Hope Solo

Sports Illustrated will announce its choice for Sportsman of the Year on Dec. 2. Here’s one of the nominations for that honor by an SI writer. For more essays, click here.

In the last 20 months Hope Solo, goalkeeper for the U.S. women’s national soccer team, suffered the loss of her best friend, who was hit by a car while running, and her father, who suffered a fatal heart attack. She was replaced as America’s goalkeeper on the eve of a World Cup semifinal match with Brazil and then was banished from the team for criticizing that decision. When allowed to return to the squad later under a new coach, she was treated as an outcast; most teammates wouldn’t sit with her at meals.

The worst spell of Solo’s life, however, turned positive this past summer. Back between the pipes for the national team, she made save after save in a stirring 1-0 victory over Brazil that gave the Americans the Olympic gold medal. Her stop of a point-blank Marta shot in the 72nd minute was the play of the tournament, and it was the kind of save that previous U.S. coach Greg Ryan questioned she could make when he pulled her from the lineup at the World Cup.

“It’s like a storybook ending,” Solo said after the Olympics. “It’s something you see in Hollywood or in fairy tales. My life doesn’t play out like that all the time.”

Happy endings alone don’t merit the honor of Sportsperson of the Year. But behind Solo’s story of redemption is a more layered one about women’s sports in general. As my colleague Grant Wahl wrote before the Olympics, the Solo affair raised many questions: “Did Solo’s outburst violate a team-first ethos that was a cornerstone of the U.S. women’s appeal and success, or was that mentality naive in the first place? Did her punishment fit the crime? And would it even have been imposed on a men’s team?”

The answers Solo provided with her star turn in Beijing have moved the women’s game to a better place. No longer will the national team’s success be anchored to the notion of camaraderie, as if friendship matters more than foot skills. After the 1999 World Cup and throughout the Golden Girls era of Mia, Brandi and Julie, we were led to believe that, but it was a selective rendering. The U.S. won because they had the most talent and they played as a team. The “friends” angle was just that, an angle.

There is little doubt that Solo’s punishment did not fit the crime; some teammates admit that now. But the way she handled her penance, by working on her game and not worrying about the love of her teammates, deserves respect. There are conflicting personalities in every locker room, and not getting along off the field shouldn’t preclude a team from winning on it, especially not when the prize is a World Cup title or a gold medal.

Before the Olympics, Solo said: “We don’t have to be friends to respect what somebody does on the field. I truly hope women’s sports can get to that point.”

The women’s national soccer team has, and for that we can thank Hope Solo, a deserving Sportsperson of the Year.

BEIJING — Amid the team bedlam of an Olympic gold medal celebration Thursday night, the star of the game, goalkeeper Hope Solo, peeled away to an empty part of the Workers Stadium pitch. No one was within 50 yards of her.

A solo operation, as is her style.

Moments earlier, the former University of Washington star and Richland native had pulled a cell phone from her stash bag next to the net she defended so magnificently in the U.S.’ 1-0 overtime win over Brazil.

So confident was she of a victory that she brought the phone onto the field so a call could be made immediately to her younger brother, Marcus, back in Washington. As alone as anyone could be in a stadium that held more than 50,000 people, she yelled into the phone.
Cameron Spencer / Getty Images
Goalkeeper Hope Solo celebrates as she speaks on her cell phone after the U.S. women’s soccer team defeated Brazil in the gold medal match to defend their 2004 Olympic title. Former UW star and Richland native Solo stashed the phone in the bag she kept next to the goal and called her younger brother back in Washington as soon as the match ended to tell him about the team’s victory.

“I told him, ‘We just won a damn gold medal!’ ” she said, laughing. “And bleep, bleep, bleep, bleep!”

Then she walked back to the sideline, where the entire team was being interviewed as a group by NBC. She passed them by, smiling, and went into the locker room. A few minutes later, she came out for her TV interview. Alone.

Hope Solo is a different kind of female team athlete. She feels no obligation to apologize for breaking the paradigm of the Mia Hamm/Brandi Chastain-led teams of previous Olympics and World Cups that offered an endearing, highly marketable chick-bonding camaraderie.

Following her for the rest of her days will be an outburst after a World Cup loss 10 months ago to these same Brazilians, also in China. She made national headlines by breaking the code among team sports, particularly with women, when she publicly criticized her coach and teammates.

Labeled a pariah, she was ostracized. Now she’s a hero. The U.S. is women’s soccer champion for the third time in four Olympics. Even she is bewildered.

“It’s like a storybook ending you see in Hollywood or fairy tales, yet it’s really playing out,” she said. “It’s almost too perfect an ending. Nothing ever goes right with my family and my life. This is too perfect. I can’t really swallow it right now.”

It is an astonishing reversal. Her talent, not her headstrong words, was the decisive factor. The soccer federation had fired coach Greg Ryan and replaced him with Pia Sundhage, a Swede who previously coached China’s national team. A transformation was under way.

“I think the team changed for the better,” Solo said. “A lot of truth came out. It’s kind of a new role for female sports — we don’t have to be best friends to collaborate, put our hearts out on the field and win a gold medal.”

Solo joined her teammates for hugs, hand slaps, the medal ceremony and all the interviews. But she seemed apart, too — similar to the male sports culture of the big home run hitter, the star wide receiver, the dominant basketball center. An alpha leader is not gender specific, nor is he or she the warmest.

Solo is one tough woman. And she was the difference.

The Brazilians completely outplayed the Americans. They had possession 58 percent of the match and had 16 shots on goal compared with 11 for the U.S., though it seemed the gap was wider.

Diving, leaping, stretching on a damp, slippery field, Solo was the formidable answer to the Brazilians’ superior speed and quickness.

“Hope Solo is a great player,” said Brazil’s head coach, Jorge Barcellos, “especially on the crossing balls. She has a very strong sense of herself.”
Luca Bruno / AP
Hope Solo snags a high ball amid a crowd of players, including teammates Lori Chalupny, left, and Heather Mitts, during the women’s soccer gold medal match Thursday against Brazil.

Played to a scoreless tie in regulation in a stadium that had no game clock (perhaps because the civilization is 5,000 old, what’s a couple of hours?), the match turned in the 96th minute when Carli Lloyd’s booming left-footed shot from 18 yards out slipped past Brazilian goalie Barbara.

Even the scorer worked out poetically — Lloyd was the teammate who stuck closest to Solo the previous summer when she was shunned by others.

Solo, 27, also spent much of last year grieving the loss of her father, Jeffrey, who died of heart failure at 69, just a week before his daughter was to put on the U.S. uniform for the first time. He was her first soccer coach. She scattered some of his ashes on the field before every World Cup game.

It was Sundhage, the new coach, who helped with the repairs to attitude and soul.

“Pia is a great leader,” Solo said. “She brought in new players and created a new style and system. You have to do that in order to win a medal.

“She let me be myself. No one was looking over my shoulder. I feel like my spirit is free.”

Thrilling as the medal was around her neck, Solo said it was incidental to the transformation.

“The medal has nothing to do with me feeling better,” she said. “The healing had already taken place. The healing had to take place in my heart and mind before I could even get to the medal.”

Sundhage understood that special talents require a different touch. That is never easy in a sports culture, male or female, that traditionally values equality and fraternity (or sorority) above all.

It doesn’t fit the stereotype, but much can be accomplished behind a solo leader.

Carli Lloyd scored in the sixth minute of extra time as the United States won their second straight Olympic women’s soccer gold medal with a 1-0 victory over Brazil on Thursday.

Since women’s soccer first featured at the Olympics in 1996, the USA have now claimed three gold and one silver medal, while Brazil won their second silver.

But while Lloyd scored the winning goal on Thursday, the hero for the Americans was goalkeeper Hope Solo, an ironic twist after last year’s controversy at the World Cup.
 

After losing to the US in the gold-medal match in the Athens Olympics, Brazil exacted revenge on Team USA at the 2007 World Cup, snapping their 51-match winning streak with a humiliating 4-0 triumph in the semi-finals.

The loss was highly controversial for the US as Solo was benched in favour of veteran Briana Scurry by then-coach Greg Ryan, who was promptly fired following the Americans’ third-place finish.

Solo, who made a number of comments suggesting that she should have started in net and would have made the saves, came up big for the Americans against the favoured Brazilians on Thursday.

Brazil controlled most of the possession but were unable to generate too many chances as the United States focused on keeping things tight early on.

Leading scorers Cristiane and Marta dazzled with the ball down the sidelines but could not get anything going down the middle of the field as the US forced long-distance shots or ambitious crosses from the wings which Solo was able to deal with.

Solo made the best save of the match in the 72nd minute when Marta worked herself free on the left side of the penalty area and fired a hard left-footed shot from close range that the US goalkeeper just got a right hand on before the ball was cleared away.

Angela Hucles had the Americans’ best chance in normal time, blasting a shot from 20 yards away that was stopped by Brazil’s sprawling goalkeeper Barbara in the 86th minute.

After the match went to extra time, Lloyd put the US on top as she received a pass on the left side of the 18-yard box and her left-footed shot beat Barbara and found the back of the net just inside the right post.

Brazil, who had 13 corner kicks in the game, supplied heavy pressure over most of the game’s final 24 minutes but attempted too many individual moves against multiple defenders to generate a clear opportunity.

With time winding down, Marta made a run down the right wing and delivered a dangerous cross into the box, but Solo was there to deflect the ball away from danger with oncoming Brazilian forwards in the area.

In the bronze-medal match, Fatmire Bajramaj scored a pair of goals as two-time defending World Cup champions Germany beat Japan, 2-0.

Bajramaj put Germany on top in the 69th minute, knocking home a rebound from a tough angle on the left side of the six-yard box. She scored again in the 87th minute to give the Germans some insurance.

Japan were denied their first-ever medal in the event, while Germany have now earned the bronze in three consecutive Olympics.

All of our area’s soccer players would love to make the U.S. National team one day and play in the World Cup or the Olympics.

Well, one former Tri-Cities player has already done that.

Hope Solo was a star for Richland back in the late 90’s.

And on Tuesday night, she came back to town to watch her Bombers play in the state tournament.

After Richland won 2-0, Solo spoke to the team and took lots of time to sign autographs and visit with fans.

She says she hasn’t been back to watch a Richland soccer game in several years.

And she adds that she’s happy to visit with all of the area’s future soccer stars.

Hope Solo says, “It’s long overdue that i’ve made it back and I’ve reached back out and given back to the community, so, I mean, these people support me and they support my career and the least I can do is sit here and sign autographs for 30 minutes. the sport has grown tremendously, especially here in the Tri-Cities, you know, I hope that one day I can get back to the program and to these kids and hopefully come back and coach.”

While Solo is popular for being a Richland star and playing for the national team, she might be best known for what happened earlier this year at the World Cup.

In case you don’t remember, she was benched right before the semifinal game against Brazil, and after the Americans lost 4-0, she spoke out against the decision to keep her on the bench.

Just one month after those comments, U.S. coach Greg Ryan was let go.

But solo had very little to say about her place on the national team.

She was asked, “What has it been like personally for you, bouncing back, I mean, now that ryan’s gone…”

And Solo said, “I’m not going to talk about the World Cup, but its good to be home.”

Solo says she’ll be in the Tri-Cities for a couple of months.

And she said she hopes to make it to the Bombers state quarterfinal game on Saturday afternoon.

New coach selects both goalkeepers in preparation for Olympic qualifying

Goalkeepers Hope Solo and Briana Scurry, who were at the center of a World Cup firestorm, were invited to the U.S. women’s national team training camp by new coach Pia Sundhage.

The camp marks the beginning of the run to the 2008 Olympics in Beijing. The United States plays in the CONCACAF finals for Olympic qualifying April 2-13 in Chihuahua, Mexico. Two countries from the six-team tournament will advance to China.

It was in China where Solo was benched for the World Cup semifinals by then-coach Greg Ryan, who started veteran Scurry instead. The Americans played poorly, Scurry was beaten four times in a shutout loss to Brazil, and Solo bitterly criticized Ryan for the move.

Solo then was dismissed from the team, which won its third-place game.

Ryan subsequently was replaced by Sundhage, who invited 24 players to the training camp Dec. 8-12. The first games under Sundhage will be at the Four Nations Tournament in China early next year.

The minicamp roster features 16 players from the 2007 Women’s World Cup squad, along with seven players who recently finished their collegiate seasons. Defender Heather Mitts returns from a torn knee ligament last May that required surgery and caused her to miss the World Cup.

Longtime star and recent captain Kristine Lilly was not on the roster; Lilly has yet to decide if she will continue playing next year.

“It’s a short camp, but it will be valuable time spent together as a team and a unique moment for me to have a chance to work with the best players in the United States for the first time,” Sundhage said. “It will give us the chance to get to know them as players a little bit more, they’ll get the chance to learn my style and I’ll also get the chance to get to know them off the field. It will be a good start to something new.”

The roster:

GOALKEEPERS: Nicole Barnhart, Briana Scurry, Hope Solo.

DEFENDERS: Rachel Buehler, Marian Dalmy, Kate Markgraf, Heather Mitts, Christie Rampone, Cat Whitehill.
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Nearly three months after her World Cup fell apart, Hope Solo still is pained by the experience.

In her first public comments since a brutally frank TV interview in which she criticized her benching, Solo told The Associated Press she never saw it coming and wasn’t prepared for it.

“I had felt as though my childhood dream basically had been ripped away from me,” she said.

The starting goalkeeper for the U.S. soccer team in China, Solo played well in the opening round and quarterfinals. But then coach Greg Ryan benched her for veteran Briana Scurry against Brazil, and the Americans were routed 4-0.

After the loss, Solo said: “It was the wrong decision, and I think anybody that knows anything about the game knows that. There’s no doubt in my mind I would have made those saves. … You have to live in the present. And you can’t live by big names. You can’t live in the past.”

Ryan dismissed Solo from the team. She wasn’t allowed on the bench for the third-place game, did not participate in the medal ceremony and flew home from China on her own.

Until Thursday, Solo had only spoken with close friends and family about her ordeal. As she prepares for a training camp in Carson, Calif., where she will mingle with many of the World Cup players, Solo spoke to the AP by phone.

“It is a little difficult to relive that,” she said. “Mentally, I was full of all sorts of emotions. The World Cup was the only thing that kept me together after the death of my father (in June), kept me fighting and together and dedicated to the game.

“Moreso, the moment I realized we didn’t have the opportunity to win the gold medal, my world came tumbling down. I had nothing to immediately give back to my father. I was wound so tight emotionally, and the moment after the loss I broke.”

The worst part, Solo said, was her comments seemed directed at her teammates as well as at Ryan, who recently was replaced at coach by Pia Sundhage.

“Of course I know I have some friendships to rebuild and teammates to rebuild relationships with,” she said. “But there is nothing I can go back and do.

“Never did I intend to put down a teammate, and that is the thing that hurts the most. I always have respected and will respect Bri. And that is the thing that hurts me the most.”

Solo issued an apology through U.S. Soccer just before an exhibition tour against Mexico in October. She and Scurry were together during that series, along with most of the World Cup players.

“I have reached out to her, but beyond the Mexico series we have not really spoken, which is not unusual with my teammates, because we’re often not together for long (stretches),” Solo said.

“I have spoken to a handful of different teammates here and there at different levels. In the end, we are all professionals and have a common goal to qualify for the 2008 Olympics. I can only hope we put our differences aside because we have a job to do.

“It’s important we respect each other on the field; we don’t have to be best friends off the field.”

The 25-year-old keeper from Richland, Wash., chuckled at the irony of the Olympics, for which the Americans must qualify in April, being staged in China.

“China is going to bring back a lot of memories for me, no doubt,” she said. “But I’ve been through a lot of worse things in life.”

Particularly the death of her father, Jeffrey. Would getting that gold medal in the Olympics ease the pain from the World Cup fiasco?

“My father was even more excited about this World Cup than I was,” she said, her voice cracking. “Looking back, it is not just gold medals that I have to celebrate his life and give back to his passing. If I never see a gold medal in my life, I will be doing what I can to make my father proud.”