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.

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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