One Life

by Megan Rapinoe

  Our first game of the tournament was against England. I stepped onto the field and felt a familiar sensation. It went all the way back, through three World Cups and two Olympic Games, to being six years old and running around for the Mavericks. I felt the give and bounce of the grass beneath my feet. I felt the sun on my back, as a million muscle memories twitched into action. I didn’t know exactly what was coming, but whatever it was, I knew I had the instinct, training, and ability to react. We won the game, and the game after that, and then faced Japan in the final. Seven minutes in, I stepped up for a penalty, launched it over the huddle of Japanese players in the goal mouth, and watched as it arced over the goalkeeper to the back of the net. It didn’t matter how many times it happened. There was no feeling like it.

  Ten days later I was back in New York. It was March 13, 2020. There was still no settlement from the federation; quite the opposite, in fact. A few days earlier, our bosses had released a statement arguing that physical differences between men and women meant that not only did we have less “ability,” “skill,” “speed,” and “strength” than the men, but that being a male player “carries more responsibility within US Soccer” than the women’s team does.

  You’d think we’d be used to these sorts of comments. You’d think there would be nothing they could say at this point that would surprise us. But even by the standards of the federation, their words were bald-faced misogyny, and, for a second, we were shocked. There was an instant, massive outcry, and US Soccer hastily backed down. But it was too late, and as our shock subsided, it turned to something more like glee. My god, they had said out loud what they had always been thinking. We see you now, we thought. The whole world sees you now.

  All we could do—all we could ever do—was go through the numbers again. Number one in the world. Winner of four Women’s World Cup titles and four Olympic gold medals. Generator of $50.8 million in revenue between 2016 and 2018, and, a year later, winners of a World Cup final watched by 1.12 billion people. Most goals in a single Women’s World Cup match. Most consecutive World Cup tournament wins. Winner of eight CONCACAF Gold Cups, ten Algarve Cups, and seven Four Nations Tournaments. On and on it went.

  After a few meetings in the city that day, I was due to meet up with Sue in Connecticut. It was a chilly afternoon, overcast with sudden gusts of wind. The streets should have been full with Friday afternoon rush hour traffic, but as the car drove me through Manhattan, everything was quiet. Three days later, in response to COVID-19, the New York City public school system closed. A few days after that, the whole city shut down, as did most of the country. As I crossed the Henry Hudson Bridge and traveled on through the Bronx, I thought ahead to the coming months. The federation would give us a deal. We would win at the Tokyo Olympics. Perhaps by Christmas, we would even have a new president. To win, you have to believe it will happen. After that, it’s just a question of being bolder, braver, more inclined to speak up, and—in any way you can—better.

  EPILOGUE

  When I knelt during the anthem in 2016, I had no end goal in mind. It was a reflex born of solidarity with Colin and my experiences as a gay woman in a straight, male-dominated world. I wanted to broaden the conversation about racial injustice and to support a fellow athlete. And while I hoped it might encourage others to act, if it didn’t, I would continue to do it anyway.

  Four years later, we are in a new world. In June 2020, in the wake of the death of George Floyd, a forty-six-year-old black man killed by a police officer in Minnesota in May, we are seeing scenes that would have been inconceivable a year ago. Across the country and the world, people are marching in protest against racial injustice. Demonstrators are gathering in LA and Oakland, in Washington, DC, and Muncie, Indiana. By mid-June, at least 1,700 demonstrations across all 50 states have taken place. In Paris, Milan, and Berlin, meanwhile, protesters hold up signs reading JUSTICE CAN’T WAIT, while in Britain, the entire Liverpool soccer squad takes a knee. Colin Kaepernick’s symbolic act, for which he paid such a price, is a global movement.

  For months, as the pandemic rages, the world has been living under lockdown. In America, the spread of the coronavirus has revealed the system for what it is, laying bare the lie—for anyone who still believes it—that this country works for the majority of people. Alongside millions of uninsured for whom having no health care is commonplace, 40 million people have filed unemployment claims and seen their health care evaporate with their jobs.

  For those millions of parents suddenly homeschooling their kids, it is glaringly obvious that we need to pay teachers more. And after it comes to light that over a third of deaths from COVID-19 are nursing-home residents and workers, it is clear we need to take better care of our elderly.

  There are other lessons. When small business loans are scooped up by big companies, it is a reminder not only that society favors the rich, but also that we have our priorities wrong. While the people we’ve been told are important stay home, the undervalued and ignored—supermarket and health care workers, technicians, delivery workers, people who clean the hospitals and take the bodies to the morgues; people of color, women, immigrants, undocumented people—have literally been deemed essential.

  Sue and I ride out the pandemic at our apartment in Connecticut. The Tokyo Olympics are postponed, possibly forever. I spend the mornings working out and the afternoons engaging with activists and politicians. I connect with Patrisse Cullors, one of the cofounders of Black Lives Matters. I speak with Joe Biden and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. I have a conversation with Gavin Newsom, the governor of California. We speak about how to get through this together, how policy and activism might meet, and about the failings of the person in the White House. We could have had $2 trillion more to put into the economy if the president hadn’t given it away in a tax cut. The cost of his fumbling response to the pandemic can be measured in the tens of thousands of lives, the brunt of them from communities of color.

  It is bigger than Trump. The pandemic and the national uprisings are a once-in-a-many-generation opportunity to look at what we consider important, to reimagine who we are and want to be. After months of lockdown, the swell of protests in the wake of the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and so many others seems to provide an obvious answer. We want to be better. We want to look beyond ourselves to others who are hurting. After months of staying inside to flatten the curve and shield the most vulnerable, most of us understand that only by acting in one another’s interests might we fully protect our own. When, in early May, a judge rejected my team’s pay equity claims (we immediately appealed), the men’s national team stepped up and spoke in our defense. A month later, the NFL lifted its ban on kneeling during the anthem. A week after that, the US Soccer Federation did the same.

  Real change lies within all of us. It is in the choices we make every day. It’s in how we talk, who we hire, and what we permit others to say in our presence. It’s in reading more, thinking more, considering a different perspective. At it’s simplest, it’s in whether we’re willing to spend even five minutes a day thinking about how we can make the world better. By the time you have this book in your hands, four months from now, I have no idea what the world will look like. But I do know that in a country where years, decades, centuries can go by in which things carry on pretty much as before, the uncertainty thrills me and gives me hope. Everything is changing. It’s happening now. And it’s just the beginning.

  Let’s go—really, let’s go.

  Our house on Oak Meadow Road in Redding, a small town in Northern California. Most of my family continues to live in the area, and I’ll always consider Redding home.

  May 1986. Me and Rachael, ten months old, on my mom’s lap.

  April 1987. I think of CeCé as my oldest sister; here Rachael and I are hanging out with CeCé.

  January 1988. Rachael and I have always been inseparable. We were barely ever out of each other’s sights
when we were little kids.

  When I was five, I told my mom I wanted to cut my hair short, like my brother, and only wear boys’ clothes.

  Mom, Rachael, Brian, me, and Dad.

  I remember watching the Women’s World Cup in 1999, when the US won 5–4 against China. Mia Hamm and Brandi Chastain became household names. I didn’t think that could be me.

  1992. Rachael and I wanted to play soccer after watching our older brother, Brian, play with a local team. There wasn’t a girls’ team nearby, so when we were six, we joined the Under-8 boys’ team in Palo Cedro.

  I joined Elk Grove, a much bigger soccer team, in 1999—right as soccer became incredibly popular, thanks to the FIFA Women’s World Cup taking place in the US.

  When we were ten, we were invited to try out for the Mavericks’ Under-12 boys’ team. We got clobbered every game. We played for only one season before my parents decided to set up a girls’ team.

  The early games I played for the Portland Pilots were thrilling. The entire college campus came to cheer us on.

  At fourteen, Rachael and I were scouted by the Olympic Development Program. Up until then, I just felt lucky to have found something I loved and was good at.

  In 2006, the US Women’s National Team called to invite me onto the national team.

  I was the youngest and the least experienced, but playing on the field with the best players in the world felt like being in a different game altogether.

  After I injured my ACL, I trained hard through 2007 and the first half of 2008 before playing a single game. But in August 2008, I returned to the Pilots lineup. I felt like I was back.

  Going back and forth between a 27,000-seat stadium and a 5,000-seat field caused my head to spin, but the change of pace was always a relief.

  In 2009, I accepted a job playing for the Chicago Red Stars, while Rachael took a redshirt year at Portland.

  The Pilots had a nineteen-game winning streak that year, and we made it to the NCAA semifinals (before losing to Stanford).

  I went platinum blond just before flying to Germany in 2011, for my first-ever World Cup. We lost to Japan in the finals, but there was so much energy and excitement about our team. It was on the flight home from Germany when I decided to come out publicly in Out magazine.

  Celebrating with Abby Wambach at the 2012 Olympic quarterfinals, where we beat New Zealand 2–0.

  After beating Canada 4–3 in the 122nd minute of the semifinals in London. Alex Morgan headed a goal with less than thirty seconds to go in overtime.

  My parents came to London to cheer me on. Once we won, I was overwhelmed with happiness as well as gratitude for the sacrifices they made when I was a kid.

  Jumping into Alex Morgan’s arms, after she headed the ball over the goalkeeper. The New York Times called the game “one of the best games, involving men or women, in memory.”

  The night before leaving for the World Cup in Germany, I bought pink hair dye. If you’re going to go all in, you might as well go all the way.

  Following our Olympic win, I was honored with an award at the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Center’s 41st Anniversary Gala. I gave a speech about my experiences as an out gay woman in sports. Winning was one thing, but being recognized for trying to change hearts and minds gave me so much pride.

  In March 2019, we filed a lawsuit against the US Soccer Federation, claiming “purposeful gender discrimination.”

  It’s hard to re-create the rush after winning the World Cup. Days later, thousands of people lined the streets of New York City.

  During the final match against the Netherlands. It took us thirty-one minutes to even make a shot on goal.

  At City Hall, after thanking my teammates and all the people who had cheered us on from day one, I spoke to the crowd: “We have to love more, hate less, listen more, talk less.”

  With Sue, at the ESPY Awards.

  A few hours after the parade in New York City, we were honored as Best Team at the 2019 ESPY Awards in Los Angeles.

  In September 2019, I was named Best FIFA Women’s Player of the Year, and flew to Milan for the ceremony. I spoke about how vital it is that we have one another’s backs: “If everybody was as outraged about homophobia as the LGBTQ players, if everybody was as outraged about equal pay or the lack of investment in the women’s game as women—that would be the most inspiring thing to me.”

  That October, I was honored as one of Glamour’s Women of the Year, and the following month I gave a speech at the ceremony in New York City, in which I thanked Colin Kaepernick. Were it not for him and his bravery, I wouldn’t have been standing there at all.

  Behind the scenes of the Sports Illustrated cover shoot, holding a sledgehammer.

  With Gloria Steinem, who is one in a long list of people whose activism has enabled my own.

  Sue doesn’t gush or fuss or make a big deal out of things, but the fact that she dived headfirst into a relationship with me, during one of the most difficult and complicated times of my life, was an expression of such love, tenderness, and strength. For the first time in my life, I allowed myself to truly melt into someone.

  Behind the scenes of a shoot Sue and I did for InStyle in September.

  My family definitely got caught up in the excitement after the World Cup.

  Real change lies within all of us. So, what are you going to do?

  Acknowledgments

  To Jessica Clarendon, without you none of this would be possible. For so long, you have been and continue to be my north star. For the hours spent listening to me rant, listening to me struggle, listening to me learn, all the while challenging, guiding, and educating me at every step, thank you. I promise to never put you on a boat in the Hudson again, but then again, I might. I look forward to all the “Good Trouble” we will continue to get ourselves into. MRS.

  I spent hours on the phone with Emma Brockes—hours in person, on text, and over email. She spent hours with my family in Redding, talking with Sue, and talking with my friends and teammates. I never could have imagined the beautiful story you would weave together. It was a mirror to things seen and unseen, spoken and not—a journey through the heart and mind of a little girl from a small town with a wild family and a big dream.

  I have known Dan Levy since I was barely an adult. He has been such a rock throughout my career and my life no matter what, always standing right with me, guiding me, and giving it to me straight. (Dan was supportive of the pink hair from the beginning, FYI.) I can’t thank you enough.

  I do not say this lightly or with hyperbole: the first time I ever felt truly seen—for all I had done and all I had the potential to do, for the woman I was and could become, all my flaws, all my whole damn self—was in a Brooklyn conference room with a beautiful view of the Brooklyn Bridge, when Ann Godoff walked in. I will never forget it. Ann, you changed my life. Thank you.

  To all my teammates over the years, too many to name: a simple thank you. Every one of you encouraged me to be myself and loved me for who I was, which, to me, is the greatest gift.

  And to all the LGBTQIA+ kids out there: I see you, I hear you, I love you, and with every breath I have I will fight for you. You are beautiful.

  About the Authors

  Megan Rapinoe is an American professional soccer player. As a member of the US Women's national soccer team, she helped win the 2015 and 2019 FIFA Women's World Cup tournaments and a gold medal at the 2012 London Olympics. A co-captain of the team since 2018, she was named the Best FIFA Women's Player in 2019, and was awarded the Golden Boot.

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