It was a hot, late summer morning, and practice had been going on for 75 minutes. Nineteen of the 20 players on the U.S. women’s World Cup team were taking a water break. The 20th, Mia Hamm, was using the time to take shot after shot, stopping only when practice resumed.
An hour later, practice ended. As her teammates sat on the field or ambled to the sidelines, Hamm was back in front of a net, working on the skills that have produced a women’s world-record 142 goals and 116 assists in 239 international matches, the first on Aug. 3, 1987, when she was 15.
She reminds you of biblically inspired lines from an old New England hymn, “Work for the night is coming / when man works no more.” Time has taken its toll; time is short; this is no time to rest on laurels, especially not for an athlete who never has tolerated less than excellence and all-out effort, not from herself or from teammates whose ears often ring with the fire and brimstone of her less-than-sacred exhortations.
“A lot of times I sit in awe as I watch her play,” said Abby Wambach, her teammate. “I honestly believe if she keeps playing, she will keep impacting this team and herself and women’s soccer for years to come.”
But the end seems near for Hamm now. The Women’s World Cup, in which Team USA opens against Sweden on Sunday in Washington, will be her final marquee appearance in the U.S. She has talked of retiring after the 2004 Olympics in Greece, although a revival of the WUSA, which suspended operations last week, might make her feel obligated to continue through 2005.
Obligated. Like it or not, Hamm–shy and slight like the ballerina her mother once wanted her to be–has borne for nearly a decade the responsibility of being the biggest, boldest, most important person in the history of women’s team sports in her country. Since 1995, when the media began to discover the phenomenon living in the underground of the soccer community, Mia mania has been part of the U.S. sporting landscape.
Her national team coach, April Heinrichs, can pinpoint the moment it began, at a U.S.-Canada match on May 19, 1995, in Dallas, one of several places Hamm had lived while growing up. As soon as they announced her name, thousands of little kids began screaming. “Mia! Mee-yah! Meeeeeeeeeeee-yah!”–each plaintive yell louder and more insistent. Hamm scored two goals that day.
“Not only did Mia raise America’s consciousness about women’s soccer and women’s sports, she did it in a non-mainstream, not traditionally accepted female sport,” Heinrichs said.
It never would have happened without marketing, especially the Gatorade commercials that appeared before the 1999 World Cup in the U.S., commercials showing her challenging Michael Jordan against a soundtrack of, “Anything you can do, I can do better.”
What athlete becomes an icon nowadays without marketing?
“Once Mia started getting exposure, people saw she was extremely telegenic, extremely photogenic, and she scored goals. What’s not to like?” said Aaron Heifetz, the U.S. women’s team press officer and collaborator on Hamm’s book, “Go for the Goal: A Champion’s Guide to Winning in Soccer and Life.”
The goal, or the goals–that’s what it has always been about for Hamm, and it hasn’t been easy since her team won the 1999 world title. A loss in the 2000 Olympic final. Shoulder and knee injuries. A divorce from her husband of seven years. Her Washington team’s struggles in the WUSA, and, at least for now, the league’s failure to survive.
When she did not play at a tournament in Portugal in early 2001, Heinrichs appreciated more than ever what Hamm’s presence has meant on the field. “We just missed the inspiration of her play,” Heinrichs said. “We need her ability to take over 20-minute periods of a game.”
She had been doing that in the last 1 1/2 WUSA seasons, healthy again, playing as effectively as ever, tying for the league scoring title, leading her team to its first title. Could it be, at 31, she has achieved the perfect balance between skill and maturity, when the decline in raw physical ability is offset by the gain in experience? “Certain days I think I’m there,” Hamm said. “Certain days I wonder where it went.”
Or could it be she has achieved a perfect balance in her life, allowing her to coexist with the encumbrances of a fame that is anathema to her? This is the question that will go unanswered, like so many you would like Hamm to answer.
When Mia Hamm doesn’t like where an interview is going, she makes it perfectly clear, keeping direct eye contact to make sure the questioner gets the point. Some questions you simply needn’t bother asking, such as ones about her relationship with Boston Red Sox shortstop Nomar Garciaparra (they are engaged and apparently planning a fall wedding).
You talk to people about Hamm, and then try to bounce their impressions off her, knowing her eyes will lock on yours and she will get annoyed and challenge your words as passionately as she challenges herself and her teammates on a soccer field. There is an honesty about her irritability, and it also is a useful tactic to change the dynamic of an interview, when the questioner usually plays the offensive role.
Heinrichs believes Mia finally has accepted being Mia!!!, adapted to the ear-shattering first-name-basis of celebrityhood.
“I don’t know that her personality has changed,” Heinrichs said. “I just think she is more comfortable with who she is, comfortable in front of the media. In ’99 [the last World Cup] it was thrust upon her; she didn’t want it. It was, I’m sure, an overwhelming four weeks. Now she’s a little more confident as a young woman.”
So this was the question to Hamm, surrounded by several reporters during a scheduled interview session last week at the University of Virginia.
Q. Was there a point in the last two years when you became more comfortable with the iconic part of your life, with being an icon?
A. “I don’t know. I’ve been asked this question so many times. It’s a part of what we do, and I know that. It doesn’t, you know, there wasn’t this kind of christening ceremony that I went through. It comes with the territory, but at the same time, I’m not going to go out and treat people differently in a negative way because . . . I’ve . . . I don’t even know what you call it.”
Her answer was all over the place. Her eyes were fixed on her interrogator, laser-burning straight. He tried another approach.
Q. I’ve read some recent stories which have suggested you seem more comfortable with the notion of who you are and what you represent to a lot of people.
A. “Um. OK.”
Q. Is that fair? Is that not fair?
A. “With regard to what?”
Q. To say you’ve kind of learned to live with this a lot better than you did maybe three or four years ago.
A. “I guess so. It’s a tough question. I don’t know how you want me to answer it.”
Q. Honestly. Whatever you feel.
A. “That’s all I’ve ever done.”
Another reporter asked Hamm about Wambach’s style. She answered, then returned without prompting to where the interview had been. The interruption did not derail her train of thought.
“I’m just saying I’m confused by the questions,” she said.
Q. A number of recent stories have suggested that for a while you almost felt it was a burden, even though you wanted to be nice to everybody . . .
A. “I’ve never felt it was a burden.”
Q. And that as time has gone on you’ve matured . . .
A. “I’ve . . . Well, OK, keep going, sorry.”
Q. That you’re able to keep your private life very private but somehow are more accepting of the whole notion of this public acclaim. I’m just telling you what other people have written, and I’m wondering if those impressions are correct.
A. “I understand the responsibility that comes with it. I do. But at the same time, I’m a part of a team, and I’m no better or any worse than any single player on this team. That’s the approach I’ve always had and will continue to have. It’s not about me. It has never been all about me. If it had, this would have been a really lonely journey.
“And that’s not the person that my parents brought up. Believe me, I’m one of six kids, and I’m not the oldest, and I’m not the youngest. I found out very early it was a family, first and foremost, not a group of individuals. I think that is what I represent when I’m out here.”
A lovely, articulate response, even if it left the original question unanswered.
There are times, watching Mia Hamm in practice, when you think she has lost a step, when she can’t turn one-on-one confrontations into highlight-reel clips any longer, when her elusiveness isn’t what it was.
Not this time. In a one-on-one of an interview (or even one-on-10, like most of Hamm’s media interaction), she is as deftly elusive as ever. You feel like the two little girls who hung over a railing, pleading vainly for Hamm’s attention. There is only one thing left to say.
“Meeeeeeeeeeee-yah!”
