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Topic: Changing of the Guard. (nsc) Return to archive
August 21st, 2004 04:11 PM
Ten Thousand Motels 'A Sense of Completion'

By Mike Wise
Saturday, August 21, 2004; Page D09

THESSALONIKI, Greece

The soccer mom missed the tournament's first few games. But now the woman who first passed out the Dixie Cups with sugar water in them, the woman who drove the kid to practice who wound up witnessing history, heartbreak and everything in between, she's back in the stands.

Mia's mom wants to see her daughter's career through.


"I was just standing there, crying for her today," Stephanie Hamm said. "I watched her walk out before the match, and it just hit me. This is almost it for her."

It's winding down, this memorable journey of five core players who won a lot of soccer games, sold a lot of posters and ultimately changed how their gender's relationship with sport was viewed.

There is a belief out there that the U.S. women's soccer team needs gold to complete its pixie-dust path of the past 13 years. Because if the team fails, the thinking goes, then the memories of Hamm, Julie Foudy, Brandi Chastain, Joy Fawcett and Kristine Lilly somehow will be tarnished. Dominance will have given way to their physical deterioration, and what kind of ending is that?

How about a dignified one, one in which a group of women approaching their mid-thirties and beyond weren't shelved for the next hot, young thing from the junior team?

The fab five all played 90 minutes in a sweltering Grecian sun Friday. They outplayed and beat Japan in the quarterfinals of the Olympic tournament, 2-1, summoning guile and grit from another era. (They also got a gift from a linesman who did not call the United States offside when it scored the winning goal, as television replays appeared to show.)

A return engagement with Germany, the team that knocked the Americans out in the World Cup semifinals a year ago, is on tap Monday on the island of Crete.

Victory puts them in their third gold medal match in three straight Olympics. A loss?

They'll be crestfallen, crushed, denied their perfect ending.

But either way, the beauty of this team is watching the old guard find it still has something left. While the rest of the world catches up to its talent in the same fashion of American men's basketball, the team continues to win. The players are physically beaten up but as yet unbowed.

Really, who wins a medal in any sport requiring real physical exertion at 36, the ages of Fawcett and Chastain?

Hamm, 32, bedazzled another nation, dribbling through multiple Japanese defenders. Lilly, 33, scored the match's first goal, punching in a bullet from about eight yards just before halftime.

No one put on makeup or prettied themselves up afterward. They boarded the team bus in damp hair and sandals. Just a bunch of aging jocks, who happened to be women.

"I feel 23," Foudy said, "give or take a few decades."

Time flies, no? Chastain peeled her jersey off and flashed the world her washboard abs in the last millennium, the day they captured America's genuine interest by winning the 1999 World Cup. Including the Olympics and the World Cup, this win over Japan means this group will have advanced to six final fours in 13 years. One gold, one silver, two World Cup championships.

Abby Wambach, the 24-year-old who scored the winning goal against Japan, was 11 when Hamm and her teammates won that first World Cup, almost anonymously, in 1991. The quintet has been around long enough to witness the birth and death of a women's professional league. And this is their last tournament together.

"I thought about it a lot today -- more than ever," goalkeeper Briana Scurry said.

Maybe you're preoccupied with Joe Gibbs's football team today. Or you can't get enough of the drama surrounding the U.S. men's basketball team. Maybe your baseball team is a few games out, and Olympic women's soccer is so beneath your radar you never made it this far.

It's understandable. The only time Mia Hamm and her teammates invade our national consciousness is every two years, for maybe a couple of weeks, when they advance to a Cup or Olympic final, and America goes ga-ga over all the little girls who took up soccer because of their heroes.

And then we go back to Yankees-Sox, Shaq or Kobe, fact or fiction, contender or pretender -- a sports world as immediate as it is inane.

It's not right or wrong; it's just who we are as a knee-jerk nation. Hamm cannot even muster nostalgia at this moment because she is so focused.

But on Monday or Thursday, that's it. The most visible player on women's sports' most visible team is done, along with Foudy and Fawcett.

Hamm may feel 32, but her fitness and economy of movement look to be peaking. You almost feel cheated about her retirement plans. She puts passes on the stubs of teammates' toes like Wayne Gretzky used to put passes on the nubs of his teammates' sticks in his last years, the way Magic Johnson still knew the dimensions of space and time even when his body betrayed him.

Selfishly, you want Mia Hamm to stick around.

Until the soccer mom reminds you that her daughter cannot be the movement's poster child forever.

"She has personal goals, things she wants to accomplish outside soccer," Stephanie Hamm said. "Being with her husband the way she wasn't able to in her first marriage, things like that. Those are all important to her."

Mr. Hamm, Nomar Garciaparra, recently said his wife's retirement was going to affect him, "because I really liked watching her play."

Almost 20 years, just like that. She and her teammates have at least 90 minutes left. Mia may not be nostalgic, but she's clearly in the minority.

"It'll be sad, but there'll be a sense of completion, too," Stephanie Hamm said, pausing to reflect on her daughter's career. "You know, I'm still amazed by her celebrity. I never saw that coming. But the women competing at this level, that was going to happen. They didn't need an audience for that."
August 21st, 2004 04:49 PM
Ten Thousand Motels







Mia Hamm seems at ease with plans for post-Olympic retirement
By Mark Zeigler
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER

Mia Hamm has never been big on hellos or good-byes, or anything else that might thrust her in the public eye. She is an intensely private person, raised in a middle-class family of six children with the understanding that one kid was no more special than the next, even if one of them grew up to become the greatest women's soccer player of all time.

Which explains why Hamm, 32, has been keeping her usual low profile as the U.S. women's national team makes its final preparations for the upcoming Olympics. And why she hasn't made much of a fuss about Sunday's game against China (noon, ESPN2) in Hartford, Conn.

Because it could, quite possibly, be her last on American soil.

The U.S. women will fly to Greece on Monday afternoon and open the Olympic tournament on Aug. 11, two days before Opening Ceremonies. And Hamm has said this will be the final major tournament of her career.

There is a good chance that U.S. Soccer will schedule a short series of "farewell" matches in the weeks following the Olympics to honor the backbone of the team that is expected to retire � Hamm, Julie Foudy, Joy Fawcett, Brandi Chastain, Briana Scurry. But those matches hinge on how they do in Greece, a gold medal being a more attractive draw at the box office. If they get knocked out in the quarterfinals or semis, who knows what happens to the fall plans.

So Sunday could be it. Hamm, after 17 years and 260 games with the national team, could say her farewell to U.S. fans in a way only she could appreciate � quietly, with little fanfare.

One thing is certain, though. Hamm will leave the game at the top of it, not as a broken-down warrior pathetically struggling to recapture past glory. She still starts and, though maybe a half-step slower, is still arguably the team's most effective player.

Exhibit A: Last week's Olympic tune-up against Australia in Minnesota, where she scored her world-record 150th career international goal. It was as spectacular as any of the previous 149, pushing the ball left into the penalty area before cutting back to her right and magically bending a shot into the far side of the net from a tight angle.

She also had an assist in the 3-1 victory, raising her career total to an equally mind-boggling 133.

Hamm has made limited media appearances this year. But she was in rare form at the Olympic Media Summit in New York in May, speaking at length about her impending retirement and various other subjects. Following are some excerpts from that interview.

On why retire now: "One of the things I watched was Pete Sampras' retirement speech, and he talked about how you just know it's time. For me, it's time to take the next step in my life � whether that's starting a family of my own or reconnecting with my family that has supported me all these years or simply trying to be a good aunt, a good sister, a good daughter, the best wife I can be.

"It's just a feeling you have. Most people want to do it on their own terms, to walk away feeling good about it. Am I going to miss it? Absolutely. But I just know it's right. I get pangs in my heart when I talk to my nieces or other people in my family or I see them, knowing they have given so much to me. For so long, they have followed me and they have supported me. It's time to give back."

On the Olympics: "One of my least favorite things is when the announcer says, 'The United States has 17 golds, six silver and five bronze medals. Russia and then Germany follow.' I think we're losing the point of these Games. We should focus on things that are absolutely still wonderful about this event, how people from different ethnicities and diverse backgrounds can come together and for three weeks forget about everything.

"The point of the Olympics is to celebrate diversity of athletes and the overwhelming adversity that a lot of them have overcome to get where they are."

On her immediate soccer plans: "I won't coach. I can tell you that. I won't be playing (in a relaunched WUSA) just to help them do what they need to do. Soccer has been a huge part of my life, and you can't just turn that off. It's not going to be a clean break, but I'm excited not to get kicked for a while."

On her physical condition: "I feel pretty good about my game right now. But I don't know if physically I could handle another four years. I don't want to play where I have to tape everything up."

On criticism that she has one goal in 14 games in the knockout rounds of the Olympics or World Cup: "Is it true I haven't scored? Yes. That's easy to check. But check all those tournaments and see if I have assists, and that's a different answer. Of course I want to score. What forward or attacking midfielder doesn't sit there and not dream about scoring the winning goal? But for me, it's about helping my team get there in any way possible, whether that's scoring goals or not."

On how she'd like to be remembered: "As 5-11. (She's 5-foot-5.) It will never happen, though. I just hope the sport is better because of something I've done." sidelines


[Edited by Ten Thousand Motels]
August 23rd, 2004 08:05 AM
Ten Thousand Motels U.S. Soccer Team Wants Payback Vs. Germany

By JOSEPH WHITE
The Associated Press
Monday, August 23, 2004; 7:40 AM

IRAKLION, Greece - The chance for payback has arrived for the U.S. women's soccer team. The United States and Germany, the last two World Cup champions, meet Monday in the semifinals of the Olympic tournament. The game is a rematch of last year's World Cup semifinals, when the Germans won 3-0.

Monday's game begins at 11 a.m. EDT.

A few hours after the Americans lost that game to Germany in October, Mia Hamm and three teammates sat in their hotel room and watched a replay of the game on cable television.

"There wasn't a lot of talking going on," Hamm said. "It was solemn."

The self-inflicted punishment was Step One of what became an 11-month mission to right the wrong, to get revenge on the new team at the top of the women's soccer world.

"We've talked about having another chance at Germany for a year - and putting ourselves in that position to have another chance," captain Julie Foudy said. "We didn't talk about it when we got here because we wanted to stay in the present.

"But, now, the Germany game is the present."

Germany went on to beat Sweden to take the World Cup last year. Intent on remaining No. 1, the Germans then opened these Olympics with a shocking 8-0 rout of China behind four goals from star forward Birgit Prinz. Their only show of vulnerability came when they had to rally from 1-0 down in the final 14 minutes for a 2-1 victory over Nigeria in the quarterfinals.

Like the United States, Germany has a deep, strong and experienced roster. Prinz is the reigning world player of the year. Silke Rottenberg has been in goal for 11 years, and she's still tough to beat. Midfielders Steffi Jones and Kerstin Garefrekes are both 5-foot-11, tall enough to look right in the eye of tough American forward Abby Wambach.

Although both teams are unbeaten in the Olympic tournament, Germany has to be considered the favorite.

"They're the best team in the world," Hamm said. "They proved that to us last year at the World Cup. And that's the way we're going to approach the game, that we respect them that much."

That puts the U.S. team in a role it hasn't played in 13 years - underdog.

Since winning the 1991 World Cup in China, the Americans have always been the favorites.

They were the defending champions at the 1995 World Cup, but they lost to Norway in the semifinals. They were favored to win the gold at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics because they were home, and they did. The same was true for the 1999 World Cup. They then went to Sydney to defend their Olympic title in 2000, but they lost again to Norway and settled for silver.

Last year, the United States hosted the World Cup again, and Germany provided the upset.

Now Hamm and Co. want to return the favor. All this year, the players would have flashbacks to the 3-0 defeat during practices, then work to fix the mistakes. What happened on the corner kick that produced a goal in the 15th minute? How about the missed scoring chances?

The game was closer than the final score indicated because the U.S. team was desperately pressing for a tying goal in the final minutes, leaving a vulnerable defense that surrendered two late goals.

"We're always coming back to that game," Foudy said. "It's a great thing. It's fresh. The memory's fresh. It still hurts, and we always say we have to extract lessons from losses, and there were a lot of lessons to extract from that."
August 23rd, 2004 12:34 PM
glencar USA is leading Germany uber alles 1-0.
August 23rd, 2004 01:45 PM
Ten Thousand Motels FINAL
USA 2 GERMANY 1