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

III.

I came home that summer with nowhere to live. Even though we dated other people, Adrian and I continued to see each other—our friendship was too deep to abandon completely—but it was awkward, even painful. We just couldn’t stay away from each other. Our families and friends didn’t understand the nature of our relationship; some, like Cheryl, thought Adrian was a jerk. But other friends loved him. We were confusing everyone, including ourselves. Meanwhile, I was back on Malia’s couch.

I had made enough money from my first three professional contracts that I felt I should buy an investment property. But I didn’t have enough for a down payment. Adrian lent me the money. I wanted to draw up a contract and make monthly payments to him.

“Forget it,” he said. “Pay me back when you sell it.”

I didn’t know when that would ever be, but I bought a tiny house in Kirkland, not far from where my sister, Terry, lived. It appealed to me because it was like a little cabin in the woods. It reminded me of how my father had lived for so many years, though he hadn’t had walls around him. I intended to rent it out. Instead, I ended up living there for years—and Adrian kept refusing to let me pay him back.

In 2005, the U.S. team continued its transition. One of Greg’s first acts as head coach was to tell Brandi Chastain that her services were no longer needed. Brandi hadn’t retired after Athens, and she wanted the chance to try out and see if she could make the team. Greg refused to give it to her, causing an uproar in the press—the heroine of the 1999 World Cup had been fired!—and sending a clear message that this was a new era. I doubted Brandi was still good enough to play, but I felt she deserved the chance to try out. Briana Scurry hadn’t officially retired, but the word around the team was that she was thinking about it. I took that with a grain of salt. Bri often needed time off after big tournaments, and I assumed she’d be back. But meanwhile, the starting job was mine.

We had a revolving door of goalkeeper coaches. Greg brought in several different coaches whose main experience had been on youth teams. They were telling us things like, “Make your hands in a W shape to catch the ball.” I felt embarrassed: here we were playing at the highest level, and the coaches were instructing us as if we were in high school. Finally Ian Feuer came in—an accomplished English goalkeeper and coach. I loved working with Ian, but I didn’t expect him to be around for long: he had a family and he could make a lot more money working somewhere else.

Even though the majority of the players in the pool had arrived post-1999, there was still a veteran cabal that controlled things. The key movers and shakers of the past were gone, so players like Kate Markgraf and Abby—who acted like a veteran—stepped into the void, taking over decision-making responsibilities for the team. There was definitely a divide on the team between “veterans” and “new players.”

Truthfully, I didn’t do much to try to win over the veteran group. The longer I was on the national team, the more I realized that my personality was different from many of my teammates. I wasn’t outgoing and bubbly; I struggled socially in big groups. I didn’t want to go to movies or to dinner in huge throngs that involved endless planning and negotiations and waiting around. I found it exhausting to be with twenty other women all the time—at training, on the bus, at every meal. I had a difficult time being social twenty-four hours a day. Other girls easily shared their innermost thoughts about boyfriends and family and personal issues, while I liked to keep my private business private. I felt the same as I had in high school: unwilling and unable to play the “social girl” game. But I knew that when I said “No thanks” to an invitation and closed my hotel room door so I could read or talk to my dad on the phone and recharge my energy supply, people thought I was being unfriendly.

“People just don’t feel like they know you, Hope,” Aly once told me. I knew that was true. It had been the same in high school and college. My lack of comfort in group situations made me feel as if I was dysfunctional, missing one of my X chromosomes.

Around this time, I read a magazine article about introverts. The article was like reading a master’s thesis on my personality. Did I enjoy spending time alone or with just one or two friends? Check. While some people drew energy from others, thriving in big groups, was I exhausted and drained by too much social contact? Check. The article noted that, for introverts, trust was a major issue causing discomfort in groups and that those trust issues usually dated back to childhood. According to the article, introverts found it hard to feel comfortable and secure in large groups. While the loudest were usually viewed as leaders—Abby came quickly to mind—introverts could also lead. I was often called outspoken, because I was honest to the point of making others uncomfortable, but I wasn’t loud or assertive. I had to find a way to lead in my own way. Now I had a name for why I felt as I did, why I preferred to be by myself. I was an introvert. I didn’t know that made me a black sheep.

IV.

In 2006 Bri returned. She had decided to make one more run, though she would be thirty-six by the time the China World Cup began. I wasn’t surprised to see her. Bri had always been nice to me when I was younger and wasn’t a threat at all. But now the relationship had