Solo by Hope Solo (best free ereader .TXT) 📕

always win out. My coach, Mark Krikorian, had come to the WUSA from the University of Hartford. He coached the Charge to the semifinals in both of his first two seasons and was named Coach of the Year in 2002. He favored a goalkeeper named Melissa Moore, who was twenty-eight and had little experience at the national-team level. It seemed Mark felt he had found a diamond in the rough, and his feeling was vindicated when Moore won WUSA Goalkeeper of the Year honors in 2002. Melissa had played for Amy at New Mexico years earlier. She was a strong team leader, but I felt she wasn’t a top-level goalkeeper. I was an up-and-coming goalkeeper, and he drafted me as an investment in the future, but it didn’t seem to me that he wanted to play me.

AND SO I sat on the bench. I felt alone and homesick for the first time. After a lot of discussion, Adrian didn’t come with me. He had too many business projects in Seattle, and we were both worried about the commitment that would have come with his moving to Philadelphia just to be with me.

Cheryl didn’t come along either. And neither did Lesle and Amy. Everyone and everything was new. The East Coast was foreign to me—I missed the green of Seattle, and I had to learn how to cook. I called my mom and asked her to walk me through her lasagna recipe. Later, I called her to help me change a flat tire. Philadelphia was freezing until it abruptly became unbearably muggy. But the most unsettling thing was that since the Philadelphia Charge didn’t have a goalkeeping coach, Melissa effectively took on the role. During practices, the coaches would send us off to the side to work together. We called Amy to ask for some basic drills—we were so used to being told what to do. Mark wanted Melissa to tutor me. How, I wondered, would anyone know if I beat her out? It didn’t seem to me that I could compete for the job. I just wanted a fair shot.

So I sat and watched as our season disintegrated. We lost our first four games before I finally got a start on May 17 against New York. I had a shutout going until injury time of the second half, but we won 2–1, our first victory of the season. It didn’t matter. I went back to the bench and watched Melissa struggle. Later on, in film sessions with Mark, I watched the scoring all over again and listened to both Mark and Melissa make excuses, talking about our team’s poor marking or the opposition’s uncanny ability.

No matter how bad the goal—and some of them were shocking—Mark never seemed to place the blame on Melissa. Nothing in college or national-team training had prepared me for the lack of accountability. I sat quietly for weeks, frustrated. I liked Mark, and I felt that we had a decent team—French star Marinette Pichon was among the league leaders in goals scored. I believed that all we needed was a stop here and there.

Finally, as the season dragged on, I decided to offer my opinion during one of our film sessions. “You were out of position,” I said to Melissa, then turned to Mark. “Maybe we should get a goalkeeper coach to break down the film.”

Mark didn’t like that. He called Amy. “What’s the deal with this kid?” he said.

“What do you mean? She’s awesome. She’s a hard worker. She wants to prove herself.”

“Is she coachable?” Mark said. “She seems awfully immature.”

Maybe I was. Mark was known as a coach you didn’t confront.

I was getting worried about my career. I felt Mark’s refusal to play me was hurting my chances for the national team, and the Women’s World Cup was coming up in September—the first World Cup since the epic 1999 tournament—and it was back on U.S. soil. Every player in the national-team pool was training hard with the World Cup in mind. China had originally been slated to host the event, but the SARS epidemic of early 2003 caused a panic about travel to Asia. In May, FIFA decided to move the World Cup to the United States with just four months notice. The rationale was that the United States soccer federation could handle last-minute planning and that the tournament might bolster the struggling WUSA. China was awarded the rights to the 2007 World Cup.

Portland, which would serve as one of the host cities, was just three hours south of my home. For three years, I had been in and out of the national-team pool, and I felt I had a chance to make the roster this time. But I needed to play. In every Charge match, I saw national-team players starting for the opposition. Bri was starting for Atlanta. Siri was starting for the Washington Freedom and would ultimately lead them to the league championship. That was what the WUSA was supposed to be about: developing players with high-level regular competition. But I was stuck watching someone else’s mistakes on video.

I heard that April actually lobbied Mark to get me some playing time, but he stuck with Melissa as the hot, muggy Philadelphia summer dragged on. I was miserable. Finally, after a 3–1 loss on July 26 to Carolina, the Charge was officially eliminated from playoff contention. We had been at the bottom of the league all season and had gone 0–5 in July. With nothing to lose, Mark decided to play me. It was, however, too late for my World Cup chances: April had to name her roster in less than a month.

I started the final three games of the season. Against Atlanta, I earned my first professional shutout in a 3–0 win. Against Washington, I shut out the eventual champions, helping to hold Abby and Mia scoreless. In the season finale, at Carolina we tied 1–1, though we might have won if we had converted a late-game penalty kick. I finished the