by Abby Wambach
Once I’m home in Hermosa Beach, down from the mountain and settling into the valley, depression creeps back into my psyche. “I’m the saddest person I have ever known,” I text to Are’s mom, Dena. I fight to reconcile this feeling with my public and professional persona: fun, optimistic, inspiring, driven. It’s a stubborn, intrepid gloom, stalking me with the skill and fervor of a private eye, finding me no matter how much I hide inside the numbness of booze and pills. My body activates its freakish internal scale, measuring the maximum amount of alcohol it can handle without affecting my game. It sustains the balance perfectly during our post–World Cup “celebration” tour in October, when we play three games against Mexico in three different cities. I start dating a new teammate, but as much as I like her, I’m still fixated on Haley and still wallowing in the old wounds stirred up by her betrayal.
A few weeks before Christmas, the team convenes in Los Angeles for a four-day camp. After the World Cup, Greg Ryan was fired, and we have a new coach, Pia Sundhage, a veteran Swedish soccer player so revered in her home country that her image once graced a postage stamp. We also have new young players and a new captain, Pearcie, ready to play only 112 days after giving birth. Pearcie and I have a tacit agreement: she’s the arm-banded captain, the official face of the team, the wise and calm general who dispenses strategy before battle begins. I’m her obnoxious counterpart, the trusty lieutenant who incentivizes her teammates to kill.
A few of the veteran leaders, myself included, meet privately with Pia to discuss what happened at the World Cup. This team has a chemistry problem, we argue, and it’s going to be a problem moving forward if we want to win games. Pia’s answer is concise and leaves no room for debate: “Hope is the goalkeeper. You guys have to figure this out and deal with it.”
When the rest of the team joins us, she pulls out a guitar and sings Bob Dylan in faltering English: “For the times they are a-changin’.” It’s an obvious plea to move past the World Cup debacle, but I apply the words personally. The 2008 Olympics are fast approaching, and it’s about time to emerge from my darkness, to peer out from the cave and find my other self.
Before I leave, Pia asks to speak to me alone.
“Listen,” she says, “I don’t want you to have to worry about being a captain and dealing with that stuff. I want you to just worry about scoring goals.”
“I’m fine with that,” I assure her. “I want to worry about scoring goals, but I’m also still going to lead. So you’re going to get, like, three birds with two stones.”
I leave camp feeling happier than I have in a year. Some disagreements and resentments linger, but the World Cup drama now seems muted and surmountable. Collectively, we’re the best in the world, and we all need each other to win.
Once again I remove all vices from my life, instantly and easily, as if they’re accessories one season out of style. My freakish internal scale recalibrates its settings so that even an ounce of contraband is rejected. Booze, sugar, fried food, junk television—anything that sullies my body or mind—cease to exist for this finite stretch of time. On the advice of my doctors, I still allow pills into my regimen: caffeine, Vicodin, and Ambien, in carefully regulated turns, all of them now necessary for Intense Abby to perform as expected, by herself and the world.
By July 16, five days before we leave for Beijing, I am a sleek and lucid beast, ready to steamroll my path to the goal. Injuries aside, I have never felt so fit and focused and certain of victory. On this night we have an exhibition against Brazil in San Diego, our last game before the Olympics begins, and the team finally feels cohesive, ready to play for another gold.
In the locker room, Pearcie motions everyone to gather for our pregame talk. Her advice is practical and precise, spoken in the language all of us know best: “We want to go out and really defend, and we want to switch the point of attack. Then, of course, we want to get numbers in the box and score goals.”
Out on the field we bend into our huddle, faces close and arms intertwined behind backs. It’s my turn to speak.
“We have to go out and play for each other,” I say. “If we’re all on the same page we can do that. Every time you put this jersey on it means something.” My voice amplifies. “We got this! We got this! We fuck . . . fucking . . .” and my words trip over each other, tumbling out in the wrong order and making no sense at all. “My god,” I finish, “I’m such an idiot,” and everyone laughs. I understand, then, that we all needed to laugh; it’s the only thing that cuts the pregame tension. “Whatever,” I add, slapping my forehead. “Pearcie!”
On cue, Pearcie thrusts her hand in the middle of the circle, waiting for our hands to stack on top. “Oosa on three!” she calls, our phonetic abbreviation for “USA.” And we respond in fevered unison: “Oosa, Oosa, Oosa, Ah!”
The night air is hot, so hot I imagine steam hissing up from the field, marking the spots where my cleats have stepped. We’re hustling, pressing the Brazilians, stifling their freewheeling style. At all times I’m attuned to where the ball is, like a pointer dog identifying its prey, and I am running as fast as I ever have, gaining speed. Cheers from the crowd rise up to follow me, and as I’m about to make my move I am stopped by the point of my opponent’s knee. It stabs at my leg with superhuman ferocity. I feel my left leg leave itself. I’m on the ground, now, with a clear view, and see that my foot and my thigh are turned in opposite directions, as if in a disagreement that can never be resolved.
My mind, hyperattuned, delivers its diagnosis: both the tibia and fibula are broken. Another realization crests to the surface: the team leaves for the Olympics in five days, and I am not going to be on that plane. Inside my vortex of thoughts, depression buds and takes root. Not now, I think, and swat it away. Later I’ll have plenty of time to tend to it and feed it and watch it grow, but now I have to be on my game. I have to be a captain.
Without question it is the worst physical pain I’ve ever endured. Worse than my ankle, worse than my toe, worse than the gash in my scalp. It’s worse, too, than pain that is yet to come: Achilles tendinitis, a sprained knee, a torn quad, a broken nose, and blackened eyes. A collision that splits my hairline like a coconut, requiring staples to hold it together long enough for me to finish the game. A concussion after which I am not in my sane mind, playing without the ability to see the ball at all.
Lying on the field, I think of my parents, watching back home in Rochester, eagerly awaiting their trip to China for the Olympics. Over the years we’ve devised a system: if I’m ever down, I give a thumbs-up so that they know I’m okay. This time I leave my thumb down, and instead beckon the trainers to come straightaway.
Pearcie gets there first.
“What happened?” she asks, squatting down. Her proximity is a small comfort.
“I broke my leg. My tib and fib are both broken.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah,” I concede, and my mind veers right back to the game. “Tell Pia to get a sub ready.”
The emergency crew rolls a stretcher toward me. I feel my left leg being encased and my body lifting off the ground. It’s dark as the ambulance doors close by my feet. My leg feels like it’s harboring a detonated bomb. Someone stabs a needle into my arm, and the pain begins to subside tentatively, by increments.
“Can I borrow a phone?” I ask no one in particular, and a medic obliges. I dial Lauren Cheney, a new teammate who also plays forward. She hadn’t made the Olympic roster a few weeks ago, but I think she’s up to the job.
“Cheney,” I say, without greeting or preamble. “I hope you’ve been working out. I’m injured, and if they replace me with another forward it’s going to be you.”
She laughs. “Shut up, you’re being dramatic. You’re fine, you’re always fine.”
“I’m serious,” I reiterate. “I can’t run. So you need to get fit, because you’re going to the Olympics.”
I hang up and call my parents. They were watching the game on television, and my mother already has plane re
servations for the next flight out. The pain medicine creeps further into my bloodstream. “I want my mom,” I whisper, hanging up, and the dial tone lures me into a restless sleep.
10
LEADER
It takes the doctors four hours to piece me back together again. They create a complex patchwork of screws and insert a titanium rod through my knee, piercing the bone marrow of the tibia, connecting the two broken halves. A few teammates are waiting in my hospital room when they wheel me in after surgery, high as a loon. My eyes make out blurred features and distorted voices: Pearcie, Kate Markgraf, Angela Hucles, Heather O’Reilly, Leslie Osborne. Others come and go as I drift in and out. Someone brings me my phone and computer. I’m coherent enough to search my name and “broken leg” and watch the resulting video clips, each showing my agony from a different angle.
“Can you please stop watching that?” someone asks. She—I’m not quite sure who it is—means well, but no, I can’t stop; my brain demands evidence that I’m not caught in some prolonged and intractable nightmare. I try to respond. My tongue is heavy inside my mouth and the words have to sluice around it, like river water around a rock. “I just can’t believe this happened,” I hear myself say. “It’s so weird. I don’t get hurt. I can play through anything.” Silently I continue the conversation: I did everything right this time; I was prepared and centered and controlled. And then comes the silent response: When are you going to learn you can’t control everything?
My mother arrives, and I weep again at the sight of her. I ask for my watch, which she fastens around my wrist. Every eight minutes I’m allowed to press the button for another shot of morphine; I set my timer so as not to fall behind. When my phone rings, my mother hands it to me. It’s my girlfriend and my mother leaves the room to let me talk.
She asks how I am, tells me she’s so sorry. After a few moments of commiserating, she gets to the point. “I can’t do this,” she confesses, as kindly as she can. She elaborates: We keep getting injured. It’s a sign we’re not meant to be together. We need a break. She hopes I understand . . .
I’m crying again when my mother returns, and I calm down just enough to relate the gist of the conversation. She sits on the edge of the bed, stroking my hair. “She doesn’t deserve your tears,” she says, proving that she, at least, has accepted what she can’t control. She’s had a few lessons in that regard; my sister Laura has also come out as a lesbian.
I doze and tap my morphine button, again and again, a slurry, slow-motion dance: doze and tap, doze and tap. In the midst of one interval, I ask my mother for my computer. Opening my e-mail, I find a message from Haley, and am suddenly and strangely alert:
Abby, that did not look good. What happened to you just now? Holy fuck. I just saw you say it was broken. You are a horse, a workhorse, and I hope so much that this injury is not as bad as it seems.
Your team and coaching staff looked blanched on TV. I could see the color leave their faces simultaneously. You have their respect and admiration; that is so evident. Their leader was leaving. I could see how much you bring to that team, and the respect those you lead have for you. You were brave, too, twenty times more calm than I was on the couch. You have so much support and love. I am so sorry for this. I am sick to my stomach and upset and I can imagine you’re in shock. I am so sorry.
Love,
Haley
Immediately I open a new message and begin typing:
Hey, at the moment it’s 4:10 A.M. on Friday. I can’t sleep so I grabbed my computer and saw your e-mail. Thanks for your words. They meant a lot. It was so weird because right when it happened I knew. I felt the bones snap. I saw exactly what you saw on television. So whenever everyone else was freaking out, I couldn’t.
Hilarious that I was trying to lessen the blow for other people. Because honestly, it is okay. I am okay. My leg hurts like hell and this situation sucks pretty bad, but there are way worse things in life. And maybe I’m just in denial or something, but immediately I went to the positives and just focused on those. I am bummed for my teammates as I am kind of important for this team, so it’s tough bearing this sort of responsibility for them but it would be cool for them to overcome this and win it anyway. It would just be amazing to me.
I can’t believe you still watch my games. I don’t say that because I want you to affirm anything to me, just that I am surprised that you do. A few questions for you: How are you/what are you doing these days? I am going to have a lot more time on my hands these next few months. Any good ideas for me? Remember, I’ll be on crutches, so hiking and stuff will be out of the question.
I had a feeling a few weeks back that you’re preggo. Could this be true? Or am I just nuts? Thanks for the e-mail, Hal. It meant a lot. If you want, call. It would be nice to catch up. I felt the love you sent. Much appreciated. Sending mine back . . .
They release me, sending me back to my Hermosa Beach condo, where Kara is waiting to take care of me. She replaced Are as my roommate after he moved back to Florida to start a personal training business. I’m grateful; I need her calm, sensible perspective right now. I return to the hospital for rehab and am eager to start, if only to regain a sense of control.
At first we try three hours per day, rotating my ankle and contracting my quad to fire up the muscle, which seems to have atrophied overnight. I limp up and down the hallways, a trainer on either side. I develop a tolerance for Vicodin, demand more, and am furious when I’m denied. The team doctor has to talk me down, explaining that the synapses in my brain are firing differently; there’s going to be trial and error in finding the right cocktail, a healthy balance of numbing and riding out the pain. He was there when it happened—in fact, he heard it happen, all the way from his seat in the stadium. I need to accept the fact that this is going to hurt, and that it’s going to take time, more time than I probably imagine, more time than I’ve ever had to give anything else.
After the day’s rehab, with nothing but time, I attempt to be a leader from sixty-two hundred miles away. I contemplate flying to China to surprise my team, but during an acupuncture appointment, with needles protruding like quills from head to toe, I conclude that my presence would only be a distraction. Instead, I decide to write them a letter, some words to inspire them before the games begin.
I open a new e-mail and begin: “To the U.S. Olympic Women’s National Soccer Team” (God, what a loser, I think years later, in my postretirement hotel room). And from there I write as if possessed, the words lining up in my mind and my fingers unable to stop.
I am hoping to somehow inspire you guys, and I thought my being there could do just that. But the truth is, I’m not the inspiration. It’s the situation that’s inspiring—and you do not in fact need me there.
I thought a lot about my injury, and what keeps coming up for me is that this has happened for a reason. It makes me realize that this team has to find its way without me. What’s so amazing about this whole thing is that every one of you has the opportunity to truly become the best of champions. This is so fitting in terms of the way things have gone all year. I have done everything and then some that has been asked of me; you all have done everything and then some that has been asked of you. You have turned over every stone, and Pia is all about challenges. So why not embrace this one? Because the truth is that this challenge that’s in front of you will in fact define this team. Not to stress you all out, but it gives me chilly bumps just thinking about it.
It’s a simple question: How do you want this team to be remembered? And I know you’re probably all really sick of getting questions about how things will turn out without me on the field. I’m sorry about that. I’m sure it’s annoying, but really, it’s a great question and I hope you all have talked about it or at least sat with it because it’s going to be what everyone wants to see.
I can safely say that I have no doubt you all will rise to the occasion. No doubt at all, because that’s what this team is, has been, and will always be. It’s timeless and no one pe
rson decides its fate. Do you all feel that? Do you all understand that? I feel like that was the lesson I really learned last year during the World Cup. Obviously I didn’t fully grasp it. I do now. I have been totally humbled by this whole thing and hope that you all have been too. Things have changed, and you all need to believe that you can do this.
Look around the room. Look each other in the eyes. This is a team that will win gold, and you can’t doubt that for one second. Yeah, you’re going to make mistakes. Yes, you will be nervous. Yes, goals may get scored. It’s not about what happens; it’s about how you react to all of it. If you let doubt seep in for just a moment then you won’t succeed. I promise you that. So if you make a bad pass or you miss an open girl or you can’t find anything good about your game, just look around. Look where you are. See that you’re playing not to win, but to define yourself.
You are playing to make your mark on this game. It’s honor that you’re in search of, and if you stop thinking so hard about success or failure and instead focus on each other, you will find way more than honor. You will find the purest part of what makes all of this so special.
I have felt that once before—four years ago, at our last Olympics. Some of you haven’t ever felt it. Some have felt it more than me. But this will be different from anything else you’ve ever experienced before. I just know it. Can you? Do you feel what an opportunity this is? Are you in control of how it plays out? You all have a choice. Are you going to cry into a corner or will you stand up and fight? What are you willing to give? Because it takes more than what you think you’re even capable of. But that’s what these kinds of tournaments are about. The team that’s standing on top of the tallest podium will have gone past their own limitations. They will have believed in each other 100 percent of the time. They will have enjoyed the process. They will have overcome problems, and most importantly the team that is standing on the podium getting the gold medal wrapped around their necks will have done it together.