Why It Was More Than a Game

People keep saying what a milestone it is that Elizabeth Dole is a serious presidential candidate, and while I say, “You go, girl,” her accomplishment never affects me the way the sight of Mia Hamm does. I start to talk about her, and I can’t because I get a catch in my throat. So much that is wonderful about being a woman in 1999 is embodied in the U.S. women’s soccer team: their sticking with it, their unassuming ways, their heart. The first time my daughter and I saw that captivating Nike commercial, the one in which four teammates–and the dentist’s nurse–ask to have two fillings because one player has to, we burst out laughing and then blinked back tears.

When I was young in the Dark Ages, I played field hockey with a stick that had duct tape around its base. The nun who coached us would pin up her long blue sleeves, hold an instruction manual in front of her and pray. We sewed numbers on old gym suits to make them look like uniforms, while the guys wore miracle-fabric football jerseys over molded plastic sufficient to protect them in the event of a nuclear attack.

I look back to those days and wonder what the dads devoted to Little League and their sons’ football were thinking. Didn’t they feel slighted that their daughters weren’t in on the fun, not to mention getting their characters built? I was a tomboy, and my father spent countless hours playing catch with me. But he never expected that there would be organized softball for girls. Of course, there was a part of him that overworried about my infrastructure. Girls have babies, after all! When my brother got a detached retina playing tackle, my parents didn’t blanch. One day I came home with a bloody nose, and I thought my father was going to pass out.

No one was used to seeing girls throwing, batting, kicking and catapulting themselves around the place. Because girls didn’t see other girls doing it, we didn’t know what we were missing. Even pros had it hard. Bobby Riggs advised the queen of women’s tennis, Billie Jean King, that when playing doubles she should “stand in the alley, and don’t hit anything that doesn’t hit you first.”

But by the time my daughter was in grade school, Title IX had kicked in. I found myself becoming a soccer mom before pollsters knew there was such a thing. Courtney became a Stoddert Stomper, playing on the team at the neighborhood school. There she was in a bright gold mesh-and-Lycra uniform, shoes with cleats. Much of the time, it wasn’t pretty; the kids all went where the ball was. They were sprinting, passing, lunging and kicking with abandon, just like the boys. I stood there amazed. A child I hardly recognized as my own hurled herself toward the goal, squealing like a maniac at the satisfaction of competing like the boys, and delighted at how much fun it was to get covered in mud without any consequences. I think it was then that the seeds of putting more of her bones in jeopardy by playing college rugby were planted.

My parents came to the last game of the season–they were quantity-time grandparents and would have come to watch her sleep if I had let them–when the Stompers had almost congealed into a team, intermittently sticking with their positions, occasionally getting a goal. We would have many other touching times together, but it is hard to think of a happier moment than watching my father cheer as his granddaughter went splat into the ground trying to block a goal. If he cringed, he kept it inside. No after-game drink of Gatorade has ever been so sweet.

So thanks, Hamm and Scurry and Chastain and Foudy. Courtney and I will have two fillings.