Solo, Hope Solo [best non fiction books of all time .txt] 📗

walked away. Greg was still stuck somewhere in 2007, bitter and small-minded. I had moved on.

V.

The thing about happy endings is, they don’t last very long. In the early morning hours of October 31, my phone rang. It was Adrian. He needed me the way I had needed him sixteen months earlier. His dad, Bob Galaviz, had been over at his home the evening before. As it had been for my dad and me, Adrian and his father—after years of separation and turmoil—had built a strong and loving relationship. That night he gave Adrian an extra long, tight hug before he walked out to his car. Bob was driving south on Interstate 5 through Seattle when a car heading north jumped the grassy median and started plowing up the highway in the wrong direction. It hit one car, smashed into Bob’s car, then hit two more vehicles before coming to a stop. The police later said the driver had blacked out at the wheel. He killed two people, the sixty-one-year-old wife of the driver in the first car that was struck and Adrian’s father. Bob was fifty-five years old.

Adrian got the phone call from the police. He had to go to his mother’s workplace and tell her what had happened. I was in Richmond, Virginia, where we were preparing to play South Korea as part of our victory tour, when Adrian called.

“Hope, I need you.”

I had seen Adrian’s father right after the Olympics. As soon as I got back from China, I found Adrian. It didn’t matter that I was planning a Winnebago tour with Jesse—I needed to share everything about the Olympics with him. We were bopping around Seattle and stopped by for a visit with his father, who had been watching Leo.

Bob wanted to hear all about the Olympics. “You’ve got to bring me that gold medal—I want to see it,” he said.

“I’ll bring it next time,” I promised.

“I miss you,” he said giving me a long hug. “You have to come see me more often.”

As we left the house that day, Adrian’s father told his son something that was an echo of what my father had once told me. “Adrian, don’t lose this one. You two have to figure it out.”

But we hadn’t figured it out. I was seeing Jesse, Adrian was seeing someone else. We were never ready to commit.

I told Pia I had to leave the tour. I told Jesse I had to go to Adrian. “You need to do what you need to do,” Jesse said.

And what I needed to do was be with Adrian. I flew west for another funeral. I brought my gold medal, even though it was too late.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Unprofessional Professionals

The air was icy. I shivered as I glanced over at Kristine Lilly. We were standing on a New York City sidewalk on the Today show to promote the launch of the WPS, our new professional league. Why the producers picked us to promote the league, I’m not quite sure. But there we were, the longtime legend and the newly minted gold medalist making nice, with no one but the two of us aware of the tension.

We took the same car service to the set and didn’t speak a word to each other. Matt Lauer tried to put a soccer ball under Kristine’s belly to illustrate how pregnant she had been a few months earlier. Meredith Vieira asked about the 2008 Olympic gold medal performance. “It’s been quite a year,” I said, thinking back to the hellfire I had walked through just twelve months before. “It’s a perfect time to kickstart a new league.”

That was an overly optimistic statement. It really wasn’t a perfect time to start a new league. Or even a good time. The economy was bad and about to get a lot worse, but the WPS had already been postponed for the ’07 World Cup and the ’08 Olympics.

It was a strange launch, straight into the headwind of a recession. We had only seven teams, with the promise of an eighth. Some owners weren’t fully committed—AEG, a major player in Major League Soccer, only agreed to run the L.A. Sol short-term and was looking to sell. Some of the proposed teams, such as the one in Dallas, never materialized. The league’s goals were modest, and commissioner Tonya Antonucci didn’t make big pronouncements. Still, every story written about the league was slathered in a thick coat of skepticism—the WUSA had failed even with players like Mia Hamm, the economy was terrible, and the league had a low-budget feel. When the uniforms were unveiled—during New York’s Fashion Week, no less—the kits included a skirt-like wrap. The goalkeeper jerseys were hot pink, and the shorts were padded, the kind of gear parents might buy at the Sports Basement for their twelve-year-old daughter. The whole thing screamed girly marketing, as though Sepp Blatter—the FIFA president who once said women soccer players should wear tight shorts to get attention—was the mastermind.

“There’s no way in hell I’m wearing that,” I said when I saw the goalkeeper uniform.

That got me in trouble with league officials. I was dissing a product being pushed by Puma, the league’s only major sponsor. No one wanted to do anything that would upset Puma, including standing up for what was right. But our owner, Jeff Cooper, stood by me. He bought real goalkeeper jerseys—Puma brand—and had them fitted and numbered for us. The league was furious with him, but he wanted the players to be happy and feel professional. “Go ahead and fine me,” he said.

I loved playing for Jeff. He was the black sheep of the league because he said what he thought, because he argued, and because he stood up for his players. I felt incredibly loyal to him. I also became close friends with our general manager, Tim Owens, and his family, who made me feel at home in St. Louis. I liked our coach, Jorge Barcellos, who had coached Brazil