Foudy Keeps Strong Focus

After the U.S. women’s soccer team finished its workout Friday on the Ronaldo Field at Nike’s headquarters, Julie Foudy sat in the chair behind one of the swoosh-embossed nets and said she had a stressful experience to relate.

You wondered if it was about something that happened in the 1-0 Women’s World Cup quarterfinal victory over Norway. Or maybe it was about Germany, the United States’ opponent in Sunday’s semifinal at PGE Park.

No, it was about the difficulties she had voting absentee in California’s recall election. When she finally reached the proper authorities and explained her circumstances, out of the state for a month while playing for the national team, they put her in the same category as military personnel serving overseas and sent her an e-mail ballot.

Until then, she said, she was in a panic because she had seen the polls that showed Arnold Schwarzenegger leading. That’s Foudy, a left winger everywhere except on the field, where she’s a midfielder.

If you want to talk to someone on the U.S. women’s team about downloading music, you talk to Angela Hucles.

If you want to talk to someone about raising children, you talk to Joy Fawcett. She has three. (When Patience Avre bowled her over in the Nigeria game, Avre asked her, “How’s your babies?”)

If you want to talk about football, the kind played in Alabama, you talk to Cat Reddick.

You talk to Foudy if you want to talk politics.

Or Title IX. She was on the president’s Title IX commission, joining Donna de Varona in writing a minority report that they unveiled on the Capitol steps. Their position prevailed.

Or anything having to do with gender equity in sports. Last December, she concluded her two-year term as president of the Women’s Sports Foundation. She wouldn’t be 32 for another month, the youngest person ever to serve in that position.

Or the Women’s United Soccer Assn. While playing for the San Diego Spirit, she was on the WUSA’s board of directors and is one of the forces behind the effort to bring back the league after it folded last month.

Or Ayn Rand. Foudy is on Page 851 of “Atlas Shrugged.”

Or designing kitchens. She is doing one for a team administrator’s condominium.

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Her teammates call her Loudy Foudy.

“Talk, talk, talk, that’s all Julie does,” Brandi Chastain says. “You can not shut her up.”

That, Chastain adds, is a good thing.

Foudy is the coach on the field, aware not only of where her teammates are but where they should be. If one is not the same as the other, she lets them know.

“She’s our intellectual,” Chastain said. “She’ll say, ‘We’ve run up the right side 10 straight times, and we’ve gotten nothing out of it. Don’t you think we probably shouldn’t do that again?’ ”

Foudy, who is from Mission Viejo, is one of four U.S. players who have played in all four Women’s World Cups and one of two, along with Mia Hamm, who have scored in all four. But Chastain said most of the things Foudy does to help the team aren’t on the statistic sheets.

“Like against Norway, she played on the right flank,” Chastain said. “It’s not her favorite position, but she did it without complaining. She ran as hard and as fast as she could until she couldn’t run any more. Some players would have coasted to make sure they lasted 90 minutes. But that’s not Julie. She goes all out.”

When the time came to choose the captain, there was no question it would be Foudy.

She is as appreciated by the young players who have joined the team this year as by the veterans. Reddick, the team’s only amateur, said she idolized Foudy while growing up in Alabama and used to wear her No. 11.

That didn’t stop Reddick from playing a practical joke on Foudy during a trip to Portugal this year, sneaking into Foudy’s room and putting George W. Bush signs on the walls. When Foudy pulled down her bedspread, she saw a large W written on the sheet.

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Don’t get Foudy started on politics. As she says in the U.S. team’s media guide, her favorite morning activity is “reading the paper out loud while having a friendly debate on politics.” (She also said in the media guide that her worst moment of the year was “realizing that [teammate] Aly Wagner was 7 years old when I started playing on the national team.”)

Many of her friends would like to see Foudy in politics. Donna Lopiano, executive director of the Women’s Sports Foundation, told the Philadelphia Inquirer she had arranged meetings in Washington for Foudy with politicians and other political pros so that they might advise her on a career in their sport.

“I would love it if that were in her future,” Jocelyn Samuels, vice president of education for the National Women’s Law Center, said Friday from her office in Washington. “She is really committed to advancing gender equity and the social welfare.

“My only regret would be that I don’t live in California and wouldn’t be able to vote for her. Can you tell I think she’s wonderful?”

Foudy says that she likes politics more than she does politicians. She doesn’t aspire to become one of them. But she would like to remain involved in public-policy issues. She also wants to have children when she retires after next summer’s Olympics. She is married to Ian Sawyers, who coached San Jose in the WUSA.

Meantime, she can’t think of doing anything better than what she’s doing now.

“The other night, we were flying on the team charter, and I was lying down on the couch reading my book, which I’m totally obsessed with, and I didn’t have a care in the world,” she said. “I just kept thinking, ‘This is the life.’ ”

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Randy Harvey can be reached at randy.harvey@latimes.com.