The Birth of a Legacy
The story of the world championship winning 1991 U.S. Women's National Team
This long read was originally published in 2007. Any stats or records that have since been tied or surpassed are indicated in the footnotes.
(August 2007) - Beginnings sometimes get overlooked.
Embryonic events can be obscured. Nascent signals can be concealed. Burgeoning significance can be misplaced.
Consider the start of the U.S. Women’s National Soccer Team’s legacy as evidence. What do you see?
Brandi Chastain lacing a penalty kick into the back of the net, whipping off her shirt to expose a black Nike sports bra, twirling her jersey in the air, falling to her knees, clenching her hands and unleashing a scream only to be drowned out by the cheers of 90,185 fans.
No, the pedigree of a dominant champion was not born on the Rose Bowl floor on a hot July afternoon in 1999 with an estimated 40 million viewers watching on ABC. Go back further.
A cluster of 16 star-spangled women brandishing flags and waving to the home crowd, 76,489 strong, on their victory lap, and then together mounting the top step of the Olympic podium, their right hands with red, white and blue painted fingernails covering their hearts, their voices singing the words of the National Anthem, reveling in winning the first Olympic Gold Medal awarded in women’s soccer.
No, the first words of the story were not written in front of an adoring crowd at the 1996 Atlanta Games.
Those moments in 1999 and 1996 were not the origins of the winning tradition, the “whatever it takes” mentality, the attack at all costs mindset. Those moments did not capture the images, smells, sounds, tastes and emotions that accompany the inception of greatness. Those moments never resonated with the dawn of a new era.
But those are the memories lodged in fans’ and society’s consciousness.
“The joke is that our pictures are all in black and white and everybody else’s are in color because if you look at any coverage now, it’s always after they win the (1996) Olympics,” said Kim (Maslin) Kammerdeiner, a member of the trailblazing 1991 squad. “They have these beautiful uniforms and everything is in color. Brandi’s pulling her shirt over her head. If you ask people when it began, that’s what they remember.”
The true seeds of the legacy are found in the saga of the 1991 National Team when a handful of female soccer players, a few coaches and team personnel, and a smattering of family and friends traveled to China for the inaugural FIFA Women’s World Championship. There was no added luggage of expectations, media coverage or fan approval. All that accompanied them was a dream to be the first World Champions in women’s soccer.
As the National Team will return to China in September for the 2007 FIFA Women’s World Cup, now is the time to celebrate the beginning, to spring free the stories of a legacy’s birth, to turn the black and white still frames into streams bursting with color.
Megan McCarthy’s face glowed. A starting position and a shoe contract were hers, all on the same day!
A tough, quick defender, Megaleeni, as her teammates called her, foresaw where the opposition would play the ball next. She excelled at the College of William and Mary and won the Women’s Collegiate Player of the Year award in 1987.
The same year she debuted as the National Team’s starting sweeper. She erased any problems that seeped past the two marking defensive backs. And she was daring. In practice, she would gain possession of the ball and attempt to dribble down field, taking on the opposition one-v-one, a no-no for the last field player stationed in front of the goal.
But when Carla Werden, a natural leader and impenetrable defender, joined the team in July of 1988, McCarthy’s days at sweeper were limited. The transition to marking back began.
Throughout the spring and summer of 1991 McCarthy learned the nuances of her new position. She made all of the National Team’s travel rosters: first Bulgaria, then Haiti, then a European tour through France, Holland, Germany and Denmark. McCarthy started here and there, but most often was a substitute.
In August, she got her chance. U.S. head coach Anson Dorrance tinkered with his lineup three months in advance of the inaugural FIFA Women’s World Championship and inserted McCarthy as a starter for a trio of matches in China.
At the end of the month, the team reunited in New Britain, Conn. for a match against Norway. The 1987 European Champions presented a test. They had competed internationally for 14 years. For the United States, on the other hand, this was just its 11th home game and first outside of Blaine, Minn.
The day of the game, Dorrance pulled McCarthy aside. He noted her diligence and how her performance was peaking. The starting job belonged to her.
McCarthy’s day grew brighter still when she inked a shoe contract with Lanzera making her one of just seven National Team players with an individual endorsement deal.
On Aug. 30, 1991, the largest recorded crowd to witness a National Team game on U.S. soil packed Willowbrook Park. The thrill of playing before 5,563 fans, signing a shoe contract and winning a starting job before the World Championship pulsed through McCarthy’s veins.
Scoreless in the second half, McCarthy ran down the field chasing after the ball. A Norwegian charged in with her shoulder lowered.
McCarthy’s knee buckled. As if a knife plunged into her leg, pain ripped through the joint. She crumpled to the ground screaming. Goalkeeper Kim Maslin-Kammerdeiner came to her teammate’s side.
“Stop yelling!” she said.
McCarthy reduced her screams to moans. The agony burned in her right knee for 10 minutes before it subsided. The damage, however, could not heal so rapidly. Her Anterior Cruciate Ligament was torn. Her World Championship dream, so rich just an hour earlier, disintegrated in one typical challenge for the ball.
“It was just a freak, wrong moment,” she said.
Her teammates were devastated. Most of the players in contention for the World Championship roster debuted for the U.S. by 1987. A few straggled in the following July. A $10 per diem was their only pay. In 1991, the U.S. Soccer Federation gave them $50 a month towards health insurance. They wore hand-me-down uniforms from the men’s youth teams. The players either attended college or hopped between jobs while they trained on their own. Each summer many of the players reunited to harmonize on the soccer field, swap stories over nightly card games and envision competing in a long talked about world championship.
“(Megan) really, I think, represented all that was great about our team – perseverance, hard work, discipline, character, honesty,” said Tracey Bates. “She just embodied every great quality that our team had. Everyone was heartbroken that she had worked so hard and won a position, and then you know. It was just so tragic.”
The coaches had to devise a means to compensate for McCarthy’s loss. A deep pool of reserves ready to negate the effects of injury did not exist for the National Team in its formative years. The team’s psyche also needed repair.
“To replace a player like her was hard for her ability and her experience and also because we were such a family back then,” said assistant coach Lauren Gregg. “To lose part of your family and then sort of go on without them was emotionally difficult.”
As Helen Keller wrote, “When one door of happiness closes, another opens; but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one which has been opened for us.”
Although McCarthy’s opportunity had died, someone else’s chance sprung into life. But whose?
September brings change in North Carolina.
The cool, dry air, out of sight and out of mind for the past three months, attempts to barge right back in with autumn on its wings. But the heavy, humid heat that accompanied the summer, tucking in every night and enveloping every morning, yearns to extend its stay.
Clouds build; Wind rises; Raindrops slap; Lightning slashes; Torrents pelt; Thunder roars; Fronts collide; Mary Harvey arrives.
A goalkeeper, Harvey traversed an unconventional path to the National Team’s final Women’s World Championship preparatory camp in Chapel Hill. In that era, if a player had not made her international debut by the summer after her senior collegiate season, her chances to ever represent the United States were minuscule. In 1988, a year after her graduation from the University of California-Berkeley and without an international appearance to her name, Harvey figured her soccer career was over.
Intelligent and determined, Harvey accepted a job with Andersen Consulting, now Accenture. On a whim while she worked on a long-term financial services project in Germany, she tried out for FSV Frankfurt, a local team in the women’s Bundesliga, the European nation’s top league. They signed her that night.
The first American to play in the Bundesliga, Harvey finally drew the attention of the National Team coaches. She earned her first cap in a scoreless tie against Poland in 1989. With just two weeks of annual vacation from Andersen Consulting, Harvey was only available for half of the National Team’s matches the following year, a three-game set at the North America Cup in Blaine, Minn. Despite just a few, rare appearances in National Team camps, she continued to excel at FSV Frankfurt and helped her club win the ‘89/’90 German Cup. A perfectionist who lacked innate talent, Harvey depended upon a zealous work ethic in the weight room and solid shot stopping in front of goal.
Still Harvey’s opportunity to make the 1991 Women’s World Championship was almost derailed, but not by her lack of vacation days. Injured in late 1990, doctors misdiagnosed the source of the pain in her right foot. When correctly identified, surgery to insert a pin was required. A Jones fracture, a break below the small toe, kept her foot in a cast until April of 1991. She did not ditch her crutches until May.
Harvey knew time was short. The National Team’s pre-World Championship activities had commenced in March with training camps and games. In June, she took a six-month unpaid leave of absence through November’s World Championship from Andersen Consulting. She had to give herself a shot.
All summer long Harvey ran, trained and lifted in solitary to increase her fitness. Her lone venture into a team environment came when she competed in a non-National Team tournament in Canada to test her progress.
Meanwhile, Kim Maslin-Kammerdeiner and Amy Allman grinded with the National Team.
Guarding the goal for George Mason, Maslin-Kammerdeiner stunned the University of North Carolina, the three-time defending national champion, for its first ever NCAA tournament loss, a 2-0 shutout in the 1985 NCAA Final. Maslin-Kammerdeiner loathed her opposition. She viewed them as her mortal enemies. She was mean.
“No one messed with her,” Allmann said. “But her bark was way worse than her bite. People that got to know her closely knew that she would give you the shirt off her back and was nice, nice, nice, but when she got on the field, she was an animal.”
Maslin-Kammerdeiner also suffered an injury and worked her way back onto the team. In her debut year of 1988, she tore her knee’s Posterior Cruciate Ligament in a collision with a teammate during practice. Three years later she rejoined the National Team and by August, with the Women’s World Championship around the corner, entrenched herself as the starter.
Allmann fell into the backup role even though she was not physically imposing, a standard trait for a ‘keeper. The goal dwarfed the 5’4” Allmann. Yet she was the team’s starting goalkeeper in 1987 and 1988.
More important than her lack of height was her impact on the squad’s chemistry. The team comedian, Allmann possessed bundles of creativity. Her clever poems poked fun at her teammates and coaches and injected a needed dose of humor that transcended onto the field.
“She had a great charisma with the players,” said goalkeeper coach Tony DiCicco. “It was almost like her teammates wanted to play for her.”
Two months from the Nov. 17 kickoff of the inaugural Women’s World Championship, the serious and reserved Harvey was thrown into the mix. Divisions materialized among the players.
“They didn’t like me, at least at the beginning,” Harvey said. “I think they warmed up to me afterwards when they realized I could help them win. But I wasn’t everybody’s favorite person.
“I don’t think Kim and Amy were too happy about it. Later I think we all got past that but it was pretty rough for a while there. I think there was some resentment because I wasn’t at training camps with everybody. I’d been away and other people had performed well. I couldn’t do anything about that. I was just out there trying to do the best that I could.”
Harvey, like a shy elementary child going outside for her first recess at a new school, was left to fend for herself.
“She never really had that building time with us,” Maslin-Kammerdeiner said. “We had been together blood, sweat and tears for many years and she just came over right before we went to the World Championship. I don’t know that she ever got much of a fair shot with our team personality-wise.”
Just a pair of tune-up matches against China remained prior to the Women’s World Championship. Allmann started the first, a 2-1 loss on Oct. 4. Harvey made her 1991 National Team debut in the second, a 2-0 victory on Oct. 12. Maslin-Kammerdeiner never played. Instead, she stewed on the bench with the added insult of the National Team playing the first match 45 minutes from her hometown of Rutledge, Pa. and the second at her alma mater.
“I was told all along that they only needed to see (Harvey) play to build her confidence, but I would be the starting ‘keeper,” Maslin-Kammerdeiner said. “As it turned out, Anson (Dorrance) knew all along that he was going to bring her in as the starter.”
Dorrance, the National Team head coach, denied harboring any preconceived notions.
“You invite in the best players you can and then they battle it out in practice to see who wins an opportunity to start,” he said.
Roster spots that once seemed certain were now in flux. Only 18 players would travel to China. Conventional wisdom held that just two places would be reserved for goalkeepers. Allmann, now uncertain about her chances of representing the U.S. at the World Championship, was at a loss regarding her relationship with Harvey.
“It was weird because everyone thought we were so uncomfortable with each other, especially Harv,” Allmann said. “I think she felt horrible for my position, but we never really talked about it.”
Despite the awkwardness, all three goalkeepers were named to the Women’s World Championship roster joining defenders Debbie Belkin, Joy Biefeld, Linda Hamilton, Lori Henry and Carla Werden; midfielders Tracey Bates, Julie Foudy, Mia Hamm, Shannon Higgins and Kristine Lilly; and forwards Michelle Akers, Brandi Chastain, Wendy Gebauer, April Heinrichs and Carin Jennings.
Allmann gained the final place on the strength of her character.
“Those last couple of spots on the roster have to be for team chemistry to make sure that everybody is supportive and are role models on the bench and still ready to step in and play a role,” said DiCicco. “Amy fit that to a T.”
Maslin-Kammerdeiner dropped into the backup role. Resigned to the bench, her love of the game dissipated.
“Going from the starting ‘keeper for a while and playing with everybody and feeling so confident to that, it was brutal,” she said.
Harvey assumed the starting spot, a position she coveted despite the difficult transition.
“Of course, (she was) maybe feeling like the redheaded stepchild at first, but you know what, I never heard her say one word about that,” said Hamilton. “She just knew she had a job to do and was going to do it well.”
On the eve of the inaugural Women’s World Championship, raw emotions had to give way to a common sense of team and purpose. Werden, the 22-year-old sweeper, urged her teammates to push forward together.
“For Carla, it was about whether or not you were good enough,” Harvey said. “As long as I was good enough, she had no problem and was happy to be on the same field with me. I needed that at some points and I appreciated that.”
The storm, leaving broken branches and battered dwellings in its wake, passed through ushering in a delicate peace. Would it last?
The U.S. National Team first met its 1991 Women’s World Championship foes far from a Chinese stadium.
After a two-hour flight from Raleigh to New York City’s John F. Kennedy International Airport, an eight-hour trans-Atlantic crossing to Geneva, Switzerland, and an hour Alps-leaper to Zurich, not to mention countless time spent waiting for connections, the National Team members strode onto an MD-11 plane for the 14-hour haul to Hong Kong and came face to face with the five European participants in the Women’s World Championship: the Danes, Germans, Italians, Norwegians and Swedes.
FIFA, the world governing body of soccer and organizer of the Women’s World Championship, plotted the National Team’s travel itinerary. Not only were the Americans sent on a roundabout route to China, but they also encountered this pre-tournament stare down across a 19-inch aisle at upwards of 35,000 feet.
Surrounded by patches of Dane red and white; Deutsch black, orange and white; Italia blue and white; Norge navy and red; and Swede yellow and blue; the Americans in their red, white and blue crammed their travel weary bodies once more into the stiff, tight confines of coach seats. Tired, aggravated and uncomfortable as they were, head coach Anson Dorrance grabbed the players’ attention as he strolled past.
“Better get some rest ladies because we’re running when we get in,” he said.
With a draining fitness session to greet them upon their arrival, the players squeezed thoughts of their nearby opposition out of their minds, closed their eyes and drifted off to visions of their final destination.
China was no mythical land of fiery dragons, the Forbidden City palace and the endless stretching Great Wall to the players. If the U.S. reached the final of the Women’s World Championship, the National Team would play one more match in China (15) than it had on American soil (14) since the program began in 1985.
The team first traveled to the world’s most populous country in August 1987, and the trip held more significance than featuring the international debuts of a quartet of teenagers: 15-year-old Mia Hamm, 16-year-old Kristine Lilly, 18-year-old Linda Hamilton and 19-year-old Joy Biefeld (Fawcett). (A fifth teenager, 16-year-old Julie Foudy, also went on the trip but did not log any game minutes.)
A ragtag group of high school-ers, collegians and recent graduates, the players on the 1987 squad were among the first Americans to enter China in almost 40 years. As the Cold War began on the heels of World War II, China plunged deeper into a civil war between a communist faction and nationalist forces, supported monetarily by the U.S. government. When the Chinese Communist Party, under the leadership of Mao Zedong, established the People’s Republic of China on Oct. 1, 1949, relations with the U.S. worsened as the American government, led by President Harry Truman, refused to recognize the new regime.
The Sino-American relationship further deteriorated during the Korean War. In October 1950 as United Nations forces neared the China-Korea border, Mao ordered “Chinese People’s Volunteers” into Korea to ward off the approaching troops, which included the U.S. military. For the next twenty years, interaction between the U.S. and China was frigid.
Richard Nixon’s visit to China, the first by a U.S. president, in February 1972 signaled a thaw in the standoff. On Jan. 1, 1979 with Jimmy Carter as president, the U.S. and China resumed diplomatic relations. China, under the authority of Deng Xiaoping, placed monumental emphasis on economic reform with the promotion of the Four Modernizations: industry, agriculture, science and technology, and national defense. Westerners were called upon for their expertise in these areas. China’s gates officially opened.
After the National Team’s introductory tour in 1987 to cities outside of Beijing, the U.S. trekked to China twice more. In June 1988, the team visited Panyu, lying at the convergence of the Pearl River and the South China Sea, and in August 1991, it stopped in a handful of cities near the North Korea border. Each time the players returned home with not only a new appreciation for life in the United States, but also plenty of tales to share.
Once the team was onboard an airplane motoring down the runway for a flight between Chinese cities. As the plane lifted into the air, an exit door plopped onto a female passenger. The pilot decided this mishap was no reason for alarm and rather then return to the airport, the plane kept on towards its destination.
“We didn’t fly more than a mile high the whole time,” said Shannon Higgins. “We were dodging cows and stuff we were so low. It was a propeller plane and you’d be thinking ‘At any time, this thing can go down.’”
Travel on the ground was just as adventurous. Stifling heat and humidity clogged the air one afternoon when the players climbed onto a train for a journey through rural China. At the end of the aisle in the corner of the railcar was a hole in the floor that looked down onto the tracks, their restroom for the next 17 hours. Smoke poured through the open windows of the coal train. The next morning they disembarked with a coat of thick, black soot stuck to their faces.
At the Chinese hotels, running water was problematic. There was either too little, sometimes it only came on for an hour a day; or too much, on occasion bathrooms flooded and the players’ flip-flops floated through the room.
When the players left the comforts of their lodging, they were greeted by the countless stares of a people conditioned to the monotony of charcoal-colored hair and almond-brown eyes.
“Adults would come up to us, especially the blonde players, and grab our hair,” said Carin Jennings, a blonde with wavy curls. “They’d yank it because they couldn’t believe it was real.”
The Chinese children hid behind their parents’ legs scared of women whose appearance was unlike any they had ever spied. The players pulled balloons and candy out of their pockets and handed them to the astonished youngsters.
Food markets lined the roads. The players, however, did not purchase any of the produce, never mind the unrefrigerated meat that baked in the sun with flies swirling about. The open-air markets offered such Chinese delicacies as duck feet, pig ears and dried flattened pig faces. Anson Dorrance discovered one of the latter in his toilet during the Women’s World Championship.
The stench on the streets was poignant, a mixture of mud, rot, decay, engine exhaust, body odor, excrement, urine and spoiled food. The players often joked they needed scratch-n-sniff stickers to take home so their friends and family could get the full effect of the repulsing smell filling their nostrils.
“It was pretty filthy,” said Kim Maslin-Kammerdeiner. “They did have these little women who wore all white with these little white masks. They had these huge, real primitive brooms and they would sweep the streets, which we never understood because it was so filthy.“
And in every direction, there were thousands and thousands of bicycles that clogged the roadways, rested beside buildings and slowed the progress of the team bus. Rickshaws added to the congestion.
“It was like we have never in our lives seen so many bicycles, more bikes than cars,” said Judy Foudy, Julie’s mother. “Women in suits were going to work on their bike and going home with their chickens hanging off the handlebars.”
Bicycles were not just the working women’s chosen mode of transportation. Chinese KGB agents pedaled behind the players to keep a close eye on the Americans’ activities as they meandered through the cities.
“At the time, it was sort of silly for us, so we would try to lose the KGB and get bikes and mingle into the crowd,” Linda Hamilton laughed. “Well clearly we looked very different.”
Unbeknownst to the players, the Chinese government agents were not the only ones on their trail.
Donning the straw hats they had recently bought, Allmann and Biefeld, always found exploring foreign countries together, walked out of the team’s hotel and then exited the hotel’s compound in search of water buffalo. Massive and powerful, water buffalo are ox-like horned animals that can weigh more than a ton. Allmann wanted a picture beside one of these gigantic beasts and Biefeld was game.
The adventurous American duo cajoled a ride in a cart from a non-English speaking farmer who sported a long, wispy mustache and a mole sprouting with hair. They trundled off into the country, but they never posed beside a monstrous water buffalo.
American security forces chased them down and dragged them back to the hotel where they were reprimanded before a concerned delegation 30 to 40 strong.
Although they shot one less picture for their photo album on that trip, there were still plenty of memories waiting to be made, stories waiting to be composed and fresh images waiting to be snapped upon the team’s arrival in China for the 1991 Women’s World Championship.
There are two ways to go into a tournament.
One is to sneak in on tiptoes, avoid eye-catching newspaper headlines, elude the cameras’ bright glares and shun the crowd’s roar. Before anyone realizes the threat such a surreptitious team possesses, the trophy has been snatched and the team has slipped home to a muted, yet joyful, celebration.
The other is to strut your stuff. Flaunt your self believe, showcase your enthusiasm, parade your ambitions. The tournament transforms into a coronation for a poised team destined for greatness.
With Anson Dorrance at the helm, there was no debate over which entrance the National Team employed at the 1991 FIFA Women’s World Championship.
“We didn’t go in shy, that’s for sure,” said Brandi Chastain.
Dorrance exuded confidence, the product of a childhood that uprooted his family every few years plunking them down in another far-flung pocket of the world where a new language, customs and friends waited.
Ironically Dorrance’s parents were both born in China, his father in Shanghai and his mother in Peking. Stationed in China due to their families’ work, his father’s side for Standard Oil of New Jersey and his mother’s side for American Tobacco, Dorrance’s parents eventually met and married.
His father continued in the family line of business as an international oil executive and was posted in Bombay, India when Anson was born on April 9, 1951. Stays in Kenya; Ethiopia; Oakland, Calif.; Singapore; White Plains, N.Y.; and Belgium followed before Dorrance completed his high school education at a Swiss boarding school. In-between these assignments, Dorrance spent six-month stretches on a farm in Louisburg, N.C., 60 miles northeast of Chapel Hill, where his paternal grandmother and maternal grandfather, married after divorcing their former spouses, resided.
The few years Dorrance lived in Ethiopia changed the course of his life. Lying on the Horn of Africa, it was the country where he discovered his two great loves: a young girl, M’Liss Gary, who later became his wife; and a passionate afternoon pickup game, soccer, that evolved into his lifelong profession.
A three-time All-Atlantic Coast Conference Men’s Soccer Team selection, Dorrance played collegiately at the University of North Carolina before he returned to his alma mater in 1976 as a coach. Three years later, he was the head coach of both the Tar Heels men’s and women’s programs. He held both positions through the 1988 season after which he resigned from the men’s team to concentrate on the women’s squad, where his heart was more invested. By then he was also in charge of the fledgling U.S. Women’s National Team, a job he earned in 1986 at a U.S. Soccer Federation coaching combine in Dallas after Mike Ryan, the team’s first coach, was not retained after the U.S. posted a 0-3-1 record in its international debut, the 1985 Mundialito tournament in Italy.
Just 12 months into his National Team appointment, Dorrance came under fire.
At the 1986 FIFA Congress in Mexico City, FIFA President João Havelange pledged to hold a women’s world championship in the near future. Speculation swirled that the inaugural women’s event could be staged as early as 1990. Dorrance, in charge of a squad whose all-time record stood at a mediocre 7-7-1 on Aug. 1, 1987, had three years to build a competitive team. A decision with long-term ramifications was in his hands.
Rather than forge on with the same player pool in existence since the team’s inception in 1985, Dorrance began to whittle away players he felt could not make a lasting impact. In their place, he incorporated a pack of high potential teenagers that included Joy Biefeld, Chastain, Julie Foudy, Linda Hamilton, Mia Hamm, Kristine Lilly and Carla Werden.
At the start of 1990, the youth movement had yet to pay large dividends. The National Team’s record had improved to just 14-12-5. Luckily, the inaugural Women’s World Championship was pushed back to 1991. FIFA, unsure of the tournament’s long-term prospects, also chose not to call the competition the Women’s World Cup in reference to the World Cup that is contested by men every four years. Instead the event was dubbed the 1991 FIFA Women’s World Championship for the M&M’s Cup.
The extra year gave Dorrance and his squad more time to mature and to win over the critics.
“It was a very controversial period in our development where people were questioning who we had selected, questioning cutting the veterans,” Dorrance said. “There was just a lot of very aggressive posturing from the rest of the country that really didn’t see what I saw or obviously didn’t have an understanding for what I was hoping to have happen, which was to have these young kids grow up. To this day I’ll never forget the circumstances. Everyone was saying that we hadn’t picked the right players.”
Charges of nepotism were also hurled Dorrance’s way. Current and former University of North Carolina players including Tracey Bates, Wendy Gebauer, Hamilton, Hamm, April Heinrichs, Lori Henry, Shannon Higgins, Lilly, and Werden peppered the National Team roster.
Even some within U.S. Soccer were upset. After 4-0 and 4-2 wins over Norway and a 4-1 victory over Canada in Winnipeg in July 1990, the National Team returned to the States in August to play a three-game series against the Soviet Union, England and West Germany. Reigning women’s European champions and men’s World Cup champions, the West Germans sent a full delegation to Blaine, Minn. to watch their women play the U.S. Concern spread among some U.S. Soccer Federation leaders that they would be embarrassed by their team’s performance in front of their prestigious colleagues.
The U.S. officials directed their anxiety at Dorrance. Prior to the match against the Germans, a few of them scolded the coach for his player selections.
Insulted, Dorrance thought to himself, “Where have you been??? Didn’t you see the scores???”
On the day of the game, the U.S. leaders sat in stunned silence as the American women demolished the West German side. The U.S. rarely allowed its opponent to cross the midfield stripe in a 3-0 victory. Afterwards, the same officials who had berated Dorrance praised his decisions.
The shutout of West Germany was just one victory in a string of 18 consecutive wins from July 25, 1990 to May 25, 1991. A National Team record that still stands, that remarkable stretch gave the players and coaches a sense of what they were truly capable of accomplishing.
The U.S. utilized its customary system, an aggressive, attacking 3-4-3 formation, to obliterate its Caribbean, and Central and North American opponents in the qualification tournament for the Women’s World Championship. Staged in Haiti, the local press labeled the Americans “Team Robo Cop” due to their offense’s ruthless efficiency. In five games, the U.S. outscored its opposition by a 49-0 aggregate.
“We were just run and gun -- go, go, go,” said Lilly.
One of 12 teams to earn a berth to the inaugural Women’s World Championship, the U.S. joined Brazil, China, Chinese Taipei, Denmark, Germany, Italy, Japan, New Zealand, Nigeria, Norway and Sweden.
Despite a pair of losses to Norway and a split against China to conclude the National Team’s preparations for the Women’s World Championship, Dorrance, who took a leave of absence from his duties at the University of North Carolina, had his U.S. players prepared for a spectacular tournament.
“He’s the best motivator in the world,” said Foudy. “He got you to the point where you wanted to rip (your opponents’) heads off.”
“Anson made us feel that we were the best team and had the best players,” Lilly said. “That added to the way we played. We knew we had great talent, but he instilled that in us every time we stepped on the field.”
Dorrance’s next opportunity to empower his team came on Nov. 17, 1991 in its Women’s World Championship debut against Sweden. His team was primed to march onto the field, stomp the opposition and parade off with the prize.
Who the hell is that girl?
Julie Foudy muttered those words the first time she saw that girl slalom through five defenders to deposit the ball in the back of the net. Both were just teenagers at the time trying out for a California state team. But Foudy was far from the first, and certainly not the last, to watch that girl play in stunned disbelief.
In 1991, women’s soccer was just leaving its infancy. The first FIFA Women’s World Championship provided evidence that the female version of the game was coming of age. It was worthy of the world governing body’s time, money and resources.
But like a child who struggles to take her first steps, the on-field product consisted of a bundle of stumbles, lurches and wobbles. The game took effort to play and to watch. The action, either in its entirety or in prolonged stretches, was unattractive, characterized by the atrocities that make coaches cringe: sloppy touches, ragged passes, missed marks, wayward crosses, botched saves, squandered chances, unkempt defenses and stagnant offenses.
Into this arena deprived of beauty strode a 5’8” 26-year-old blonde. She lacked an abundance of power, but the gifts of agility and deception were at her mercy.
Magic ensued when the ball settled onto that girl’s foot. She was a born dribbler. Pigeon-toed, the ball nestled into her gait. She dribbled almost as fast as she ran. The moves she perfected as a child against her older brothers, Bob and Ken, in the backyard of their Palos Verdes, Calif. house, she now unfurled against the world’s best competition in large stadiums with flair and flourish. Dazzling spins, sparkling cuts, deft jabs and shimmering dekes were all at her disposal. She did not just beat defenders. She demoralized them.
“She could make the most athletic person look as if walking was something new to them,” said Mia Hamm. “She was amazing. The way she could cut the ball as dynamically as she could at full speed was unbelievable. Defenders would fall down a lot. They just couldn’t keep up with her. She was faster than a lot of people gave her credit for. I learned so much from watching her. A lot of times when I cut the ball the way I did, it’s because I watched her for so long. You could just see how devastating it was to defenders. You could be really fast and she could find ways to beat you.”
“We called (her) ‘Crazy Legs,’” said Tracey Bates. “When she was dribbling, you never knew where the ball was. She made these radical cuts, but they weren’t just 180 degrees, they were like 240. You just match that with her athleticism – she was just real graceful.”
Yes, who the hell is that girl?
Before that girl came in for her first National Team camp, naysayers informed head coach Anson Dorrance of exactly what she would bring. She’s a diva, she needs coddled, she’s more trouble than she’s worth, they said.
Then that girl arrived to train with the U.S. squad and Dorrance just shook his head.
“She’s been a sheer joy from day one,” he told the Chinese press. “She comes into every training camp as fit as can be. She comes into every training camp played in. She plays her heart out in every game. She’s been absolutely wonderful to coach. She’s a coach’s dream.”
Accolades were not her pursuit. She wasn’t concerned with what others thought of her game. She was not a cutthroat competitor.
She just wanted to help her team win, to be a part of something bigger than herself. She cared.
“I played for my teammates,” that girl said. “Everyone had an incredible bond and you wanted to do your best. How I always did reflected how our team did.”
The threads of friendship sparked that girl’s extraordinary performance against Sweden on the night of Nov. 17 in front of 14,000 fans at Ying Dong Stadium in Panyu, China.
Choppy play dominated the first half of the opening game. The U.S. lost Kristine Lilly 31 minutes into the game when she collided with her own defender while attempting to clear a Swede cross. Felled by a left hip pointer, the flank midfielder was carried off the field. Linda Hamilton replaced Lilly in the lineup and moved to left back, pushing Debbie Belkin into midfield.
Lilly’s departure did not sit well with that girl. When Lilly first came onto the team, that girl was paired with the 16-year-old as her “big sister.” She taught Lilly the intricacies of the international game, shepherded her through bouts of homesickness and gave her advice on soccer, school and boys.
“They were really good friends,” said assistant coach Tony DiCicco. “When Lil went out, (she) picked up her game and really just took over.”
Inspired, that girl displayed her brilliance right before halftime. A Heinrichs cross deflected off one Swede to another, whose misclear went straight to that girl’s left foot as she stood on the left side of the 18-yard box. She trapped the ball to her right foot, and tapped it twice with her toes daring her defender to attempt a swipe. Feinting towards the endline, she swung the inside of her right foot over the ball before she cut back to her right with the outside of the same foot to set up her shot. As two defenders and the goalkeeper lunged the wrong way, she snuck the ball inside the left post.
“Oh my God!” Allmann said. “She was so quick, but it was happening in slow-motion. All of the defenders just biting at that ball that wasn’t there anymore.”
Who the hell is that girl?
Nine minutes after halftime, there was more. Werden won a Swedish punt and poked the ball to that girl on the left just over midfield. Spinning inside away from her defender, that girl dribbled down the field with the Swede on her heels. Another defender closed in as she approached the top of the penalty box. Darting outside, she nailed a left-footed laser off the underside of the crossbar. The ball plummeted down, caromed off the ground, glanced off the right goalpost and crossed the goalline to increase the U.S. lead to 2-0.
Although many in attendance on that 70-degree evening spoke Chinese, no translation was needed for the sentiment pulsing through the stands.
Who the hell is that girl?
Despite that girl’s genius, Sweden still showed signs of life. Mary Harvey extended to her right to push an Anneli Andelen shot from the top of the 18 out of bounds. Many of her teammates gave their goalkeeper a high five as they lined up to defend the corner kick.
“For her confidence, for the team’s confidence, for everyone, it was a huge play,” DiCicco said.
Hamm drove down the left flank and unleashed a 20-yard rocket over the goalkeeper in the 62nd minute for the National Team’s third goal.
The referee’s whistle then helped Sweden gain momentum. Off a free kick, a Swedish attacker gained possession inside the right corner of the U.S. 18-yard box. Of all people, that girl’s attempt to stab the ball away ended with the Swede crumpled on the ground, a foul drawing a penalty kick. Annette Hanson bounced the kick wide right, but her miss galvanized the Swedish attack.
In the 65th minute, Lena Videkull swept a loose ball into the goal to get her country on the scoreboard. Six minutes later, Ingrid Johansson’s improbable 40-yard shot into the left corner over Harvey’s dive narrowed the margin further.
Sweden blitzed the U.S. defense in search of the equalizer. The clock, however, was in the United States’ favor. FIFA, wary of games getting out of hand and unsure if women could withstand 90 minutes of play, had shortened the Women’s World Championship matches to 80 minutes. The U.S. escaped with a 3-2 victory.
As the spectators filed out of Ying Dong Stadium, jumped on their bikes and pedaled into the night, they rehashed the match they had just witnessed. Scenes flashed before their eyes of the United States’ offensive outburst and Sweden’s frantic comeback. But that girl, number 12, crowded those thoughts out of their minds. Images of her slashing, twisting and pirouetting through defenders to score spectacular goals filled their vision. They had never seen a woman paint the game with such artistry.
Who the hell is that girl?
“She defined I think what separates women’s soccer,” said assistant coach Lauren Gregg. “The beauty of the attacking game is something that the United States has been committed to since that point. I think that set the standard that other teams aren’t going to be able to just defend. Women’s soccer is about attacking soccer and expressiveness. My only regret is that more young people don’t know about her and didn’t have the chance to see her.”
That girl was Carin Jennings. And this performance was only a prelude.
All greatness makes an entrance. Sometimes it pounds down the door screaming of its presence. Other times it slips into a crowded party and slowly makes those in attendance turn and stare.
Mia Hamm’s burst of acceleration as a 14-year-old was all Anson Dorrance needed to see to know she was National Team material. One year later, she debuted as a 15-year-old on Aug. 3, 1987 in China. Over the first three years of her career, Hamm started 11 of the 16 matches she played in, but did not score a goal.
The woman who would go on to become one of the world’s greatest goal scorers finally had reason to celebrate in 1990. Hamm registered four goals even though she started just one of the five games she appeared in on the year.
“Mia was still evolving,” said assistant coach Lauren Gregg. “She had the ability to be a great goal scorer because of her mentality. She would be willing to take on, take on, take on and put herself in goal scoring positions. Part of being a great goal scorer is that mentality to constantly be willing to try to put yourself in position. She always had that.”
Hamm played in all 22 matches the National Team contested in 1991 prior to the Women’s World Championship, starting 19 of those games. Still, her role was not certain. Unable to dislodge Michelle Akers, April Heinrichs or Carin Jennings from one of the forward spots in Dorrance’s famed 3-4-3, Hamm, a lifelong striker, contended for the right midfield position from April through June.
When the National Team traveled to China for a three-game series in August, Heinrichs remained in the U.S. to rest a left knee injury. Hamm competed with Wendy Gebauer, Brandi Chastain and Tiffeny Milbrett to be the third starting forward on that trip. A hard worker with a positive attitude, Gebauer scored 42 goals during her collegiate career at the University of North Carolina. Chastain, a student of the game who exhibited poise and flair on the ball, had struck for a team record five goals against Mexico on April 18 during the Women’s World Championship qualifying tournament. A National Team rookie, Milbrett owned an uncanny burst of speed and had just won Soccer America’s 1990 Freshman of the Year award after leading the University of Portland with 18 goals.
Also in August, Megan McCarthy received an opportunity to start as a marking back opposite Debbie Belkin, a physical, relentless defender, while Carla Werden anchored the back line. The insertion of McCarthy into the lineup granted Dorrance the ability to move right back Joy Biefeld into her more natural flank midfield position.
“She could play either position at a World Cup level,” Gregg said of Biefeld. “There’s no doubt in my mind.”
These maneuvers meant that as soon as Heinrichs was healthy, Hamm was destined to come off the bench. But in the team’s first domestic match of the year, a 1-0 loss to Norway on Aug. 30, McCarthy shredded her ACL. Biefeld returned to right back and Hamm landed the right midfielder job.
“I only started because Megan McCarthy got injured,” said Hamm. “I had played a little midfield growing up, but in our system, I had more defensive responsibility than I realized. Anson was great about it. Because we were so dynamic up front, he told me not to worry about getting into the attack. He said my main responsibility was defensive. That actually gave the front-runners more freedom, because they didn’t feel they had to track back so much. I learned a lot from watching Kristine (Lilly), who played the position on the left, but I learned a lot by making a lot of mistakes and asking questions. I probably frustrated April in front of me and Joy behind me – being up too far or balancing back too far, not having good defensive shape. I didn’t have a lot of time, but they were patient with me.”
After Hamm netted what proved to be the game-winner against Sweden in the opening match of the Women’s World Championship, she scored again as the U.S. disposed Brazil, 5-0, in its second game. The U.S. was already staked to a 4-0 lead courtesy of Akers, Heinrichs (2) and Jennings, dubbed the “Triple-Edge Sword” by the Chinese press since an opponent could block two of the blades but the third would still cut through, when Hamm streaked down the right flank on a counterattack in the 63rd minute to tally the final goal.
“Her physical dimensions are extraordinary,” Dorrance told the Chinese media. “She’s explosive. She’s a bullet. Her acceleration is world class. No one can stay with her.”
The youngest member of the U.S. team, Hamm provided the squad with what Dorrance described as a human element. She was one of the most sensitive players he coached. Incredibly insightful, Hamm foresaw the direction her career would take.
“I’m a person first and an athlete second, granted a majority of the people identify me with soccer,” she said to the Chinese press in 1991. “But you know, when God created me, He didn’t create a soccer player. He created a human being and that’s the way I like to look at myself.”
Hamm did not confine herself to the attacking end at the Women’s World Championship. Conscientious of her defensive responsibilities, Hamm dropped back so often and so effectively that she was recognized as one of the top defenders at the tournament.
“Even though she scored a few goals, they assumed she was a right back that joined the attack,” Dorrance said. “She made an unbelievable reputation for herself in her first World Championship as one of the greatest young right backs in the tournament, even though she was a midfielder.”
Hamm wasn’t the only budding star to make her mark in the victory over Brazil. Chastain came off the bench to assist Hamm’s goal. After a quiet match against Sweden, Julie Foudy motored through the midfield on numerous dynamic dribbling runs. Biefeld dashed up the right flank to generate several attacks. And Lilly, who suffered a sharp hip pointer in the opening match, showcased the mettle that has defined her career to log 67 minutes.
A berth into the quarterfinals already secure, the U.S. contested its final group play game against Japan two days later on Nov. 21 in Foshan, China. Biefeld, Heinrichs and Higgins rested while Lilly and Hamm were utilized as substitutes. Chastain, Gebauer, Lori Henry, Tracey Bates, and Debbie Belkin started in their places.
Henry, once a U.S. captain, fought her way back onto the National Team after she was inexplicably left off the Women’s World Championship qualifying roster earlier in the year. Dorrance never notified a player, not even a former University of North Carolina Tar Heel such as Henry, that she had not made a team. The failure to receive an airplane ticket in the mail as a trip approached was the only indication she had been cut. One of the toughest, most intimidating defenders to wear the red, white and blue, Henry exhibited a business demeanor on the field and a carefree persona off the field and often repeated her motto: “Who said life was going to be fair? Nobody said life was going to be fair. Deal with it.”
As Foudy labeled her, Henry was a nutter. Whenever the players were served food in a foreign country, all eyes turned to Henry, the designated taste-tester. She was the first to sip the turtle soup with floating claws, to bite into the fish as it eyed her from the plate and to stick her fork into the pig’s head. Sometimes she might bark to let her teammates know the substance of a mysterious dish. When fed shrimp, the players ate the bodies and passed the heads to Henry. She stuck them on her fingers and gave a puppet show.
Bates, the leader of the reserves, stood just 4’11” but packed a tenacious game and endless enthusiasm inside her diminutive frame. A midfielder, Bates competed as if she was six feet tall. Dorrance’s favorite photo of the former Tar Heel shows Bates leaping just as high as the 5’10” Akers to challenge for a header during a collegiate match.
What distinguished Bates more than her competitiveness was the way she illuminated every situation as a positive beacon.
“You can just hear my voice,” said Gregg as her thoughts turned to Bates. “I start to smile and light up. That’s what she brought. She just brought such joy and such happiness and a reminder all the time every day why we were doing what we were doing. She’s just a bright light every day.”
In a single, brief conversation, Bates boosted a friend’s morale. Her teammates would do anything for her.
“If you can meet someone in life, meet Tracey Bates,” said McCarthy. “She’s just that special of a person.”
Before the Women’s World Championship, Belkin started all but three of the 46 matches she had played for the National Team. A career defender with a powerful left foot and strong soccer acumen, Belkin was pushed into midfield when Lilly injured her hip against Sweden. Out of position, Belkin’s play suffered. When a healthy Lilly returned against Brazil, Belkin ceded her place in the lineup to Hamilton.
Sincere with a humorous streak and a large Boston accent, the Needham, Mass. native refused to make an issue of her demotion no matter the pain it must have inflicted. Instead, she sought to see the scenarios encapsulating her team through her teammates’ eyes.
On the day she was benched, Dorrance called on both Belkin and Bates to get loose. Lilly’s hip pointer had flared up and she needed to be replaced. Chosen to enter the game against Brazil, Belkin jogged to midfield and turned to Bates, who had yet to see action in the Women’s World Championship.
“I’m sorry,” Belkin mouthed.
“No, no! Go play! You’ll do great!” Bates said.
That same thoughtfulness existed in all of the players. Together they rallied, argued and fought for one more woman to be a part of their team: McCarthy. Although unable to play, she sat on the bench at the Women’s World Championship in China.
“The team was not going to go unless she went because she was on the team for so long,” said Bates. “Everybody was so much in her corner.”
With a handful of reserves on the field, the National Team defeated Japan, 3-0, behind a pair of goals from Akers and a third by Gebauer to complete the group play stage of the inaugural Women’s World Championship with a 3-0-0 record. A quarterfinal against Chinese Taipei on Nov. 24 in Foshan was on tap and a woman whose greatness needed no introduction would take center stage.
How many times and in how many ways can a player score in a single World Championship game?
The answer began to form in the eighth minute of the U.S. National Team’s quarterfinal against an overmatched Chinese Taipei side as the pro-American crowd broke into a “U-S-A! U-S-A!” chant.
On cue, Carin Jennings received a throw-in, spun and sliced between two defenders. Racing down the left sideline, Jennings delivered a serve to the back post. Mia Hamm rushed in from the right flank and laid out to smack a diving header that the Taiwanese keeper, Hong Li Chyn, slapped to Michelle Akers’ feet. The center forward with a mane of dirty blond curls pushed the ball into the right corner for the game’s first goal.
Akers had concentrated on strictly the forward position for just two years under Dorrance on the National Team. From 1986-1988, she alternated between striker and center midfielder and scored just three goals in 16 games.
During those years, Akers often paired with Shannon Higgins in the middle of Dorrance’s 3-4-3 formation. Both players possessed identical qualities: unselfishness, vision and a proclivity to dictate a swift pace of play. Sameness was an undesirable characteristic for the central duo in Dorrance’s midfield.
At the 1988 Mundialito tournament in Italy, an event Akers did not travel to, Julie Foudy played her first international game. After a year spent on the bench, the intelligent, boisterous and effervescent Foudy shrugged off her disdain for tackling and became a starter, a title she did not relinquish until she retired 16 years later. A penetrating dribbler, Foudy galloped through the midfield to make the U.S. attack less predictable.
“Julie, she’s a ball winner,” said Higgins. “She was better in the air than I was. She was extremely active and mobile. That complimented me because I was more of a sitter. I wasn’t going to stray too much from the middle.”
The addition of Foudy to the lineup presented Dorrance with the opportunity to move Akers closer to goal. Still harboring a midfielder’s mentality, Akers was encouraged to be more aggressive in her new position.
“We wanted Michelle to be more selfish,” Dorrance said. “We wanted her to be the type of player who said, ‘Give me the ball and get out of my way.’ There was nothing wrong with her decision-making, but they were the decisions of a play-making midfielder. Up front, you want more of a selfish personality, and slowly but surely Michelle converted herself into this attacking personality that wanted the ball.”
Akers provided a glimpse of what was to come when she registered nine goals in six matches in 1990. A year later she delivered a colossal 39 goals in 26 games, a team single-season record that still stands.
Now Akers and Kristine Lilly lined up a 20-yard free kick after Jennings tumbled to the ground due to a harsh Chinese Taipei foul. Lilly, a decoy, ran over the ball leaving Akers to place a right-footed shot into the upper left corner. Hong turned and watched the U.S. go up by two.
Akers practiced that shot innumerable times. She hit 100 balls high and to the left post one day, low and to the right post the next. Sometimes she dragged trashcans just inside of the posts and toppled them with her powerful kicks.
The labor over her shot was just one piece of evidence that detailed Akers’ extreme dedication to the sport. During her collegiate years at the University of Central Florida, she arrived early at practice to shoot on the goalkeepers. Then she trained with her team. After two hours, the women gave way to the men’s team. Akers, however, remained on the field for another session.
Throughout the entirety of her career, she badgered her teammates and coaches with questions: How can I improve? What more do I need to add to my game? Is there anything else I can do to become a better player? She loved to hear everyone’s opinion, but if she disagreed with an assessment, she said so. However, when Akers saw value in a judgment, she went to work.
The ball bounced Akers’ way again. Linda Hamilton pushed forward from right back and fired a cross into the box that Hong got a fist to before she crumbled to the ground. From 16 yards, Akers blasted a right-footed volley into the empty goal. Only 33 minutes had elapsed and she had notched a hat trick.
“Michelle was just in a different class as a player,” Mary Harvey said. “She was. There was kind of the rest of the world and then there was Michelle.”
Akers factored into another National Team goal just before halftime as she flicked on a Lilly free kick from 45 yards. Foudy chested the ball up into the air and slid it into the goal on its way down.
Four minutes into the second half, Akers set the ball on the penalty spot. Mia Hamm, playing forward since halftime when April Heinrichs was removed, beat Chinese Taipei’s offside trap courtesy of a Joy Biefeld pass. When Hamm cut inside of the onrushing Hong, the Taiwanese ‘keeper had no defense but to take out the U.S. attacker. Akers insured there was penance to pay. She drove her low shot into the left corner past Hong’s dive. Deflated, Hong threw her head back and then slumped her shoulders forward.
Hong’s tormentor, a 5’10” mass of brawn, was not even fully healthy. At an August practice a sprinkler head, of all things, almost ruined Akers’ pending appearance at the Women’s World Championship.
“I don’t know if it was a slide tackle or what she was doing but it was right on a sprinkler head,” said Sue Hammond, the team’s trainer. “The rounded top part of the kneecap all but came off.”
Mended by 35 stitches and protected with a sleeve, Akers’ knee strengthened as the tournament continued. Her tolerance of pain was legendary as was her inclination to err on the side of recklessness. Teammates shuddered with each bone-rattling collision the goal-thirsty striker incurred.
“I remember her losing teeth in a college soccer game,” Higgins said. “They just broke off and she kept playing. She just laid herself out every time we played.”
Such was the case in the 48th minute against Chinese Taipei. Hamm won a free kick near the top left corner of the penalty area. Higgins curled the kick into the box. Making a near post run, Akers extended to send a header into the left side.
The air was Akers’ domain. Opponents shielded their faces from Akers’ elbows or simply shied away when she launched herself skyward. They knew the ball was hers so why risk a broken nose or worse.
“The intimidating quality she brought was something other teams couldn’t handle,” Dorrance said. “Not just because she scored goals, but the way she scored them and the way she went after balls in the air. Every single head ball that was anywhere near her, she was going to win.”
Jennings glided a corner kick to the penalty spot in the 79th minute and who was there? Yes, Akers. Hong punched Akers’ violent header to Biefeld positioned at the left post. Biefeld steered the rebound into the goal to conclude the 7-0 victory that was never in doubt.
But back to the question posed at the start. How many times and in how many ways can a player score in a single World Championship game?
The final answer: Five. Five times and in five different ways, Akers tattooed the ball into the back of the net, still a FIFA Women’s World Cup record that no woman has matched.[[1]]
“All great players have the capacity to reach down and hit a button,” said Dorrance. “Michelle hit that button all the time.”
Behind Akers’ largesse, the U.S. marched into the semifinals of the 1991 Women’s World Championship. The National Team’s opponent, a strong, unified German team, won back-to-back European Championships in 1989 and 1991. In three previous meetings with a German side, the Americans had never lost. To advance to the World Championship Final, they needed to extend their winning streak one more game.
“Where on earth am I?” Lauren Gregg wondered.
Over an hour ago while the assistant coach and the National Team’s Chinese translator walked towards a taxi outside of the Americans’ Panyu hotel, the translator and driver conversed about Gregg’s plan to scout the Denmark-Germany quarterfinal in Zhongshan. Gregg scooted into the back seat expecting the translator to follow her. Instead, the translator shut the door and waved as the taxi drove away.
Gregg peeked out the cab’s window and speculated how much longer until they reached Zhongshan. The further the taxi went, the smaller the road became and the more Gregg’s apprehension grew. Her attempts to ask her non-English speaking taxi driver about their whereabouts were fruitless.
“Anything you say to them, they’ll just nod their head and you’ll think they understand you,” she said. “All of a sudden you ask something just to check and you realize they’re still nodding their head and they don’t know what you’re talking about.”
When the road narrowed to a single lane and turned to dirt, Gregg’s worries went from missing the 3:30pm kickoff of the Denmark-Germany match to whether she would ever rejoin her team. Just as her anxieties peaked, a clearing in the woods emerged. A magnificent stadium sat in the middle of nowhere.
“Okay, I’m going to live another day,” Gregg thought.
The quarterfinal she scouted pitted opposites against each other. Denmark, like its fellow Scandinavian countries, favored a direct, physical approach to the game with the ball often launched upfield. A technical side, the Germans preferred the ball at their feet as they built the attack from the back through the midfield to their frontrunners.
Each nation capitalized on a penalty kick as the score was knotted 1-1 after 80 minutes of regulation. Heidi Mohr’s 98th minute overtime goal decided the match in Germany’s favor. Gregg hurried out of the stadium to her waiting taxi. The U.S.-Chinese Taipei quarterfinal started at 7:45pm in Foshan, about 45 miles northwest of Zhongshan. On this ride, fear had no time to capture her attention as she completed her game report.
After the United States’ quarterfinal romp over Chinese Taipei, Gregg pulled out her notes on Germany. Head Coach Anson Dorrance and Goalkeeper Coach Tony DiCicco joined her to break down the National Team’s semifinal opponent. The Germans thrived on playing connect-the-dot soccer as they built their attack short pass by short pass. Convinced by piles of videotapes and her on-site evaluation of Germany’s propensity to wilt under pressure, Gregg voiced her conclusion.
“We decided we would high-pressure them all over the field, basically lock them in their end through our pressure in hopes of disrupting their rhythm,” she said. “Giving them too much time and space would have been risky. But we didn’t know what they would do in response.”
In-between the quarterfinal and semifinal games, the players too called their own meeting. As each game of the tournament passed, resentment sprouted and ripened amid a few players over their lack of game action.
“I’m sure it wasn’t something bothersome to most players but it was something that needed to be talked about,” said Tracey Bates, one of the team’s leaders.
Team captain April Heinrichs brought the players together to discuss the issue.
“The meeting allowed one or two players to say what was on their mind, and it allowed everyone to say that we were all in it for the right reasons and we were all in it together,” Heinrichs said. “It was a positive meeting in the end. I came out of that meeting knowing that we were going to win...That’s when it changed from ‘I want to win, I think we can win, I hope we win,’ to ‘I know we are going to win.’”
But when tested, would Heinrichs’ newfound knowledge produce the desired results?
Prepare to watch a woman grab a game by the throat and hold it captive to all her whims and impulses; to snatch fans’ and players’ attention alike to her every touch and flick, cut and feign, gesture and facial expression; to send her opponents sprawling with her guile and flummox them with her skill; to leave her foes shattered, questioning their will.
Enter Guangdong Stadium in Guangzhou, China on a cool November evening as Johann Strauss’s Blue Danube Waltz lilts over the loudspeakers while the teams from the United States and Germany warm up, and a soldier, perched on a folding chair resting on the track surrounding the field, wears a green dress uniform and puffs on a cigarette as Pelé, the Brazilian great, finds his seat in a prime midfield section decorated with yellow, green and red bunting and planted boxes of yellow flowers.
When the 1991 Women’s World Championship semifinalists stride onto the field for pre-game introductions, the stands hold a few handfuls of spectators. As the competing countries’ National Anthems sound, fans flood the grandstand and fill every seat, save for those with obstructed views from the green poles rising to hold the roof that protects the onlookers.
Settle in and prepare to witness an individual effort that no U.S. woman has ever topped, not on this grand a stage, not with stakes so high[[2]]. Glue your eyes to Carin Jennings’ dancing legs, blond ponytail and number 12 jersey. Do not lose sight of her on this night!
“You cannot forget,” U.S. assistant coach Lauren Gregg said as she fell back into the memories of that semifinal. “The level of our opponent, who was so much more sophisticated than we were at the time, just so much more sophisticated. We stole so many things from them. Their combination play was and is so phenomenal. They were just so organized.
“So given that, given the weight of the match, [Carin’s] performance I don’t think has been matched. I honestly don’t. She was nicknamed Gumby. Her ability on the ball for one was phenomenal. I don’t think there was a missing dimension in her game. Every aspect she brought was on a level so high. They had no answer for her. There was just no answer for her. She took on at will. She defended. She scored some of the most brilliant goals I’ve ever seen.”
Just as Gregg predicted, Germany was intent on building its attack piece by piece from the back. Prepared for such a scenario, the Americans ratcheted up the pressure on their opponent’s methodical ways. Ten minutes was all the time needed for the Germans to unravel.
Doris Fitschen, a 23-year-old rugged central defender, played the ball to a midfielder who had checked into a free splotch of field. Inexplicably, the midfielder popped the ball up into the air back towards the defensive line. Letting the ball carom off the turf, Christine Paul swung her leg at the sphere and like a bewildered Little Leaguer missed completely and tottered to the ground.
Jennings, already pestering Paul, won the ball on the left side of the box and patiently waited for it to settle. She took a touch towards goal and slotted the ball into the far corner with the outside of her right foot. Joy lit her skyward-pointed face as she cantered up field firing uppercuts into the air.
Where her first score was a clinical finish executed with precision, Jennings’ second goal was a stroke of beauty delivered with flair. After she received a square pass on the right side of the field from Mia Hamm, Jennings looked up and saw nothing, absolutely nothing, in her path. Three long dribbles left her 25 yards off center to the right from goal as three German defenders attempted to impede her progress.
“Michelle shoots from here all the time. Maybe I’ll try it,” Jennings thought.
Her right foot drove the ball on a breathtaking arc past Marion Isbert, the stunned German goalkeeper, and into the upper left corner of the goal. Jennings thrust her fists above her head. As April Heinrichs and Shannon Higgins wrapped their arms around her, she threw her head back and laughed.
“That’s absolutely mind-boggling!” said Matt Bahr on the Sports Channel America broadcast.
Down by two goals, Germany remained stubborn and insistent on playing its innate brand of soccer. Yet again building the attack out of the back, Fitschen sent a misguided square pass too far in front of fellow defender Jutta Nardenbach. Jennings ran onto the ball and dashed in all alone on the German goal. Her right-footed shot into the left corner gave the U.S. a 3-0 lead.
Thirty-three minutes had passed; Thirty-three minutes against a quality German side; Thirty-three minutes in the semifinal of a world championship; and Jennings had tallied a hat trick, a feat no woman since has accomplished during the elimination stage at the Women’s World Cup[[3]].
“Carin just caught fire at just the right time,” said National Team head coach Anson Dorrance. “Rarely do all the stars align and rarely do you just absolutely play your best during a world event like this, but everything sort of lined up perfectly for Carin. She just had an absolutely magnificent performance in that World Championship.”
There were still another 40 minutes to play against the Germans, who broke through the U.S. defense to score on a Heidi Mohr back heel before halftime. Jennings, however, had one more piece of brilliant artistry to display.
When Akers, her fellow frontrunner, received the ball with her back to goal 35 yards from the target, Jennings took off running at the German defense. Akers turned and threaded the ball to Jennings. One-on-one against Isbert, Jennings attempted to slide her shot under the German goalkeeper. Determined not to be victimized once again, Isbert kick-saved the shot only to see her nemesis corral the rebound on the left side of the six-yard box. As Isbert dove to protect the near post, Fitschen rushed at Jennings. With a deft touch inside, Jennings shed Isbert and screwed Fitschen into the ground.
“She would show (defenders) the ball and then cut it away and they could never touch it,” said Kristine Lilly. “It was just precision.”
Jennings’ serve found April Heinrichs at the far post where the U.S. captain one-timed a left-footed volley into the back of the net. Full of exuberance, Jennings topped her own goal celebrations as she jumped up and down and swung her arms in wide circles.
In the stands, Jim Gabarra cheered his fiancée’s assist. A member of the 1988 U.S. men’s Olympic team, Gabarra was playing in the indoor Major Soccer League but flew to China for the semifinals and final.
“She was probably the best 1-v-1 player around,” Gabarra said. “She had a very unique ability and dribbling style. She could beat one and two players and not only score but set up other players to score. You don’t see that many players come along in a lifetime who can draw two and sometimes three players from the other team and have the ability to find that seam to set the open player up for a shot. She could really take defenses apart.”
Germany cut its deficit to 4-2 in the 62nd minute when Bettina Wiegmann ran onto a Martina Voss serve and shot the ball under a diving Mary Harvey. But the U.S. attack had one final response.
Shannon Higgins won a challenge in midfield and passed the ball back to Julie Foudy. Darting forward, Foudy worked a give and go with Hamm to spring herself down the right flank. As she fell over the endline, the opportunistic midfielder slid the ball in front of the goalmouth for Heinrichs to knock into the goal.
With the Germans vanquished, the U.S. advanced to the inaugural Women’s World Championship Final to face Norway, 4-1 victors over Sweden in the other semifinal.
As she stood on the track after the match with a television camera focused on her face, Jennings was asked what she would have thought if a year ago she was told that she would start and score three goals against Germany in the semifinals.
“I would have thought it was a dream come true, I think,” Jennings said.
One reality achieved with one more larger, more craved vision to realize.
Thanksgiving without turkey borders on sacrilege. And so begins the legend of the National Team’s holiday birds because even if China was its locale on Thanksgiving Day there was still only one fowl suitable for a feast.
Fully aware of this truth, the team’s staff attempted to locate the main dish for Thanksgiving dinner, a task made more difficult since turkeys are native to North and Central America, not Asia. None were to be found at the nearest market.
Greg Overbeck, the boyfriend of sweeper Carla Werden, and Peter Dorrance, Anson’s brother, were partners in a handful of North Carolina restaurants and hired by the U.S. Soccer Federation to be chefs for the team while it was in China for the 1991 Women’s World Championship. FIFA, however, ordered Overbeck and Dorrance not to step foot in a Chinese kitchen as no other team had the foresight to bring its own chefs.
Although Overbeck was reduced to instructing the Chinese chefs through translators on how to cook pasta and make basic marinara and parmesan cream sauces, Amy Allmann remembers him as a central figure in the turkey plot.
“You had to be careful what you asked for in China because he asked for nine turkeys and there were nine live turkeys in his hotel room hanging from the ceiling and crapping all over the floor, but that’s what he wanted,” said Allmann. “They were fresh.”
Not so fast. Overbeck says no dangling gobblers defecated on his carpets.
“I think if I got this story right that at one point Roger Rogers had ten live turkeys in his hotel room that they were going to try to butcher and make a Thanksgiving dinner,” said Overbeck.
Rogers, however, claims no birds roosted in his room. Instead the team’s manager and head of delegation points the finger at a travel agent, whose name has been long forgotten. Charged with organizing the trips for the players’ families to China, the agent was the one who tracked down the turkeys.
“After he had taken the families around on a trip and then back to the hotel, there were five live turkeys in his room,” Rogers said. “Of course that wasn’t what he meant. But then the White Swan (Hotel) came up, and I think it may have been the (U.S.) consulate that helped them, but they actually had the typical frozen turkeys that are sold in the United States. So that was the dinner that was provided on Thanksgiving Day.”
Pelé dined with the U.S. contingent that evening, but the real excitement surrounded the players meeting each others’ families. By Nov. 28, Thanksgiving Day, many of the players’ parents, siblings, significant others and friends had traveled to China. Some, like Julie Foudy’s parents, Jim and Judy, needed to be convinced more than others to go on the trans-Pacific journey.
“Are you guys going to China?” Ian Sawyers pestered his girlfriend’s parents.
“China! Ian, that’s a long way away,” Judy responded. “Oh Lord, I don’t know.”
Needless to say, Sawyers persuaded his future in-laws to make the trip. While the team trained, the players’ families and friends toured southeastern China. On the afternoon before the Final, they along with the players ushered Carin Jennings and her fiancé, Jim Gabarra, into the lobby of the White Swan Hotel for an impromptu wedding shower. A veil fashioned out of paper towels and a lone white flower was placed on Jennings’ head, and the young couple was presented with such gifts as Ken & Barbie wedding dolls.
While the players’ families and friends snapped photos at Chinese landmarks, conversed over dinner and cheered for the U.S., they formed bonds that had really been years in the making. Each time the players trekked overseas or to a domestic training camp, they shared stories of those back home and then returned to their loved ones with outrageous tales that depicted the exploits of their teammates. Now everyone finally got to meet the actual characters.
One such individual, Amy Allmann, closed the Thanksgiving Dinner with one of her trademark poems.
On this special Thanksgiving Day,
We’ve got much to be thankful for.
After 18 days here,
We only have two days more.
Our team is healthy and happy
For our country to fight and defend.
And we are very thankful to be in China
With so many family and friends.
We experienced Haiti, Bulgaria
And China twice this year,
Which is why thank God for the pilgrims
And today’s holiday cheer.
The next morning the National Team strolled onto the field for its last practice of the 1991 Women’s World Championship.
“One more day!” Foudy hollered.
On Nov. 30, the U.S. would meet Norway in the Final. The Norwegians won the countries’ last two matches and owned a 4-3 all-time advantage over the Americans. A classic Scandinavian side, Norway bypassed the buildup of play in the midfield in favor of more direct tactics. Tough and physical, the Norwegians launched long balls from the back line forward to the frontrunners creating ample air duels.
Heading, unsurprisingly, was chief on the United States list of items to review on the eve of the championship. Technique was polished, defensive clearing revisited and offensive finishing sharpened.
To conclude the practice, Anson Dorrance divided the players by brunettes and blonds, a customary method to separate the group into two squads for a contest. Today’s competition was finishing serves with headers.
The blonds went first. Shannon Higgins lobbed crosses from the right flank into the box as each blond received two attempts to head the ball past the brunettes’ Mia Hamm, who guarded the goal. After the blonds hit the back of the net five times in 16 tries, the brunettes had their turn.
Wendy Gebauer uncorked serves while Brandi Chastain stood in goal for the blonds. The brunettes connected on just three of their heading chances but Dorrance granted the dark-haired team a few extra attempts, much to the blonds’ chagrin.
“I’m a brunette!” Dorrance replied to the blonds’ gripes as he combed his hand through his deep brown locks.
Able to convert on only one of their additional opportunities, the brunettes still lost the game and had to suffer the consequence: butts up in goal. Together they walked to the goal line and bent over, their posteriors forming a row of targets. Tracey Bates, a member of the victorious side, shoved Dorrance inside of the right post to make the cheating arbiter pay for his crime.
“This is the safest spot,” he said. “You’ll never hit me!”
One by one the blonds belted shots from the top of the penalty box at the brunettes’ rear ends. Almost all of the blonds took dead aim at their coach’s fanny. Bates curved her effort into the right corner a foot and a half over Dorrance’s backside.
“Trace, I saw that!” he screamed as Bates giggled.
To the oohs and aahs of her teammates, Michelle Akers clanked a blast off the right post two feet away from searing Dorrance’s rump. Escaping with his derriere unscathed, Dorrance yelled, “We’re out of here!” as his players walked off the field laughing, undaunted by the challenge and the historical implications the next day would bring.
“If you want to sit me, I understand.”
No coach expects to hear those words from his captain before the biggest game in team history, but that was the message April Heinrichs delivered to Anson Dorrance prior to the 1991 Women’s World Championship Final.
Heinrichs traversed a rocky road to the National Team.
Named April Minnis at birth and raised in Denver and its outskirts, Heinrichs had no relationship with her biological father. When her mother, Patricia, married Mel Heinrichs, April took his last name. The strength of their bond was displayed when in her freshman year of high school her mother divorced Mel. April kept her stepfather’s name, continued to live with him and for years had only rare contact with her mother.
In 1982, Heinrichs enrolled at Mesa State College. The Grand Junction, Colo. school did not offer a soccer program, so Heinrichs turned to the Colorado Bandits club team. Participating with the Bandits at a tournament in Providence, R.I., Heinrichs impressed a Virginia club coach. He picked up the phone and called Dorrance. A year later Heinrichs donned the University of North Carolina’s sky blue and white and helped the Tar Heels to the first of three NCAA titles won during her collegiate career.
Through all of her travails, Heinrichs kept her sense of humor, a blend of wit and sarcasm. And she was never afraid to speak up.
Although she did not possess a warm and fuzzy persona, Heinrichs’ teammates always knew where they stood with her, that she cared about them and that she would bring the best out of them.
The 5’4” forward, with dark brown hair pulled back in a ponytail and bangs covering her forehead, was a workhorse and a clinical finisher. The 87 goals Heinrichs scored during her 85-game North Carolina career still rank third best in the storied program’s history. She entered the 1991 Final with 46 National Team appearances and 37 goals. A fierce competitor, all Heinrichs ever wanted to do was win, whether a world title or a card game among teammates was at stake.
“She would run by you, dribble by you or plow by you,” said Tracey Bates. “Whatever it took.”
But as her career wound down, her left knee crumbled. Bone grinded on bone as her cartilage wore away. Heinrichs grew concerned her performance was suffering. Although she scored twice against Germany, she believed her play in the semifinal was inadequate.
Hamilton, the U.S. left back, also felt she played poorly versus the Germans. Frantic she may have another subpar outing in the Final and let her teammates down, Hamilton confided in Heinrichs.
“Look Linda, I think I had one of the worst games of my tournament this game too,” Heinrichs said.
“Kiss my ass!” Hamilton said. “You had two goals.”
“No really, I had all that just because everybody put me in a good position to score,” Heinrichs said. “I don’t think I played very well either, but the great thing about this team is I don’t think I had my best game, you don’t think you did, but we get another chance in the next game to prove we deserve to be here and we all do this together. Just because we didn’t have a great game, look what the rest of our team did for us.”
Hamilton walked away from the conversation with a tremendous sense of belonging.
“Wow, I’m a part of something,” she thought. “I don’t know what it is or what it is going to become, but this is an amazing thing to be a part of.’”
Dorrance appealed to that same tingle of wondrous excitement in his pre-game remarks. To conclude, he pulled out a poem that had been slipped anonymously under his hotel door the previous night. This was written by one of your mothers, he told the players wanting each of them to believe the verses were penned by her own:
Years ago when you were born
Women’s team sports was an oxymoron
We held you close and searched your face
For signs of your talent, your fate, your grace.
All your admirers spoke of your beauty
“Those rosebud lips – oh, what a cutie”
No one foresaw the athlete, oh no…
Our vision was limited, very much so.
I thought you’d be a teacher, nurse or aesthetician
Didn’t think of president, lawyer, obstetrician
It wasn’t that I doubted you
It’s just the way it was
But then, I didn’t know then you’d grow up
With such a cause.
But as you grew, you strained our senses
Don’t want to wear dresses, rather climb fences?
Girl’s soccer? Sure, fine, it’s OK to play
But isn’t two hours enough practice each day?
No, games weren’t enough
You had to be best
Play with the boys, play “up” for a test
Yes, we saw your spirit, that special “fire”
That made you so focused, so filled with desire
Our vision was broadening, though ever so slow
WOULDN’T IT BE GREAT
IF THE WORLD COULD SEE THIS SHOW?
But we didn’t dare dream it
So I’m glad that you made your way by
Sheer grit, sweat and sacrifice, too.
And lucky for you, Coach Anson was there
To believe and support and to build a team rare.
Yes, you’ve arrived – the goal is in sight
But the cup is not all, let’s get this right…
Along the way you grew up well
You’re beautiful people, we’re proud as hell!
So as I strain to sing our anthem
And wave the flag and roar the chant then
Know that U.S. chests are swelling
And tears in eyes, on cheeks are telling.
No matter what happens, I know what you are
I didn’t really have to come this far
To see it inside you, to see it so clear
You’re a woman, of course, and a CHAMPION, my dear.
Likewise, Dorrance knew what was inside of his captain. He had not guided his team to the verge of a world title only to contest the most significant game of his young squad’s history without its leader. There was only one place Heinrichs would be found come kickoff.
“The thing about Heinrichs that I absolutely loved was that this woman was a warrior and yep, she was in pain,” said Dorrance. “Her knee was deteriorating but her heart was huge. I wanted her competitive fire and competitive spirit and leadership qualities on the field for me. There was never an issue in my mind as to whether or not I was going to play her.”
At 7:45pm on Saturday, Nov. 30 in front of 63,000 spectators at Tianhe Stadium in Guangzhou, China, Heinrichs stood on the field for the start of the 1991 Women’s World Championship Final. If she was unable to perform up to her standards, Dorrance counted on her teammates to fill the void.
“One of our philosophies, and one we talk about in every pre-game, is there’s no way all 11 of you are going to have a brilliant game,” he told the Chinese press. “If the person on your left is struggling, you carry them. We play for each other. The philosophy we have when the game begins is that if someone struggles, we take care of them.”
The Final began like most championship matches do - frenetically. With each side content to feel each other out, play was jagged. Norway recorded the first shot on a set piece taken from the right flank by Cathrine Zaborowski, who played collegiately at North Carolina State University from 1992-1995. Her left-footed serve was met at the back post by Birthe Hegstad, a University of North Carolina Tar Heel from 1985-1988, and nodded over the crossbar.
The stalemate broke midway through the first half. Mia Hamm received a pass from Michelle Akers in the offensive third, and as Hamm attempted to dribble, the Norwegian sweeper and captain, Heidi Støre, chopped her legs out. The U.S. was awarded a 30-yard free kick to the right center of goal. In the pre-game meeting, the U.S. coaches advised the players to let Michelle Akers take all of the re-starts that could be fired on frame. The players nodded, well aware of the strength and accuracy of their teammate’s shot.
Now as Akers lined up the free kick, Shannon Higgins joined her. The National Team’s attacking midfielder, Higgins owned exceptional vision and delivered passes with precision. What the squad’s playmaker lacked in speed, the University of North Carolina alumna made up for with pesky defense.
“She was an incredibly simple and unselfish player,” Dorrance said. “She didn’t require the ball to be happy. In fact, she would just as soon play a one-touch pass off to someone as anything else. But her quality was that she played a two-touch rhythm. She would get the ball with her first touch, prepare it for service and then either before she got the ball or right after scan the field and figure out where to place this ball that would hurt the opposition the most.”
And she was tough. Like goalkeeper Mary Harvey, Higgins suffered from a Jones stress fracture that affected the middle portion of the foot below the pinky toe. Injured just before the Women’s World Championship due to overuse, there was no time to embrace the logical treatment of rest. Instead, Higgins wore a flat-soled shoe on her left foot throughout the tournament until the Final when she replaced it with a cleat.
“That injury hurts like hell,” said Harvey. “I mean it hurts, and she’s running around. We couldn’t function without Shannon. That team needed Shannon Higgins in midfield, period. We couldn’t play without her.”
As she stood over the ball with Akers, the coaches on the sideline yelled for Higgins to let her more powerful teammate drill the shot. Higgins, however, was born partially deaf and susceptible to voices carried over distance.
The owner of an easy laugh, Higgins was often the butt of jokes that played off her lack of hearing. One of Lori Henry’s favorites was to act like the phone rang, pick it up, chat for a moment and then call her college roommate over and hand her the receiver. When Higgins heard the dial tone, she knew she had been duped again.
Now with the din of a noisy stadium in the background, Higgins did not catch wind of her coaches’ screams.
“Michelle, get in there. I’ll hit ya on your head,” Higgins told Akers, who trotted to the 18-yard line.
Higgins curled her right-footed serve into the center of the penalty box where it connected with the flashing Akers. Out leaping the twice-victimized Støre, Akers pounded a header inside of the right post for the game’s first goal.
“(That) goal was the perfect example of how dominant (Michelle) was in the air,” said Dorrance. “She was being marked by perhaps the second greatest header in the world, Heidi Støre. Michelle jumped up over everyone and headed it so hard that the goalkeeper, literally, did not move as the ball was going into the net.”
Nine minutes later, Norway countered on a set piece of its own. Julie Foudy had the ball poked away from her and took out the leg of her antagonist, Tone Haugen. A Norwegian defender boomed the free kick from just inside her attacking half to the top of the six-yard box. Harvey rushed off her line in an attempt to catch the ball. In a gnarled thicket of American white and Norwegian red jerseys, the U.S. goalkeeper ran up Carla Werden’s back and was unable to jump for the serve.
Norway’s Linda Medalen rose higher than her defender, Joy Biefeld, and nodded the ball towards the goal. The U.S. players turned and watched Medalen’s header kiss off the left post and spin across the unprotected goal line.
When the halftime whistle blew, Higgins grabbed Dorrance. Cerebral, Higgins was the team’s on-field tactical mastermind, and she did not like what she saw in the first half. She gestured with her hands while she explained everything that was going wrong as they walked to the locker room.
“It was frustrating,” Higgins said. “It wasn’t the type of game where either team got into any type of rhythm. We were having difficulty stringing a number of passes together. It was your typical final. It was ugly, and I, obviously the playmaking center midfielder, liked when we got into those rhythms.”
Dorrance listened and took mental notes for his mid-game speech.
“Her list of corrections was so long, I had to pick which ones to address at halftime so as not to discourage the team,” he said. “It was actually kind of amusing because Shannon had so many different areas of concern and she was right.”
Still scrappy and physical, play did not become any prettier in the second half. Successive corner kicks provided the U.S. with a pair of scoring chances five minutes after halftime. Carin Jennings lashed the first kick to the penalty spot where Akers flicked it on just out of Kristine Lilly’s reach at the right post. Norwegian goalkeeper Reidun Seth, however, swatted the ball to Lilly’s feet. With Seth on the ground, Lilly’s shot from a tight angle was turned aside by Norway’s Gunn Nyborg for another corner.
Jennings’ second kick deflected to Akers in the middle of the box. She hammered a one-time right-footed shot destined to zip inside of the right post. But first Akers’ smash had to get past her own teammate, Lilly, positioned at the top of the six-yard box. Unable to dodge the rifled shot, Lilly’s left leg took the brunt of the blast and the ball ricocheted out of bounds. Frustrated, Lilly punched the ground.
Possession was almost even throughout the second half as the U.S. attempted to play the ball to feet and Norway flung long balls upfield. The Americans, however, felt like they were under siege.
As the last line of defense Biefeld, Hamilton and Werden were under constant pressure. An incredible athlete, Biefeld marked an opposing forward, often on the right, despite a painful right hamstring pull. So aggravated was her leg muscle that the U.S. received special permission from FIFA for Biefeld to begin her pre-game on-field warm-up well ahead of the allotted time.
One of nine children, Biefeld barely said a word and lived in constant fear that she was about to get cut from the National Team. Nauseous with nerves before every game, she treated herself to a Diet Coke and a pack of M&Ms after she survived each match.
Hamilton, dubbed “a blunt instrument” by Dorrance, defended on the opposite side of the field. Tough, dauntless and mean, Hamilton was determined not to let any opponent get by her.
She too had experience with injuries. At 15, she underwent her first Anterior Cruciate Ligament (ACL) reconstruction surgery on her left knee. In the NCAA quarterfinals as a senior at North Carolina, Hamilton slid to tackle the ball away from North Carolina State’s Charmaine Hooper and heard the familiar pop of her ACL tearing away from the same knee. Hamilton shook off the pain, played in the semifinals and final and helped the Tar Heels to the 1990 NCAA Championship.
With the inaugural Women’s World Championship a year away and ACL reconstruction not as advanced as it is today, Hamilton conversed with her doctor and Dorrance before she decided to forgo surgery in hopes rehab would strengthen her knee. After two months, the joint was still unstable. Early in 1991, Hamilton had another dreaded knee operation and then battled her way back onto the National Team in October before she regained her starting spot in China.
The epitome of a sweeper, Werden anchored the U.S. backline. She read the game one step ahead of the play, organized her fellow defenders and always swooped in just in time to defuse a threat. Skinny and scrawny when she debuted on the National Team as a 19-year-old in 1988, Werden built herself into a hard-nosed fitness machine.
“She was very strong, had incredible endurance and a mental tenacity of extremely intense and focused,” Akers said. “She was someone who made you want to live up to her standards, which were exceptional.”
The rare capacity to pull her teammates to a higher level differentiated Werden.
“I played as well as I did because I had Carla directing me, telling me who to go to and where,” Hamilton said. “It’s not that I’m stupid, but there was just not one thing she didn’t have under control.”
A natural leader, Werden’s voice was unmistakable, all at once authoritative, confident and inspiring. She never wavered. She empowered her teammates. She made them feel as if they were the greatest soccer players to ever walk on the face of the earth and that there was no one else she wanted to compete with.
Harvey often wondered how much of Werden’s poise was feigned and how much was genuine, but she never dared to ask.
“Carla was the real deal,” Harvey said. “She took responsibility when things didn’t go well, which you don’t always see, and she gave praise when good things happened. It was never her. It was always somebody else. She was just a terrific calming influence in the defense.”
Still knotted in a 1-1 tie, the U.S. defenders depended upon Werden’s guidance, as their legs grew weary, their focus drifted and the Norwegians just kept coming.
“She was constantly talking, constantly in the game, constantly keeping you true, not letting your concentration wander and pumping you up as you got tired,” said Hamilton.
Strained under Norway’s pressure, the U.S. gave up a corner kick with less than 10 minutes left. Støre leapt above everyone to meet the service. Her furious header rippled the net. The crowd roared but then fell silent. Støre’s shot had hit the outside of the goal, not the inside.
The U.S. team breathed and then rallied behind its captain. Still on the field as the Final reached its latter stages, Heinrichs’ knee ached and her runs forward shortened, but her spirit was undeterred.
During a stoppage in play, Heinrichs called her teammate together.
“Listen, we’re good!” she said. “Think about it. We’re good!”
Higgins paused for a few seconds in the huddle.
“Yeah, we are good. We aren’t showing it right now, but we’re good,” Higgins thought.
With two minutes remaining on the game clock, Werden collected a misfired Norwegian pass and found Higgins in the center of the field. In her classic two-touch rhythm, Higgins corralled the ball, turned on her painful left foot and struck a right-footed pass that landed at the feet of Norway’s right back, Tina Svensson, 35 yards from goal with Akers bearing down on her full bore.
Svensson slipped a weak back pass toward her goalkeeper, but it never had a chance to reach its intended target. As Seth dashed out to clear the ball, Akers touched it outside to elude the sliding keeper. She looked up and saw a wide-open goal.
“Hurry up and shoot it!” Julie Foudy thought as the Norwegian defenders desperately tried to recover.
At the left corner of the six-yard box, Akers took another touch to set up her right foot.
“Would you shoot it!” Debbie Belkin shrieked from the bench as she clapped her hands over her eyes.
Akers drove the ball into the goal and flung her arms above her head. As Akers turned to triumphantly jog back to midfield, Svensson tumbled into a dejected heap, head buried in her arms, by the left post. Foudy was the first to greet Akers, then Jennings, then the rest of the starters. On the bench, Brandi Chastain jumped up and down while Amy Allmann clasped her arms around Wendy Gebauer. The goal was Akers’ 10th of the tournament, the most of any scorer.
Staked to a 2-1 lead, the game’s final two minutes dragged on for an eternity. All 11 U.S. players retreated inside their own half to stave off the Norwegians. Determined to create an equalizer, a Norwegian attacker lifted a cross from the left side of the box, but Harvey snagged it at the near post.
After a Norway throw-in referee Vadim Zhuk blew his whistle three times to signal the end of the match. The U.S. players ran to hug each other at the top of their 18-yard box. In goal, Harvey fell to her knees and then dropped face forward to the ground.
“Oh my God, he blew it three times,” she thought. “This thing is finally over with.”
The players on the bench, forbidden by FIFA from rushing onto the field, exalted in a cluster on the sideline while assistant coaches Lauren Gregg and Tony DiCicco embraced. Finally, the entire team squeezed into a tight circle of hugs and cheers.
Together they stepped onto the victory podium. One by one a FIFA official placed championship medals hung on red ribbons around their necks. A giant replica of the championship trophy sparkling with thousands of gold lights rotated on a dais behind them as the actual championship trophy was handed to the U.S. captain. Heinrichs raised it over her head for her teammates to touch. Fireworks burst in the night sky.
The United States etched its name in history as the winners of the inaugural 1991 Women’s World Championship.
No victory by an American team is complete without a champagne bath.
Early on the morning of the Final, Ken Chartier set out in search of some bubbly in hopes the U.S. would have reason to spray it later that evening. The National Soccer Promotion Manager for adidas, then a U.S. Soccer sponsor, Chartier commandeered a taxi outside the White Swan hotel and somehow got across to the driver that he was in search of a celebratory drink.
The pair canvassed Guangzhou stopping in a number of shops with no luck before coming upon a few bottles. Then they drove to Tianhe Stadium where Chartier convinced the security guards to let him into the U.S. locker room to stash the champagne along with some cans of beer.
After the Americans’ 2-1 victory over Norway to win the inaugural Women’s World Championship, Shannon Higgins and Mia Hamm were the first to enter the austere U.S. dressing room. Each grabbed a champagne bottle and doused the other with the warm, sticky liquid. Soon the entire team was soaked. Even Tracey Bates, who didn’t drink alcohol, found a can of Coke, shook it up and showered April Heinrichs.
Wet and tired, yet exultant, the coaches and players, along with many of their significant others, crammed onto the team bus. Led by a police escort, the bus rolled through the streets of downtown Guangzhou. The players serenaded onlookers with an earsplitting rendition of Queen’s We are the Champions through the bus’s open windows.
When they reached the White Swan hotel, the players were ushered into a banquet, the first and only time FIFA held a post-tournament reception. Before a full program of speech giving and award bestowing commenced, food was served.
“They brought one delicacy, according to them, after another,” said U.S. assistant coach Lauren Gregg. “What first came out was this snake soup. Then there was a whole bird on a plate.”
“All we wanted was rice,” said Amy Allmann. “We begged for rice, but they said that rice was peasants’ food and it would be an insult to serve us rice.”
Unable to stomach any of the cuisine on the menu, the players resorted to consuming more alcoholic beverages. FIFA’s prestigious fete transformed into a rowdy dance party.
Later that night after the conclusion of the official dinner, Kim Maslin-Kammerdeiner, Kristine Lilly and Julie Foudy took to the streets. All tournament long, they had eyed the official event pennants splashed across the city.
“In the middle of the night, we stood on bridges taking down banners to bring to each one of our teammates,” said Maslin-Kammerdeiner. “Had we given it any thought we wouldn’t have done it because we’re in the middle of China. Who knows, we could have been arrested.”
Women’s World Championship signs in hand, the sleep-deprived players boarded a train to Hong Kong early the next morning. Together with the other semifinalists they flew back to Zurich, Switzerland where the return trek became less flamboyant as the Germans in their black, orange and white, Norwegians in their navy and red, Swedes in their yellow and blue and Americans in their red, white and blue parted ways.
The U.S. contingency took their seats on another plane and continued the long haul back to New York City’s John F. Kennedy International Airport. When the World Champions landed just a handful of people greeted them including Bora Milutinovic, the U.S. Men’s National Team head coach, Bill Nuttall, U.S. Soccer’s General Manager and Thom Meredith, U.S. Soccer’s Director of Events, who were in New York City for CONCACAF meetings.
After rallying together for three weeks and proving their international dominance, the U.S. players separated to return to their hometowns, universities and individual lives.
Michelle Akers sat down next to an elderly lady on her flight home. The woman struck up a conversation and asked Akers where she had just traveled.
“I was in China representing the United States in the first-ever women’s world soccer championship,” Akers said.
“How did you do?” the woman asked.
“We won!” Akers said.
“That’s nice,” said the woman.
When Julie Foudy returned to Stanford University to continue her junior year, her classmates asked her why she had not been attending lectures and labs the past few weeks.
“I was in China winning the world soccer championship,” Foudy said.
“Great,” her friends replied. “Did you study for the chemistry test?”
While Foudy was at school, her mother stumbled upon her jersey from the Women’s World Championship. Wadded up in a bag and ripe from a mixture of sweat and champagne, the shirt was stained and covered in mildew. Like any good mother, Judy Foudy washed it, scrubbed it and sprayed it, but the blotches and discolorations remained.
When Julie finally made her way home, she asked her mother where her World Championship jersey was.
“Oh honey, that thing was a mess,” Judy said. “I couldn’t get it cleaned so I pitched it.”
“You what!?!” said Julie.
Her World Championship uniform lay in a heap of garbage in a landfill. Muddied and tarnished, the once proud red, white and blue jersey disintegrated and lost all of its hues.
Now designated as the FIFA Women’s World Cup, the fifth edition of the tournament returns to China in September 2007. If the U.S. wins the event, each player will receive a reported $50,000 bonus and another $60,000 for a 10-game celebration tour. In 2006, a minimum of 14 U.S. players made $70,000. Secondary jobs, needless to say, are no longer necessary.
When the players report to six-month residency programs, they are allocated funds for housing. At the past two Women’s World Cups, charter planes were utilized for their transportation. Nike showers them with free gear.
But what if their predecessors had lost the 1991 Final, failed to advance past group play or not even qualified for the inaugural Women’s World Championship? What if an illustrious tradition, that now includes two world championships and two Olympic gold medals[[4]], was never conceived? What if the National Team remained imprisoned in black and white?
With the exception of Kristine Lilly, the 36-year-old captain of the U.S. National Team, the players on the inaugural championship squad have moved on to other pursuits. All are advocates for the sport, many are moms, some are coaches, a handful are teachers, a few are TV commentators and one is the highest ranking woman in FIFA. Together they possess a bond forged 16 years ago in shared purpose, competitiveness and passion.
“There were so many great players on that team that played because we loved the game,” said Carla (Werden) Overbeck. “We didn’t get paid to play. We loved the game and we enjoyed the people that we were playing with. To be a part of that group of people and players was something very special.”
From time to time, Carin (Jennings) Gabarra catches the glint of the Golden Ball, awarded to the Most Valuable Player of the 1991 Women’s World Championship, now a bookend resting on the bookcase in her children’s playroom; Amy (Allmann) Griffin pulls the one and a half-inch thick, maroon-covered journal she filled with notes, pictures and thoughts during the tournament out of a box in her attic and opens its pages; Tracey (Bates) Leone glances down at the words “World Champion,” the US Soccer logo and the red, white and blue stones sitting on the face of the ring worn on her right hand; Shannon (Higgins) Cirovski digs through her closet and finds the carton holding the poem her mother, Sandy, composed on the eve of the Final; and Kim (Maslin) Kammerdeiner walks into her home’s library and sees a photo hanging on the wall of herself wrapped in an American flag surrounded by rejoicing teammates on the medal stand.
The memories of a legacy’s birth come streaming back in brilliant, vivid color.
Additional reporting by Tim Nash and Will Lunn.
[[1]]: Alex Morgan matched this feat scoring 5 goals for the U.S. Women’s National Team against Thailand in the 2019 FIFA Women’s World Cup
[[2]]: Carli Lloyd (2015) and Megan Rapinoe (2019), who each won the Golden Ball - which is awarded to the tournament’s best player - now join Carin Jennings in making compelling cases for best individual effort for the U.S. Women’s National Team at a FIFA Women’s World Cup
[[3]]: Carli Lloyd scored a hat trick in the first 16 minutes of the U.S. Women’s National Team’s 5-2 victory over Japan in the 2015 FIFA Women’s World Cup Final
[[4]]: As of Jan. 1, 2024, the U.S. Women’s National Team has won 4 FIFA Women’s World Cups and 4 Olympic gold medals