Girls of Summer

by Kate Christie

  That evening, Jamie sprinted onto the field, buoyed by the streaks of red, white, and blue, and the noisy chants of U-S-A in the stands. Despite what she had told her sister, there had been a good sixty seconds at the outset of every game so far in Canada where she felt light-headed. She was on the US Women’s National Team playing for a World Cup title. It was unreal, but at the same time, as she’d told her sister, she had been working toward this moment, this one, single tournament, nearly all her life.

  No pressure, obviously.

  Emma slapped her back as she walked by, as had become their ritual before kickoff. The contact should have grounded her, but today for some reason, it didn’t. As she stood in the center of the field waiting for the Romanian referee to start the game, she legitimately thought she might pass out. But then the whistle blew, and they were off. As soon as Ellie touched the ball back to her, Jamie’s butterflies fled and, just like in the earlier matches, she settled into the flow of the game.

  Colombia was a bit of an unknown. Ranked twenty-eighth in the world, they had qualified for the World Cup for the first time in 2011 after three previous failed attempts. The US had met the South American side only twice before, once in the 2011 World Cup and again in the 2012 Olympics, and had defeated Colombia both times by the same score, 3-0. But Salome Sanchez, their leading scorer as well as Ellie’s problematic ex, was quick and unpredictable. Between Sanchez and a cadre of physical, creative midfielders, Colombia had overwhelmed France’s defense in the second game of the group stage to upset the European side 2-0. That said, Colombia’s first-string goalkeeper had been suspended for the Round of 16 because she’d accumulated two yellow cards during group play. This situation was an example of why most rosters had three goalkeepers. No one wanted to have a field player (Mia Hamm circa 1995, anyone?) be forced to play keeper in a World Cup match.

  The US started fast, as was the game plan. Ellie scored in the fourth minute on a rebound off the backup keeper’s glove, only to have the goal disallowed on an offsides call. They continued to threaten for the next ten minutes, until Gabe ran into Sanchez while chasing down an errant pass. The Colombian captain immediately hit the ground and rolled three times in a move that would have been impressive if it wasn’t such obvious acting. Well, obvious to everyone except the head referee, who promptly whipped out a yellow card. Given it was Gabe’s first foul of the match, a yellow card seemed extreme—except that Gabe was one of the players at the Algarve who had “accidentally” struck the officious (and incompetent, both teams had agreed) referee with the ball during the run of play.

  Unfortunately, Gabe was one of several American players, including Jamie, sitting on a yellow from the group stage. By giving her a second card, the referee had just guaranteed that Gabe would have to sit out the quarterfinal match against China—assuming they made it that far.

  Ellie surged forward, her eyes hard as the referee recorded Gabe’s name in her match notes. Before she could make contact, Maddie stepped between them, her hand on the US captain’s chest.

  “Leave it,” Jamie heard Maddie say, her voice low and commanding.

  After a moment, Ellie stalked away. But Jamie didn’t miss the searing look she sent Sanchez, who smirked back and even added in a slight, taunting wave. No wonder Ellie had married a non-soccer player. Playing against your ex could get ugly.

  While the US had rebounded from having a goal called back, the yellow card was a different matter. Suddenly the American players seemed to be reacting to Colombia rather than dictating the pace themselves. Instead of maintaining possession and building patiently out of the back, they were ball-chasing and playing catch-up, unable to string together enough clean passes to settle into their own style of play. The US attack in the first half hinged on long balls and 50-50 passes that, more often than not, Colombia managed to snag or at least disrupt. Somehow, the Colombians seemed every bit the giant killers they’d claimed in the press to be.

  And then, five minutes before halftime, it happened. Jamie was contesting with a Colombian midfielder for a chip pass when they smacked into each other. Jamie was taller and broader, so she only wavered slightly while her opponent crashed to the ground. Immediately Jamie held up her arms in an “I didn’t do anything wrong” gesture, even though she knew—she knew, damn it—that to do so was to call attention to her complicity. Sure enough, the referee blew her whistle and reached for her pocket.

  No, Jamie thought, staring at her. She couldn’t do that! It hadn’t been—Jamie had barely—

  But even as the silent protests flashed through her mind, she could see as if from a distance the referee waving the card in the air almost triumphantly. Yellow. She’d given Jamie a yellow card, which meant that, like Gabe, Jamie would now have to sit out the next match. She had worked so hard for so long, and now this officious asshole was trying to take it all away? No way. No fucking—

  She hadn’t even realized she’d started toward the ref, who was looking down as she added Jamie’s name and number into the match records, until Emma stepped between her and the navy-clad woman.

  “Chill,” Emma said softly. Her hands gripped Jamie’s shoulders as she stared into her eyes. “Let it go. There’s nothing you can do here except make it worse.”

  Jamie resisted the urge to shove Emma out of the way so that she could—what? Yell at the ref and get kicked out altogether? She closed her eyes briefly, took a deep breath, and reminded herself that while she may not be able to control the referee, she could still control herself. In fact, she had to not only for her own sake but for her team.

  She nodded shortly at Emma. “Okay. Thanks.”

  Emma squeezed her shoulders and let go. “Of course.”

  Play resumed, but for Jamie, the last five minutes of the half felt like a dream sequence where her autonomic responses were slow and her body refused to cooperate the way it normally did. She felt like she was running with ankle weights on, her legs heavy and her feet unwieldy. The image of the referee waving the yellow card at her kept replaying in her head on a loop, making it difficult to concentrate on the game at hand. She couldn’t play in the next game. She wouldn’t be on the field for the quarterfinals. What if the team played better without her and Jo decided they didn’t need her anymore? What if she had come this far only to be benched for the rest of the tournament for fucking up so egregiously?

  Oh, god. She was going to throw up. She’d let everyone down—Ellie, Jo, Emma, her family. They had come to Canada to support her and she’d screwed everything up.

  She barely heard the whistle that signaled halftime. In a daze, she followed her teammates off the field and back to their locker room beneath the stadium, where Ellie and Emma gave her a brief pep talk—It wasn’t a yellow card offense; that ref is terrible and we all know it; keep your head in the game—before Jo cleared her throat from her position by the white board where her pre-game notes remained untouched: “Pressure. Patience. Probing. Progression. Possession. Play smart. Play to win, not to not lose.”

  And underlined three times: “Leave it all on the field.”

  “I told you the night we arrived in this country that we would be tested,” she announced without preamble. “Well, athletes, this game is one of those tests. You did everything right in the first fifteen minutes and still Ellie’s goal was disallowed and two of your teammates are facing suspension. Who are you going to be in the face of adversity? Who are you going to choose to be in the next forty-five minutes?”

  She looked around the room, holding the eyes of the players who looked back. “Right now we are teetering on the brink of elimination. At this minute, our fans are wondering which path you’re going to choose. Will you focus on the parts of the game you can’t control, or will you start with the basics?” She gestured at the white board. “The 4 Ps. Playing smart. Playing to win, not to avoid losing. And most of all, leaving it all on the field. Everything you have. Because there is no going back, athletes. There is only moving forward. So let’s see what you have.�
��

  And with that, she walked out of the room, the other coaches following.

  For a moment, the locker room was silent. Then Phoebe and Ellie exchanged a look, and Ellie said, glancing around the room, “I’m not ready to go home yet. Are you guys?”

  “Hell fucking no!” Jenny Latham shot back, and just like that, the tension was broken.

  “All right, then,” Ellie said. “You heard Jo. We’ve got forty-five minutes to turn the show around. Let’s do it. Oosa on three. One, two, three, oosa-oosa-oosa-ah!”

  The cheer was a reference to a USWNT that was no longer, a way of connecting to the team’s storied history. Rumor had it that in 1985, when the team made its international debut against Italy, the Italian fans were so impressed by the American players that they started cheering for the USA, which they pronounced, “OOSA.” The chant had become something of a ritual that the team invoked to signal the program’s legacy. Today, Jamie took it as a reminder of everything they were playing for—everything they had to lose, yes, but everything they had to win, as well.

  Ellie caught up with her on their way out of the tunnel and slipped her arm around Jamie’s neck, giving her a brief side-hug. “Don’t let it get to you, okay? Just focus on the now. The future will work itself out, one way or another.”

  Jamie nodded. This was good advice. She only hoped she could follow it.

  As she sprinted onto the field, she had to force herself not to glare at the head referee, who was standing at the center circle with her whistle in her mouth and her eyes on her watch. How did that woman not know she was a menace? More importantly, how did FIFA not recognize her incompetence? Or maybe they did. Maybe assigning her to a big match like this—one in which a bad referee could make the difference between advancing or going home—was purposeful. Maybe this was their way of punishing the US team for daring to sue them in international court over artificial turf at the World Cup. Didn’t take much of a stretch to believe that one.

  Her conspiracy theories hit a wall two minutes into the second half when Emma served Jenny Latham a through ball that allowed her to drive into Colombia’s penalty area. Jamie watched, initially elated and then horrified as Colombia’s goalkeeper slide-tackled the US striker near the top of the box—and missed the ball entirely, only making contact with Jenny’s trailing leg. Jenny went down hard, screeching out a curse as she fell. Unlike their South American opponents, she didn’t roll half a dozen times to sell the foul. She didn’t have to. The keeper had been the only person between her and a certain goal. There was no way Jenny would have gone down if she could possibly have stayed on her feet.

  The partisan crowd barely had time to erupt in shouts and whistles before the referee blew her whistle and pointed to the penalty spot. Then she reached for her pocket, and instead of the yellow card Jamie expected, she pulled out red and practically flung it at the keeper, who stared at her for a moment, clearly stunned, before trailing after her with her hands spread out. But the referee ignored her and held up a warning hand to Colombia’s captain, who came to plead her keeper’s case.

  Was it a red cardable offense? Jamie wasn’t sure. But if her own incidental contact with a Colombian player in the mid third of the field had drawn yellow, then she supposed the keeper destroying Jenny’s scoring opportunity on a clear foul was grounds for ejection. She couldn’t help but feel sorry for the young player, though, who at only 20 years old was the youngest person on the pitch. She wouldn’t have even played today if the starting keeper hadn’t been suspended. Talk about a nightmare World Cup.

  The backup keeper—the backup’s backup, Jamie corrected herself—had next to no time to warm up as the Colombian coaches discussed their options and the player who had been sent off hugged her teammates and slowly made her way to the sideline. Ultimately, the Colombian coaches decided to sub out one of their two strikers, though not Sanchez but rather a younger, less experienced teammate. A red card meant the South American side would have to play down a woman for the rest of the game. Since they couldn’t very well field a team without a keeper, the least dangerous player from a defensive standpoint—the striker—left the game.

  If anything, Colombia’s third-string keeper looked even younger and considerably more frightened than the player she was replacing. Jamie pictured Britt in the same situation. Would she look as shell-shocked? Maybe, but probably not. Britt was closer to 30 than 20 and had won a youth world championship. While that experience may not compare to the pressure and drama of this World Cup, it definitely gave Britt a leg up.

  Soon the new Colombian keeper was jumping up and down in the goal mouth while Jenny lined up to take the penalty kick. She wasn’t the best PK taker around. In fact, she rarely made the top five in practice when they were prepping for penalties. But the shot was hers if she wanted it, and she had made it clear to Ellie that she wanted it.

  Maybe too much, Jamie thought a moment later, wincing as Jenny’s shot pinged just wide of the goal. Or maybe she’d just had too much time to think. Most strikers didn’t do well if you gave them extra time. The best scorers in the world, like Ellie, could handle additional time to consider their options. But most strikers, even phenomenal ones like Jenny, did better on instinct. Time gave your brain options, and scoring happened most frequently when the shooter had minimal options to choose from.

  The energy that had surged through the crowd when the referee signaled the penalty kick dropped again—except for a small contingent of Colombian fans seated near their team’s goal. They made more sound than Jamie would have expected at Jenny’s miss, and continued to cheer loudly whenever their team made a defensive play. With only ten players facing off against the US side’s eleven, Colombia had more than their share of opportunities to come up big on defense.

  At a break in action, Jamie put her hands on her hips, closed her eyes, and lifted her face to the cloudy sky. The previous day had been the summer solstice, which meant that the sun wouldn’t set for another few hours yet. The temperature had been close to 70 at kickoff, and it was a perfect summer soccer night. She’d been playing summer tournaments since she could remember, like Surf Cup in Southern California where she and Emma had met. This was just another game in a long line of games, she told herself, and with her eyes closed, she could even believe it. But then she heard the sound of a ball being struck cleanly, and Ellie was bellowing at her and she opened her eyes to see the ball sailing in her direction and… Right. Back to it.

  She caught the ball on her right foot and managed to evade an oncoming Colombian. Head up, she dribbled toward the goal, mind efficiently cataloging angles and speeds. Jenny was ahead of her just outside the box, so she touched the ball to her. But Jenny’s back was to the goal with pressure on in the form of a double team. She dropped the ball to Jordan Van Brueggen, who dribbled up the line before passing back to Taylor O’Brien, open in a supporting position.

  “To me!” Jenny shouted, pointing in front of her with her left index finger the way she always did when she wanted the ball.

  Taylor dribbled a few steps farther, just enough to make one of Jenny’s defenders step to her, and then she sent a pass directly to Jenny’s feet. The striker neatly turned the ball past the remaining defender and into the penalty area, where Jamie was unsurprised to see her wind up for a shot. The only player between her and the goal was the keeper, but Jenny’s angle was terrible. She should really pass off to—

  Jamie’s thought cut off as the ball rocketed toward the goal and Colombia’s backup keeper bobbled Jenny’s low, near-post shot. Wait, had she actually palmed it into the back of the goal? Was that an own goal? Did it even matter?

  “Hell yes!” Jamie cried, sprinting madly toward Jenny, who raised her arms to the sky in triumph and, Jamie thought, probably more than a little relief. She had made up for her missed PK. In the 53rd minute, the US was finally on the board.

  The flag stayed down (Jamie checked), and the team piled on for a group hug, laughing and cheering Jenny on. The goal had been
lucky. Jamie wasn’t sure the shot had even been on frame. But that didn’t matter. What mattered was that they were up a goal and a player against an increasingly dispirited Colombian team. All of a sudden, the victory that had seemed out of reach in the first half now felt almost certain.

  Which was why they needed to double down even harder, Jamie thought, nodding when Ellie shouted instructions to press after kickoff. The most dangerous time defensively was the first two minutes after you scored a goal. Wouldn’t do to let Colombia back in the game now.

  “Let’s put this puppy to bed,” Maddie said, nodding at Jamie, Gabe, and VB.

  Jamie and the others nodded back. “Let’s do it.”

  Colombia fought hard, Jamie had to give them that. But they were fighting an uphill battle, short-sided against the US, the favorites who not only were generally viewed as the fittest, most athletic team in the world (thanks to Lacey) but also possessed the home crowd advantage. The game had taken on an air of inevitability, in Jamie’s estimation, and she found herself buoyed by the sense of certainty permeating the stadium. The crowd alternated chants of “U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-A!” with “I believe that we will win!”

  Jamie was with the fans because with thirty minutes left to play, she believed they were going to win, too.

  Even the referee seemed to have settled in because Jamie barely noticed her. That is, until Ryan sent a perfect through ball into the box for Gabe to run onto only for Gabe to be taken out with a hefty hip check by the nearest Colombian defender. The referee, again, didn’t hesitate. She pointed at the penalty mark and whipped out a yellow card for the defender, who shook her head in apparent disgust and walked away.

  Jo called in from the sideline, “Ellie! It’s yours.”

  Everyone looked around at her in surprise. Ellie was not one of the team’s strongest penalty takers. But she only nodded once, stepped up to the spot, and, at the whistle, drove the ball past the diving keeper into the corner.

  Her record was growing. With that shot, she had just moved into second place all time in World Cup goals: thirteen, one ahead of Germany’s Mila Friedrich and two behind the Brazilian star Marisol’s record-setting fifteen. Germany had beaten Sweden 4-1 two days earlier without scoring help from Friedrich, and Brazil had been upset by Australia 1-0 in a result that had left some US players complaining that they wouldn’t get a chance to wreak revenge on Marisol’s side. With three potential games still ahead of them and Brazil on their way home, Ellie and Friedrich would be battling each other to surpass Marisol’s record.