Solo
'Solo' – a no-holds-barred, tell-all autobiography – has already rocked some boats.
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The situation grew worse after Brazil beat the US 4-0, handing the Americans their worst World Cup loss in history. When approached by an ESPN interviewer afterward, Solo said that playing Scurry was “wrong,” among other terse comments.
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The short interview caused tremendous pushback from her teammates, who felt she’d broken a team code by going public with her dissatisfaction. Solo found herself a pariah who was isolated and ostracized in various ways, including by being told she wouldn’t be allowed to fly home from China with the team. She was even forced into making a formal apology.
A cloud hung over her career until Sundhage, a former star of the Swedish national women’s team, was named to replace Ryan in 2008. The change provided Solo with a fresh start under a coach not beholden to golden oldie memories created by the ‘99ers, the American players, including Mia Hamm and Brandi Chastain, whose victory in the 1999 World Cup lifted women’s soccer to new heights.
The folk-singing new coach pulled out her guitar at her first team meeting to send the message that a new era was dawning. She strummed and sang the Bob Dylan lyric “For the times they are a-changin.” She also told the players that they needed a goalkeeper and that forgiveness was expected of anyone who harbored resentment.
The team “stepped out of the shadows of the past” and established its own legacy by winning the gold medal at the 2008 Beijing Olympics, then playing in a World Cup championship game for the ages in 2011, when Japan won on penalty kicks after the score was deadlocked in overtime. It was a spectacular effort by both teams, and although the US lost, Solo was presented the Golden Glove award as the tournament’s best goalkeeper. That essentially conferred upon her status as the world’s top goalkeeper as she approached her 30th birthday – nearly 17 years after she entered the Olympic development pipeline.
It was an immensely satisfying moment for a woman whose upbringing includes many trying moments and hardly fits the typical suburban soccer image. As a young girl, she lived in a tract house in Richland, Wash., a nuclear industry town east of the Cascades noted for having one of the most toxic waste sites in the country nearby.
Her mother, a karate black belt, worked at various times testing plutonium samples and as the first woman corrections officer at Walla Walla Penitentiary. Her dad’s checkered life included several brushes with the law. He was imprisoned for embezzlement and was long a murder suspect who wasn’t exonerated until after his death. After a breakup with his wife, he became homeless, lived in a tent in the woods, and made his “living” shoplifting.
Despite the heartache he caused his daughter and family, he never quit showering love and encouragement on his “Baby Hope,” cheering her on wherever and whenever he could. That included at her youth league games and those at the University of Washington in Seattle.
Hope dedicates the book to her mother, who overcame a drinking problem, and who she calls “the true champion." But it’s the love of her dad, through it all, that she says defines her. As she poured his ashes into the clear waters of the Cascades runoff in 2009, she whispered, “Thanks, Dad. You made me who I am” – tough, resilient, a fighter to the end.
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