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

I charged off my line and tried to punch the ball out, but I clocked Chups in the head instead. The goal was left untended and a Norwegian player easily headed the ball into the empty net. Not only had I made an error, I had injured Chups—our best defender. She left the game with a concussion.

The mistake rattled me. But it wasn’t what led to the next goal—there wasn’t really much I could do when Markgraf made a bad pass right to a Norwegian forward who brought the ball down into the box and blasted a shot past me. Now we were down 2–0. And that’s the way the game stayed. It was our first-ever loss in Olympic group play, the U.S. team’s only Olympic loss other than that golden goal defeat to Norway in Sydney in 2000. I was furious with myself. I couldn’t believe we had lost our very first game and that our entire Olympics were suddenly at risk, all because I had worried about what other people thought. What the fuck am I doing? I thought. Why the fuck am I letting the critics get to me?

It was the first time in my life that I had felt influenced by the opinions of others. I hadn’t been able to shut out the distractions on the soccer field. I thought of my dad—how he had always ignored those who judged him with a “Fuck off” attitude.

Fuck everyone, I thought.

We stayed in Qinhuangdao while the extravagant opening ceremonies unspooled in the Bird’s Nest in Beijing. We watched them on TV, but I couldn’t fully enjoy the spectacle. The thrill of being at the Olympics had given way to the desperate business of trying to recover and win an Olympic medal. We were already being ripped to shreds in the press. We could never win without Abby. The World Cup wounds couldn’t heal. We weren’t a unified team. In the eyes of the American media, we were already eliminated, forever in the shadow of the ’99 team.

But Pia stayed positive. She didn’t let us get down about the Norway result, and when we played Japan on August 9, we came out determined and attacking. In the first half, Carli scored a goal, and I played much better. We won 1–0 and headed to Shenyang to play New Zealand. What seemed impossible a few days earlier—winning our group—was within our grasp, if we won our game big and Japan beat Norway. I knew I couldn’t afford to let in a goal. We did our part, winning 4–0. At the end of the game we celebrated and then heard the score of the Japan game: the Japanese had beaten Norway 3–1.

Our celebration circle on the field was an especially joyous one. We had overcome a disastrous loss—just ten months after the bitterness that ripped our team apart, we were playing resilient, tough, unified soccer. It felt good. It felt like fate.

Before and after every game, I talked to Adrian on the phone. I was dating Jesse now, and Adrian was dating someone else, but I still needed him. Before the Olympics, I had pleaded with him to come to China. “Adrian, you’re one of the most important people in my life. I can’t imagine getting through these games without you. I bought a plane ticket for you. Please come.”

But he didn’t. Still, he got up early back in Seattle to watch every game on television—interrupting his life to support me. He answered my calls at any hour of the night, and he took care of Leo.

In the quarterfinals, we played Canada in Shanghai. Midway through the first half we were leading 1–0 when rain began to pour down and lightning flashed around the stadium. The match was delayed for an hour and a half because of lightning strikes. I called Adrian. He kept me focused and calm through the long break.

When the game resumed, my old nemesis, Christine Sinclair, blasted a shot past my extended body to tie the game. It took eleven minutes of overtime before Natasha Kai, who had come on to replace Heather O’Reilly when overtime began, scored on a diving header to put us in the semifinals, where we would meet Japan again.

VI.

Our manager handed me an envelope. “This is for you, Hope.”

Inside was a letter from Abby. Back home in upstate New York, she was rehabilitating, watching us and reflecting on the team. She had thought about coming to China but decided she would be a distraction. Instead, she wrote each of her teammates a letter. Even me.

She told me that she understood that as a goalkeeper I needed to have a strong belief in myself. She said that in the past year she learned to accept people for who they are. She said that she had tried to turn me into a villain for being myself.

“That isn’t honest. That isn’t compassionate. That is controlling and manipulative. I am sorry I was like that,” Abby wrote.

She said that my skill in goal frustrated her constantly in practice and that she appreciated my ability. She encouraged me to show the world my softer side.

“You have a chance to show everyone who you really are,” she wrote. “I believe you’ll show everyone you’re a winner.”

I folded up the letter. I was blown away by the thought and feeling Abby had put into it. She could have written a perfunctory, “Go for the gold!” but she had truly thought about our relationship and what was at stake. I was humbled and inspired. She had reached out across the ravine that separated us and I knew I would grasp her hand. We didn’t have to be best friends, but we had to be teammates. We needed each other.

Finally, after our quarterfinal, we traveled to Beijing, where the Olympic action was happening, and moved into the Olympic Village. The semifinal and final were at Workers Stadium, an old stadium removed from the Olympic Park, in a bustling part of