by Carli Lloyd
Ultimately, I say no to Coach Izzo-Brown—one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do—to stay in New Jersey and go to Rutgers and play for Coach Glenn Crooks.
It couldn’t go much better at the start at Rutgers, where I bond instantly with two of my favorite all-time teammates, Christine Wentzler and Tara Froehlich. We live together in a dormitory called Stonier Hall, an unsightly brick box with a splendid location in the heart of campus, and we remain roommates for three years in off-campus housing. Christine, Tara, and I are inseparable—except for when they patronize Rutgers’s famous Grease Trucks. These are a string of lunch wagons on College Avenue that serve so-called Fat Sandwiches—sub rolls stuffed with burgers, chicken fingers, French fries, mozzarella sticks, bacon, and more, all thrown in together.
I eat one Fat Sandwich, get sick, and never have another.
The results on the soccer field are far more appetizing. We have a strong season in the Big East and get an at-large bid to the NCAA tournament, only the second in school history. We trounce Boston University in the first round and then upset number twenty-two Princeton in the second, advancing to a round-of-sixteen against perennial heavyweight North Carolina, which is 21-0 and gunning for its customary national championship. Even though we are playing on Carolina’s home field, we give the team one of its toughest tests of the season, going up a goal in the first half before losing 2–1. We finish the season 14-8-1, and I am named All-American and Big East Rookie of the Year after setting a school record with fifteen goals and seven assists. But the bigger development for me comes when Glenn Crooks talks to Jerry Smith, the coach of Santa Clara, the reigning NCAA champion, and the newly installed coach of the U-21 national team.
“You need to take a good look at Carli Lloyd,” Crooks tells Smith, underscoring how good a freshman year I’d had.
So Jerry Smith calls and invites me to camp. It is 2002 in Chula Vista, California, and it is terrifying. The team is loaded with big-name, big-time players such as Aly Wagner, Nandi Pryce, and Cat Whitehill, along with a goalkeeper from the Pacific Northwest named Hope Solo. It is the first time I meet Hope, and she is totally intimidating to me. She is strong and tough and has this air about her that she just might be in your face if you disagree with her about something or look at her the wrong way.
I do my best to only look at her the right way.
As scary as these players are to me, I caution myself to leave those feelings in the locker room. I know they won’t do a thing for me on the pitch.
It works out.
“When players come into their first camp, there are certain things I am looking for—a mentality as much as anything,” Smith says. “Everybody on a national team is a good athlete and most of them are skillful. What determines whether you are going to make it is the mental side, and that is what impressed me about Carli from day one.
“She played with a confidence that said, ‘I have no fear. I don’t have fear of success, and I don’t have fear of failure. I can do whatever you want me to do. Now let’s go.’ After I watched Carli in her first full day, I said to myself, Holy smokes, this kid just got here, and she isn’t afraid of anything or anyone. She’s taking people on. She’s attacking the goal. She might just be the best player here.”
I have a bunch of things to work on, I know that. I am not the hardest-working player in the camp. I also have defensive deficiencies, mostly because all my coaches have just wanted me to sit in underneath the forwards, go on the attack, and let other players worry about it when the opponent has possession. But put the ball on my foot and point me toward the attacking third and watch me go. Jerry loves that defiance, and he tells the people at U.S. Soccer that I am somebody they need to invest in.
“Carli Lloyd isn’t a finished product, but she’s got stuff you can’t teach,” Jerry tells them. “This is a player we have to develop.”
The mission of the U-21s is twofold. One is to work as a feeder for the full national team, and the other is to win the biggest international tournament of the year in that age group, the Nordic Cup, which is contested in northern Europe every summer. I make my first international trip for the United States, to Finland, in late July 2002, and though I don’t get a ton of playing time, it is exhilarating to be part of a championship effort as we knock off Germany in the final. It is a significant step up the ladder for me, and when Jerry turns the U-21s over to Chris Petrucelli, then the women’s coach at the University of Texas, I expect to climb a couple of more rungs.
Except that it doesn’t happen that way. It’s January 2003, and though I am coming off a second consecutive All-American year at Rutgers, I don’t seem to be impressing my new coach when we have the first of our monthly camps in preparation for the Nordic Cup. He is on me constantly about my defense and isn’t thrilled with my fitness level either.
I don’t know what this guy’s problem is, I think. Every other coach I’ve ever had has appreciated what I can do, and this guy only talks about what I can’t do.
We move into March and then April, and I am not sure where I stand. The fearlessness that so impressed Jerry Smith has given way to doubts about where I fit in the scheme of the new regime. When we do drills, I know I am as good as or better than most everyone with my technical skill, and I can shoot from distance with anybody. I am scoring goals, but am I scoring any points with Chris Petrucelli?
At the close of the April camp, Chris is ready to name a roster of the players he is taking to Brazil for a pre–Nordic Cup tournament. He schedules meetings with every player. When it’s my turn, we sit down in the lobby of the hotel where we are staying. It is handsomely appointed in spotless earth tones. People are milling about, doing what people do in lobbies, checking in, checking out. I am oblivious to all of it. My entire focus is on my coach and the report card he is about to issue. I believe in my heart that I should go to Brazil, but I don’t know what to expect.
I brace myself for Chris Petrucelli’s words. He starts to talk.
“You’ve done okay in our camps, Carli, but the truth is that you are not performing to the level of a national team player,” Chris Petrucelli says. “It’s not a lack of talent; you have plenty of talent. It comes down to a lack of effort—to your tendency to take time off during the flow of play, to not doing the work we need you to do defensively.
“In my role as the U-21 coach, they want me to develop the players we have to the point where I can say, ‘I recommend this player for the national team.’ And the simple fact is that you have not put yourself in a position where I can say that.”
Chris Petrucelli finishes by telling me that I will not be making the trip to Brazil, or to the Nordic Cup.
He stands up, as if to signal the meeting is complete. I stand up too. I remember nothing else. I am in a daze. It is by far the most stinging evaluation I have ever received in my soccer career. Somehow I manage to avoid breaking down in front of him—I am not sure how—and slowly walk away. I honestly don’t recall uttering an insincere “thank you,” or wishing him a great day, or saying anything at all. I am so numb from this face slap that I can’t even think.
I get back to my room and call my parents. They can barely hear me between the sobs.
“Chris Petrucelli just cut me from the U-21s. He says I’m not a national team player,” I tell them.
My parents do their best to comfort me, they really do, but I can’t take in any of it.
“I don’t know if I want to keep doing this national team thing,” I tell them. “It’s not going anywhere. The players here are so good. The coach just finished telling me I’m not at that level. Maybe it’s time to come home and just play out my final year at Rutgers and be done with it.”
I fly home to New Jersey. I am sure I will never wear a USA jersey again.
Chris Petrucelli’s rebuke is still singed into my psyche days before the U-21 team is about to leave for Denmark and the 2003 Nordic Cup. It feels really crappy to think about how I went to Finland with Jerry Smith’s team a year ago and now here I am ly
ing in my bedroom in Delran a year later, looking at my Ronaldinho poster and wondering how things got so fouled up. I haven’t been with the U-21s for a couple of months. I have no idea what my soccer future is. I am at a crossroads, a midfielder in a muddle, and the more I think about it, the more I am convinced that it is time to give up the chase. As I told my parents, I will play my senior year at Rutgers, get a degree, and try to find a job. I mean, what’s the point of putting in all the work on the field when clearly U.S. Soccer doesn’t think I’m good enough?
If I can’t stick with the U-21 team, how am I ever going to make the full national team? This is my belief, and don’t try to talk me out of it. You’ve got no shot.
As I try to sort it all out, I find out that the U-21s are looking for a friendly game before they leave and have made arrangements to play a top Jersey club team that I sometimes play for. I am going to get to play against the coach who just told me I wasn’t national team material.
Do payback opportunities get any better?
I figure I am on my way out of the U.S. Soccer orbit, but I don’t mind leaving behind a few reminders of what might’ve been.
I don’t have anything personal against Chris Petrucelli, not at all. I just want to show him that there’s more to my game than he thinks. I don’t work hard? I can’t defend? I’m not national team–worthy?
I am all over the place in the friendly against my former team. I win fifty-fifty balls. I tackle hard. I go on the attack and generate threats. I don’t remember the score, but I do remember that I bring it the whole game.
“Carli was a different player. Her overall commitment to playing the game was way different that night,” Chris says.
The next day I get a call from the man who ripped my heart out, Chris Petrucelli. Kelly Wilson, an All-American forward for the University of Texas who had already played, and scored, for the full U.S. Women’s National Team, suffered an injury in the friendly and won’t be able to compete in the Nordic Cup.
“We need another player. Would you like to take the spot?” Chris asks.
“Yes, thank you,” I say. “When do we leave?”
In the opening game, against host Denmark in the medieval city of Randers, Chris calls for me in the eightieth minute with the game still scoreless. We have been dominating, but the Danish goalie, Heidi Johansen, keeps coming up with huge saves. She is the keeper on the full Danish national team, and it isn’t hard to see why. We finish the game with twenty-five shots, Denmark with three. The trouble is, we are not finishing them. The scoreboard says the game is tied, and that is all that matters.
“If you get a chance, go ahead and knock one,” Chris says.
Almost instantly I get a chance, carving out enough space to drive a shot from the top of the box. Johansen knocks it down, and my teammate Lindsay Tarpley, the North Carolina star and national College Player of the Year, pounces on the rebound but knocks it just wide.
We keep pushing the attack. Seven minutes later, I beat a Danish defender and pound another shot, this time from twenty-five yards out. Johansen tracks it well, but the ball has too much pace to catch, so she deflects it away. Tarpley, again, is on the doorstep, picks up the rebound, and buries it. In just seven minutes, I have contributed two big scoring chances, the second of them an assist on the game-winner. It is something to build on, I hope.
We go on to beat Iceland, tie Norway, and come from behind on two goals by Joanna Lohman, our captain, to beat Sweden for our sixth Nordic Cup title in seven years. I am thrilled to be on the winning side, but frustrated that I play a total of only sixty-five minutes in the tournament. Being a late injury replacement, I realistically could not have expected more, but I head home full of more doubts than ever about where this is going. I am twenty-one years old. I am no better than a fringe member of the U-21 team, even though I’ve just been part of another Nordic Cup championship.
That is the truth. Why pretend otherwise?
I spend the rest of the summer training with the Philadelphia Charge of the Women’s United Soccer Association (WUSA), thinking that this could be an option after I graduate.
I love to play soccer, and if the U.S. national team doesn’t want me, maybe I will just play pro soccer, I think.
Then, in September, the entire league folds.
It feels as if doors are closing all over the place, and then things get even worse. Brian and I are out one night when he tells me, “I think we should stop seeing each other for a while.”
My insides instantly go cold and numb. I briefly consider the idea that he might be kidding, but then I look into his eyes and realize quickly that he is not kidding at all.
Shocked? I am beyond shocked.
“Why do you say that?” I say.
“I don’t know. I just think we need some space. You have a lot going on, and so do I. Things haven’t been the same lately. It’s just a gut feeling I have.”
Brian and I had a breakup a few years before, just as I was starting at Rutgers. I was starting to travel a lot, and when summer came around he wanted to be with his friends, but somehow I never doubted we’d wind up back together. This time catches me much more off guard. Brian has just suffered the loss of a close friend, and that weighs heavily on him. I want to be there for him and support him, but I am devastated and mad, and not taking this news very well.
“Well, okay, if that’s what you want, fine,” I tell him.
I try to be brave, but I want no part of a separation, or space. This is the man I want to be with. I have no choice but to go along and trust that things are going to work out.
Brian and I stay in touch periodically, and I have a good year for Rutgers. We make it back into the NCAA tournament, drawing Maryland in the first round. I score on a one-timer in the first half, before the game ends in a 1–1 tie and we wind up winning on PKs. Next up is Penn State, ranked number six in the country, a team anchored by Joanna Lohman, my Nordic Cup teammate turned NCAA opponent. Joanna is such a good player, and a ferocious worker. She just goes and goes, and her level of play is as consistent as a metronome. I really admire that about her. You always know what you are going to get. Joanna scores early, and Penn State goes up two goals in the first six minutes. I blast a ball into the upper corner in the fourteenth minute, but we never can quite catch up, and then Joanna scores again in the eighty-fifth minute to make it 3–1. Our tournament, and season, are over, and my soccer soul-searching commences anew.
Three years into my Rutgers career, I’ve scored and assisted on lots of goals, won a bunch of honors, and helped turn us into a winning program. I am often mentioned in conversations about the top collegiate players in the country, and yet I still feel strangely unfulfilled.
I still feel like I’m an underachiever.
People have been telling me for years that I am going to wear a USA jersey someday, so how come I am going backwards? Were they just saying that to be nice?
Are Chris Petrucelli’s words (“not performing to the level of a national team player”) going to be my soccer epitaph?
Not long after my college season ends, I get a call from my father. He has just had an impromptu meeting with James Galanis of Universal Soccer Academy in the parking lot off of Ark Road in Lumberton. It was raining hard. James was packing soccer gear into his car, eager to get dry and get home. My father approached him and asked if he had a minute.
“I don’t know if you remember, but you saw my daughter, Carli Lloyd, a couple of years ago when you were training one of her Medford Strikers teammates,” my father said. “She’s been on the U-21 national team and is looking to get back into the national program. Would you be willing to meet with her and, if you think it’s a good fit, train her?”
James thought for a moment.
“I remember your daughter,” he told my father. “If she is interested, tell her to give me a call.”
“Thank you,” my father said. “I will do that. I am sure she will be reaching out to you soon.”
My father cal
ls to share the news. I hear the excitement in his voice. He is convinced James Galanis is a trainer who can make a difference for me.
“He’s an excellent trainer. I think you should at least talk to him and see what your take is,” my father says. “It can’t hurt, can it?”
“I’ll think about it,” I tell my father.
And I do think about it. Very slowly. A week passes. Another week passes. Thanksgiving comes and goes. I am still thinking. I’m not quite sure what my resistance is, but I am a little skeptical and a lot guarded. What are the chances that this guy is going to tell me something I haven’t heard a hundred times before?
Why should I take the time to meet with a trainer who, however much he might know, is not working anywhere near the national team level? My honest feeling is that nothing is going to help at this point.
Finally, in early December, I call this James Galanis. He has such a thick Australian accent that I can barely understand him. I am standing up and pacing around my bedroom with the door closed, anxious to get the call over with. He asks me a few questions about my college season and my history with the U-21s. We set up a time to meet when I am home for winter break. Brian and I are back together again, and I am really excited to see him, and not so excited to see James. Brian and I plan a weekend trip to upstate New York to go skiing, but first I am scheduled to meet James, on a Thursday night on Ark Road. It’s after eight o’clock when I pull into the lot in my little black Saturn. The temporary light stanchions cast a faint glow on the frozen field. James has set up rows of sticks and cones. This is his first up-close look at me in several years, maybe more.
“What do you say we start with some skill work and see where we are?” James says.
“Sure,” I reply.
For the next hour, I audition for James Galanis. I juggle. I dribble in and out of the poles. I demonstrate my first touch, passing, volleying, my technique on the ball with every part of both feet. In between drills, James asks questions.
He asks more questions than any trainer I’ve ever worked with.