I camp, I size up the other players, especially the midfielders. There is Joanna Lohman, from Silver Spring, Maryland, and Sue Flamini, another Jersey girl from the town of Cranford. They are stud center mids. I watch them play and think, I will never be at their level. The next step after Region I is making a U.S. national team. No way I can see that happening with players such as Joanna and Sue around.

  Joanna goes on to a stellar career at Penn State, a three-time All-American who makes the U.S. Women’s National Team and now plays for the Washington Spirit in the National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL). Sue accepts a scholarship to the University of Tennessee and is now a big star as well, making national teams of her own.

  In Region I camp, I compare myself to them constantly. I stress about not measuring up to them. I wish that weren’t the case, but it is. I worry that I simply won’t be good enough and won’t keep advancing.

  When the U.S. women capture the World Cup in the Rose Bowl in 1999, beating China on penalty kicks, I am totally inspired. I attend one of their games before the final and bring the team poster I have and get the autographs of Kristine Lilly, Joy Fawcett, Julie Foudy, Carla Overbeck, and others. Seeing them reach the summit of the sport ratchets up my dream even more.

  Can you imagine what it would be like to play in the Olympics and win a gold medal? Can you ima
gine what it would be like to win a World Cup?

  It’s hard to wrap my head around it, but I try. I wonder if I will ever get anywhere near such accomplishments.

  You can do it if you keep getting better and work harder than everybody else, one voice inside me says.

  You’ve got no shot. You’re not even as good as Joanna Lohman and Sue Flamini, another voice says. And what about all the other great center mids in all the other regions around the country? Who are you kidding?

  But the first voice insists: If you work hard and keep believing, you have a chance.

  Why are you deluding yourself? the second voice answers.

  Like fencers on a strip, swords raised, the voices keep dueling. I worry about which voice will prevail. I know which one I want to listen to. I am a South Jersey girl, and I love soccer, and I want to keep playing at the highest level I can. I don’t know what level that is, but I resolve that I will keep going for it. I am going to channel my inner Jaime and think about all she did to get back from her knee injury. I put a lot into soccer and play all the time, but I know I can do more and work harder. It occurs to me that maybe being insecure is a good thing, because it means that you will never get complacent.

  Nobody understands this, or me, more than my boyfriend Brian. Brian is two years younger, but just one grade behind me in school. He lives in the same neighborhood, just a few blocks away from Vermes Field. His best friend lives next door to my aunt Patti, so when I am over there visiting I see him riding his dirt bike or hanging out. We get to be good friends, in an athletic, adolescent way, united by our mutual love of sports. Brian plays on the Delran High boys’ soccer team, but his best sport is golf. At the beginning of golf season, I find myself intrigued by the sport and show up at some of the practices and try my hand at it. Brian and I start spending more time together, and I find out from a friend of mine that he likes me. I like him too. It’s so easy to be with him. He is kind and thoughtful in a quiet, understated way, the opposite of the sort of guys who are always acting up and drawing attention to themselves. Brian is bravado-free, and it’s such a great quality. Our first night out together is a double date at the movies, at the Millside Theater on Route 130 in the heart of a Delran shopping center. I think we go to see a horror movie. I am scared by the movie, and happy to be with Brian.