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

Boston team denied that anything racist had taken place. It started to feel like a cover-up. I was accused of lying and being a prima donna who couldn’t handle heckling. But when a handful of Boston fans wrote letters to the team saying they had to walk out of the game with their children because the language and behavior was so inappropriate, an apology was sent to our team.

A week later our coach was fired and James Galanis was brought in as interim coach. The owner asked me for a recommendation, and the first person I thought of was James, whom I had met through Carli. He knew how to push me and when to back off. A few weeks later, we were playing the Washington Freedom. Both teams needed a win to get into the playoffs. It was the craziest officiating I’d ever seen: calls were changed for no reason and goals disallowed. We lost 1–0, a result completely gifted to Washington by the center ref, who appeared in awe of Abby. I thought she might ask Abby to autograph the red card she pulled out of her pocket to show one of our players. I couldn’t stand it. The league was a joke. The officiating, rather than getting better, seemed to be getting worse.

THAT NIGHT I vented on Twitter, willing to accept the standard $250 fine for criticizing officials:

It’s official, the refs are straight bad. Its clear the league wanted DC in playoffs. I have truly never seen anything like this. It’s sad. . . .

We play with 10, DC with 12 . . . I am done playing in a league where the game is no longer in control of the players.

Multiple choice question. Why did the refs call back our goal? Is it A) Free kick taken before the whistle B) Indirect not direct C) Offsides D) Foul

Those are all the reasons we heard so I think E is the only one that makes sense.

E) We just want Washington to win regardless.

Twitter gave me the ability to talk directly to fans. The WPS, which had encouraged players to tweet, didn’t love Twitter so much anymore.

League officials slapped me with a one-game suspension, eight hours of community service, and a $2,500 fine. When Tony DiCicco had ripped the officiating a year earlier, he was fined $200. When high-profile players like Kate Markgraf and Pearcie said things about the refs, they were barely disciplined. The league was acting out of desperation. It was clearly falling apart: its commissioner had just been forced out, and several teams were on the brink of shutting down. But don’t say anything’s wrong! Just smile and keep on playing!

The season was over. I didn’t know if there would be another one. But I had bigger concerns than whether the WPS was going to survive. My entire career was at risk.

V.

My right shoulder had been throbbing and aching for years, the result of more than a decade of abuse—hard landings on dives, bone-rattling contact with players and the turf. I was the Queen of Advil, but I refused to give in to the pain. After Portugal in 2009, I had an MRI because doctors suspected I had a torn ligament in my elbow. Turned out I did have an injured elbow, but the doctor was most concerned about my shoulder: he said it was disintegrating, that there was nothing holding it together.

“My shoulder is the least of my worries,” I told him. “I’ve been living with that pain for years.”

They told me surgery to repair my elbow would require twelve-months of recovery, so I decided not to have that operation because I wouldn’t be ready for the World Cup. So I just plodded ahead. My shoulder got worse and worse as the year progressed, until it was screaming at me with every dive and every block.

Listen to me! My shoulder screamed. I’m your livelihood. You had better take care of me.

My closest teammates, Aya and Tina, were concerned. They saw how much pain I was in every day. They kept encouraging me to take care of it. One day, toward the end of that second WPS season, I gasped in pain and walked off the practice field. I couldn’t take it anymore. I went home to Seattle and started to gather medical opinions. If I had listened to my body instead of trying to tough it out, I would have had surgery right after the 2008 Olympics. But now I faced a decision: surgery on my shoulder and elbow would mean that I would miss the 2011 World Cup. Surgery on just my shoulder still put me at risk of missing the World Cup. No surgery meant there was a chance that my shoulder would blow at any minute.

And the World Cup was just ten months away.

I talked to Pia. What would my status be if I had the surgery? I knew better than to assume that any starting position was written in stone. She assured me that when I was medically cleared, I’d return as the starter.

One night, I called Paul four different times, bouncing around like a moth trapped in a lamp. I was going to get the surgery and bust through my rehab. No I wasn’t, I would just suffer through the pain. Yes, I don’t think I can keep going without surgery. No—what if I don’t come back? I didn’t know what to do.

On September 21, I was on a conference call with the WPS. My appeal was denied. The ridiculous league was upholding my punishment. I listened from Birmingham, Alabama, where I was meeting with Dr. James Andrews, the world-renowned orthopedic surgeon.

First, he did a physical strength test. “You’re fine, kiddo,” he said.

I was surprised. Then he went to his computer and looked at the images. My muscles around my shoulder were so strong that Dr. Andrews was fooled into thinking the shoulder was functional. In truth, the muscles were the only things holding the joint together. “Can