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

Pia played guitar in meetings and seemed more relaxed now that we were isolated. We felt strong. We played a closed-door game against Norway and lost, but I wasn’t bothered by that—I thought it was probably a good thing to get some mistakes out of the way.

I tried not to think about the 2007 World Cup. That experience taught me how unpredictable life is. The lesson was to enjoy every moment and opportunity. I vowed to lock in every memory so that I could have it for the rest of my life—the way my father had taught me. I also reflected on how far the team had come in four years, how much we enjoyed each other’s company, and how well we functioned as a unit. There wasn’t the segregation between young players and veterans or the cliques that had existed in 2007. No one expected us all to be best friends. It wasn’t perceived as an affront to team camaraderie if I took my book and went off to read, or if I shut the door to my room. If a young player raised her hand and asked a question, no one viewed it as an impertinent challenge to authority. No one was worried about the small stuff: we were all focused on the task at hand.

One day Carli and I talked about 2007. Her theory was that if Greg hadn’t fucked up and I hadn’t spoken out, nothing might have changed on the team. The bad dynamic might have continued. Out of all that struggle and pain, Carli said, we ended up having a better team. “You helped change that,” Carli said.

I didn’t know if I had changed it, but things were clearly different now. Nothing underscored that transformation more dramatically than my relationship with Abby. We not only tolerated each other now; we liked each other. Abby had reached out to me with her letter during the Olympics, and that started the healing process. She seemed humbled by her injury and by missing the Olympics. Abby and I were often together on photo shoots or at Nike events, away from the rest of team. We would hang out and have cocktails in the airport bar while we traveled. When we were in a foreign hotel, Abby and I were always first at breakfast, sitting together and reading the paper while drinking four or five cups of coffee. We quietly built our relationship with every camp and every game.

“You know, Hope, we’re really pretty much alike,” Abby once said.

“We are,” I agreed, then laughed, “but we’re also pretty different.”

We were both crazily competitive and honest. We both demanded excellence and professionalism and would do anything to win. We both liked to party. And I knew I could rely on her. We needed each other. We didn’t have to be best friends to be great teammates, and if we were going to win the World Cup, we both had to excel.

II.

After ten days, we left our beautiful alpine spa and boarded a charter flight for Dresden, the site of our first game, against North Korea. At the airport, we saw the World Cup banners and the mood immediately changed. This was it.

The atmosphere in Germany was exhilarating. A few hours before the game on June 28, I got—as I had for all my other games—a huge shot of Toradol in my ass. I knew what was going to happen next. My arm was going to feel like Gumby—bendable with more range of motion. And after the game, I was going to be in agony from moving my shoulder in ways I shouldn’t have been able to. My shoulder was now my source of inspiration. Athletes have to keep finding new forms of motivation. In 2007, I was motivated to play for my father’s memory. In 2008, I was playing not only for myself, with a kind of “fuck you” attitude to the world, but also for my mom and Marcus, Grandma and Grandpa, Adrian and Glenn, Lesle and Amy, aunts and uncles—my lifelong team. In 2011 my motivation was the constant pain in my shoulder. I wanted to prove the doubters wrong, to show that I could come back from a devastating injury. And I wanted to earn the right to be called the best goalkeeper in the world.

I reminded myself to lock in every memory. I tried to soak in every moment—standing apart from my team during warm-ups to look at the faces in the crowd, to study my opponents, the vibrant colors in the stadium. Not every athlete gets to experience such a grand event.

Once again—as we had in the previous World Cup—we opened with North Korea. Though the game lacked the dramatics of 2007, it was far from easy. I had to make two difficult saves in a ten-minute span in the first half. There was no score at halftime, but early in the second half, Lauren Cheney headed in a perfect service from Abby. Twenty minutes later, Rachel Buehler gathered up a deflection on a corner and scored. We won 2–0.

WE FLEW TO Frankfurt and then took a bus to Heidelberg, where we practiced in front of a group of American military personnel and their families. I felt so proud to be wearing a USA jersey in that environment. It was thrilling to get that kind of hometown support in a foreign country.

The sold-out crowd at Rhein-Neckar Arena two days later was full of American flags and red-white-and-blue painted fans. We dominated the Colombian team. Heather O’Reilly scored in the first half, and we all ran to one sideline and saluted the fans. (It was the first time I had ever celebrated a goal on the field and I was honored to recognize the service men and women who were in attendance.) In the second half, Megan Rapinoe and Carli added goals. When Megan scored, she ran to the oversize microphone in the corner of the field, picked it up and sang “Born in