It’s Been Heaven for These Seven
Ask Michelle Akers where her gold medals are and the answer you’ll get might be surprising.
“The ’91 one is framed with my jersey,” she said, “and the gold Olympic one is just sitting in a drawer. When people ask me for it, I get it out, but otherwise that’s just past. The memories are there.”
This is not to say Akers regards her 1996 Olympic gold medal as less of an achievement than the medal that was draped around her neck at Tianhe Stadium in Guangzhou, China, in 1991, when the United States won the first Women’s World Championship.
On the contrary.
It’s just that for her and six other starters on the U.S. team that plays Germany tonight in the quarterfinals of the 1999 Women’s World Cup, China ’91 is a glittering memory that time cannot erase.
They were much younger then, the significant seven, and after being the heart and soul of the first American team to win a soccer world championship, they partied deep into the night at the White Swan hotel beside the Pearl River.
Akers was the oldest at 25. Next came Brandi Chastain, Joy Fawcett and Carla Overbeck, each of them 23. Julie Foudy and Kristine Lilly were only 20. And the baby of the group was Mia Hamm. She was 19.
Tonight, at Jack Kent Cooke Stadium in Landover, Md., the seven will line up together again, just as they have every year since 1988.
Regardless of being soccer’s first women’s world champions, of being soccer’s first women’s Olympic champions, of all the other honors that have come their way, that they have stayed together and kept playing at the highest level is perhaps their most remarkable achievement.
“That is pretty amazing,” U.S. Coach Tony DiCicco said. “But the thing you’ve got to remember is that they were all teenagers when they started. The core of the team, in many ways, is not even 30. Some of the players are just getting into their 30s.
“This has been their league. These are professional players who wanted to play at the highest level. If somebody played 10 years in a top league, we probably wouldn’t think much of it. But they haven’t had a league to play in. . . . This is where they’ve been able to realize their competitive drives and dreams and satisfy those types of energies within them.”
But it is more than competition. It is also very much about camaraderie.
“This team has been together, gosh, since ’87 or ‘88,” Overbeck said. “We’ve grown up together. We go through hard times. We have great times. I think this team is unique in that we all get along. It’s amazing how much we genuinely like each other, and we have so much fun together.
“I think when you stop having fun is when it’s time to stop. But this team continues to have a great time every time we’re together.”
In 1991, Overbeck was still Carla Werden. She had not yet married. She had not yet given birth to a son, Jackson, now 1 1/2. And yet here she is, only two victories away from returning to Pasadena, the city of her own birth, for another world championship final, this one at the Rose Bowl.
Five of the seven have married since ’91. Fawcett, who was Joy Biefeld in ‘91, also has children in tow, her daughters Katelyn Rose and Carli, and their nanny, being very much a part of the U.S. team’s entourage.
Lilly has become the world-record holder in number of international appearances, just as Hamm has become the world’s all-time leading goal scorer.
“We love the game and we love to play at the highest level,” Lilly said. “We’re competitive and we love each other. We love seeing each other, playing with each other.
“When you’ve known people for so long, you don’t want it to end. Whatever it may be. But we still love the game of soccer, and I think that’s what keeps us coming back.”
Chastain sees something more at work.
“I think it’s a testament to not only the hard work that each one of those players puts in, but I think it says something about women athletes in general,” she said. “I mean, I don’t think you see too many players in men’s athletics who are on one team for 10 years, even if their career lasts that long.
“To play at the highest level for that long is pretty impressive, I think.”
Especially since the U.S. women, despite the championships they have won and despite the crowds they draw, do not get much in the way of financial reward.
“That’s even more impressive, isn’t it?” Chastain said.
“I think that’s the bottom line for this team,” she added. “Fans know that we go out there and work hard for ourselves and our teammates and our country. And we’re doing it because we want to put a good product out there, not because we’re making millions of dollars.
“It’s because we love soccer and we love what soccer has given to us and now we’re going to give it back. It’s a simple equation. It’s so simple.”
Simple to say, yes, but not simple to achieve. A great deal of thought and large amount of work has gone into building the closeness that is the hallmark of the U.S. team.
“It comes down to the very basics of the stuff we do,” DiCicco said. “If you see the equipment list for practice, you’ll see Hamm’s name up there, Akers’ name up there, Foudy’s name up there, water, ice, bibs, cones. We don’t have a rookie responsibility to handle those things, because we ought to do it together on the field and we ought to do it together off the field.
“That’s the way they want it. Carla Overbeck doesn’t want somebody else doing these jobs. She wants to be part of it. And when we’re unloading a bus, you’re going to see Carla and Lil [Lilly] and the veterans there first. So what we’ve built--not me personally, but as a team--is a culture.
“Because if I’m a young player and I see Kristine Lilly going over to take bags off the bus without being asked, or to help load bags onto the belt at the airport, the message has got to sink home or else it’s going to come home down the road and bite me.
“If you’re not ready to share the responsibilities, both on and off the field, on this team, you’re going to have trouble living in this culture. That’s something that I think the team leadership creates.”
Can the next generation do as well, or is this a unique team, a once-in-a-lifetime coming together of all the elements that make for sporting success? Were Overbeck and friends so much better in ’91 than the young players now waiting to take their place?
“It’s been so long I can’t remember back that far,” she said. “But I know there is some great talent coming up.
“It makes us feel comfortable as veterans knowing that when we go and finally retire and give up the national team, they’ll just step right in and continue the success because the federation has started [women’s] under-16, under-18 and under-20 teams. They understand that the development of the youth is critical to the team’s success.”
Indeed, once World Cup ’99 has disappeared from the front page and the nightly news, the American stars of 2003 and 2007 will be out there trying to match their predecessors’ success.
In August, assistant coach Lauren Gregg takes the U.S. under-20 national team to Iceland for the Nordic Cup. Later that month, Shannon Higgins-Cirovski takes the under-18 national team to Canada to compete in the Pan Am Games in Winnipeg.
Shannon Higgins-Cirovski was Shannon Higgins in ‘91, a starter on the world championship team. The legacy is being passed on.
But no matter what happens tonight or in the rest of the World Cup, it won’t be until after the 2000 Sydney Olympics that the seven stalwarts--Akers, Chastain, Fawcett, Foudy, Hamm, Lilly and Overbeck--will bid their adieus.
They’re still having too much fun.
“I have a tremendous respect for this team,” DiCicco said. “It’s an honor, an absolute honor, to coach them. It’s a privilege.
“I think the world of them, not only as players but as people. I’m proud of them.”
Best of all, when the inevitable does happen, the bonds that have been formed over the last decade will continue to keep the players and coaches together.
“It’s a good feeling,” Overbeck said. “These are the friends we’re going to have for life.”
WEDNESDAY’S SCORES
China: 2
Russia: 0
****
Norway: 3
Sweden: 1
****
TONIGHT’S GAMES
Landover, Md.
United States vs. Germany / 4, ESPN
Brazil vs Nigeria / 6:30, ESPN2
