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  It was an epic sports moment, extremely dramatic. I imagined people back home watching, sitting in bars, jumping up to celebrate when the whistle blew. We were tied 2–2 and the game went to a penalty shootout, which we won 5–3. If we’d lost, it would have been a catastrophic exit from the World Cup—our earliest ever, with no medal rounds, nothing—and after it was all over, we collapsed with something we rarely feel as a team: overwhelming relief.

  That clip of my cross to Abby and her stupendous header into the goal went what we didn’t yet know to call viral. It jumped from ESPN to all the mainstream news and talk shows. It was endlessly played and discussed in the media. We were still in a bubble, going from hotel, to field, to ESPN studio, but we knew something had broken through. Friends and family started calling us. Then we started to see numbers. The average global TV audience for the World Cup so far was 13 million per game, across 181 countries, a huge increase from previous World Cups. After we got through the semis against France 3–1, it rose to 62 million for the final. In America, audience reach had increased by almost 200 percent over the previous World Cup, peaking for the final at 14 million.

  These numbers were mind-boggling, and not just because we had played well. One of the reasons audience figures were up in the US was because during the 2007 World Cup, matches had been scheduled to air in the morning, so no one had been able to watch. This time around, they were aired throughout the day and after work. I could see now that there were specific ways of inflating or depressing people’s engagement with women’s soccer, rather than, as I had understood to be the case, interest in us waxing and waning as if it were a natural phenomenon, like weather.

  The final against Japan was a nail-biter. Four months earlier, Japan had suffered a catastrophic tsunami that had killed fifteen thousand people. If ever a nation needed some joy, they did. We played hard, edged into the lead with a low strike from Alex Morgan, surrendered our lead, then squandered a bunch of goal opportunities so that by the final whistle we were tied 2–2. Abby scored in overtime and we were celebrating like crazy until Japan equalized, and once again the game went to a penalty shootout. To lose in the final of the World Cup is agonizing. To lose 1–3 on penalties is almost unbearable.

  We were crushed. We were also, however, saved from the worst of the disappointment by the energy around the World Cup. Almost immediately, we realized that something about this tournament had been different; the buzz around our return was huge. This was the first Twitter World Cup—the platform had only been a year old in 2007 and no one had been using it. By 2011, although I still couldn’t imagine a day when, to pick a random example, the president of the United States might use Twitter as his primary method of address, the social media service had become popular enough for us to feel the spike in engagement. Here was the beginning of our social media life, and it was thrilling. People bandied around stats like “seven thousand tweets a second” to describe fans reacting to us online while we played. It was at that point, while we were letting this sink in and wondering what would happen when we got home, when I started to feel uncomfortable.

  * * *

  —

  On the plane on the way back from Germany, we were all in pretty bad moods. Our bodies were trashed. We’d gotten totally drunk the night before flying. And now I had one of the worst fucking seats on the flight—first row of economy, nowhere to put my feet, and the table didn’t come out. I had Alex Morgan on one side and Lori Lindsey on the other, and Dan, my agent, was sitting behind me. At some point I turned to Lori and said, “This is just dumb.”

  We had been talking about the way athletes never come out, particularly when the spotlight is on them. I’d never been in the spotlight before. The team hadn’t been popular enough. Now, as we flew back into the eye of a media storm, we were popular and I didn’t feel right. “This is weird, right?” I said to Lori, who is one of my best friends and had been feeling weird, too. “Yup,” she said.

  All year I’d been reading about gay rights and the law, and it had made me much more politically aware. Coming out, I understood now, was not a zero sum game, but more of a process. I wasn’t in the closet, but no one in the press knew I was gay and that aspect of my life wasn’t part of the conversation. Saying something now might be impactful—I don’t think I used those kinds of words yet, but I was making my way toward that conclusion. “Clearly this is a public issue and we’re public figures,” I said to Lori, but it wasn’t only that. Not talking about my sexuality felt intuitively bad, like I was operating a policy of don’t ask, don’t tell, or flying deliberately under the radar. “I’m gay, and an athlete, and I just want to be out,” I said. I looked down the aircraft at all the other gay players, most of them older than me. Why am I not out? I thought, impatiently. Why are we all not out?

  I swung around in my seat to talk to Dan. Once a decision feels right, I don’t agonize or have reservations. I felt similar to the way I had when I came out to my parents, which was that (a) people were not going to be surprised to find out I was gay. And (b) if this was going to be a super big deal to people, then that’s wack, and they’re not going to be in my life anyway. But the way the world was going, I didn’t think this was going to be a problem. Being a professional athlete, particularly if you’re female, is not like being a Hollywood star, where your sexuality has a bearing on the way people perceive your performance. I had never struggled with accepting this part of myself, so there was no hitch when it came to telling other people.

  Dan was supportive from the jump. He wasn’t just cool with my plan, he actively encouraged it and never raised a single alarm about potential commercial damages, or told me to slow down and give the decision some thought. Instead, he was a real cheerleader just when I needed one, and I will always be grateful to him. I wasn’t going to blurt it out on Jimmy Fallon that night. But by the time we flew to London the following year for the 2012 Olympics, I decided I would be fully, publicly out.

  There was no reception committee for us when we landed at JFK, but when the team bus arrived in New York and parked in front of the W hotel, a crowd of people and media had gathered outside. It was wild. For the next few days, we were plunged into an intense PR schedule, getting up at the crack of dawn to shoot the morning shows, and staying up until well after midnight to appear on the late-night shows. On the street, everyone wanted to stop us and talk. I don’t tend to think of tournaments in theatrical terms, but the story of the World Cup—my cross to Abby in the dying moments of the quarters, and the extraordinary finale of Japan winning after the tsunami—had captured the country’s imagination. We rebranded our victory tour a “welcome home” tour and played three exhibition matches, and everywhere we went there was commotion and excitement. “This is so bizarre,” I said at one point on the bus, “but it feels like we won the World Cup!” To which Christie Rampone, the team captain who had played on multiple Olympic gold medal–winning squads, whipped around and snapped, “No it doesn’t.” She was right. One of the biggest dangers of being number one in the world is complacency. We hadn’t won. We were overcelebrating.

  Slowly the fuss around us started to die down, and as we scattered back to our league teams, it felt like the right time—not at the height of the post–World Cup media frenzy, but with the lead-up to London 2012 under way—to follow through with the decision I had made on the way back from Germany. After spending the winter break in Australia with Sarah, I got back to the US and scheduled an interview with Out magazine. I’d been talking to Rachael, and she was gung ho on my side. And I’d been talking to my mom, who went through another round of jitters. She was fearful that, right at the moment when the team and I had made such a splash, coming out might mess things up for me. “Are you sure you’re doing the right thing?” she asked, and mentioned my sponsorship deals. She wanted me to consider all the angles before I made my decision, but I told her it was already made. I’d always felt soccer wasn’t the beginning and end of my life, which
was something my parents had taught me, and now I knew for sure. Coming out was bigger, more important, and more integral to who I was than anything that happened in sports. I also thought my mom’s concerns were misplaced. “People are selfish,” I said. “You know what people are thinking about rather than thinking about me? Themselves. No one really cares. And if they do care, whatever, I don’t care.”

  The interview was published in July 2012, and my coming out was presented matter-of-factly. “She’ll be traveling to London to represent the United States at the Olympics this year,” wrote the journalist Jerry Portwood. “It’s a crowning achievement for the 27-year-old. But Rapinoe has decided to pull off another landmark in women’s soccer: to come out and publicly discuss her sexuality.” I said some things I’d been feeling ever since the World Cup. “I feel like sports in general are still homophobic, in the sense that not a lot of people are out. . . . People want—they need—to see that there are people like me playing soccer for the good ol’ U.S. of A.”

  I spoke about the fact that while I’d never been actively hiding, since no journalist had ever asked me about my sexuality, I felt duty bound to spell it out. “For the record: I am gay.” My sister chipped in with a quote. “I think it’s incredibly brave to use this talent and platform that she’s been blessed with in a positive way,” said Rachael, “not just on the field, but providing an example of how to treat people off the field as well.” Then I told the reporter I’d modeled my bleached-blond pixie cut partly on Tilda Swinton, and that life was too short to take seriously. It was a fun interview.

  Nothing happened. In the best possible way, it was a complete nonevent. My sponsors didn’t cancel me. I didn’t get an angry call from Nike. There was no negative blowback, or, if there was, I didn’t see it. Coming out in this way felt like a positive thing in my life and career. It also felt part of a wider movement. Later that year, a judge found in favor of Edith Windsor, ruling that section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act, defining marriage as exclusively between a man and woman, was unconstitutional, and ordered the IRS to reimburse Windsor, with interest. The decision was upheld by the court of appeals, and as it began making its way up to the Supreme Court, I was proud to have spoken up in some small way. I felt like I was part of something bigger than myself.

  The only regret was that with the exception of Lori, who came out shortly after me, no one else on the team came out. They were all very supportive and lots of players tweeted in my favor, but when I talked to the other gay players, they mostly said the same thing: I just want to live my life. I’m not the kind of person who likes to scream about my sexuality from the rooftops. If you come out, you have to be an advocate, which isn’t me.

  I got it. And I got that if in women’s sports being gay wasn’t a big deal, then you could live quite comfortably half in the closet. If no one cared, why go through the hassle of formally coming out?

  This missed the point. If you’re a prominent athlete, coming out isn’t for yourself but for others. Until everyone can come out without it being a big deal, nobody gets to “just” live their lives. And the more people who come out, the more we break down the stereotypes of what it is to be gay. I would love it, for example, if an athlete on the level of a LeBron James or a Derek Jeter came out. It would mess with the stereotypes about masculinity and femininity, just as if more women on my team came out, I’d hoped it would show there was more than one way to be gay.

  I didn’t mind being the “gay player,” or one of the few out players on the team. Clearly I like attention and I was comfortable with myself, no matter what. But I couldn’t understand why no one else followed suit. I wanted to ask them: What do you want to be the story of your lives? Do you want someone else to tell it for you, or do you want to tell it yourself?

  I also started to understand the privilege of coming out as a female athlete. I came out and it was applauded; that’s not the universal experience, or, probably, even the norm. For the first time, I began to realize it was about more than being gay, and that there were other factors at play. I was affluent and white, and I had a platform, all of which shaped people’s responses to me. And while I didn’t yet have the term “intersectionality,” at hand, I understood that people without my protections were struggling. We’re supposed to respect people’s timetables for coming out, and I try, I really do. But guys, come on; people are still being beaten up for being gay, it’s illegal in over seventy countries, and it’s punishable by death in at least ten. Can you maybe hurry things up a bit?

  9

  THE END OF THE LEAGUE

  You get a free pass when you’re a successful athlete and belong to a winning team. If you play and win for the US, you’re a hero; you occupy a category that is almost immune to criticism. When I came out, I hadn’t braced for a backlash exactly, but I had been prepared for some negative commentary, and when it didn’t come, I was pleasantly surprised. I was twenty-seven and politically engaged, while also remaining relatively politically naive. Looking around, I came to a general conclusion: perhaps the world was a better place than I’d imagined.

  This was not an eccentric mindset for me to have had in late 2011. Months before I came out publicly, though, I had a lot to learn and another season to play. As a soccer player, I was looking forward to the 2012 London Olympics; as an out gay woman, I was following the run-up to the 2012 presidential election with a keener and more personal interest than any election I’d followed before. I broadened my political reading beyond the campaign for equal marriage and gay rights to other minority interests and progressive causes, on the basis that what helped one probably helped the other. What was Mitt Romney’s record on civil rights? (He didn’t have one.) How was he on the environment? (Terrible; he campaigned against Obama’s Environmental Protection Agency because it was “killing jobs.”) How did he plan to help the uninsured? (By pulling Obamacare on day one of his presidency and replacing it with . . . tax breaks.) My dad had started watching Fox News, and when he went off about Obama to me one day on the phone, I was ready. “That’s funny,” I said, “because you got a lot more in benefits for putting in energy-efficient windows and doing construction jobs for energy-efficient updating with Obama than you would with Romney. And Obamacare—I know it’s not perfect—but it’s better than anything else on the table.” I hadn’t become any less annoying since college; I had just become more informed.

  The big issue for me was gay marriage, and in spring 2012, six months before the election, President Obama had become the first sitting president to announce his support. (Romney went on Fox News to affirm that marriage should exist only between a man and a woman.) Obama’s support was a huge deal and the tide was turning. Just look at the way the American public had changed its mind on this issue over the years. In 1988, a University of Chicago poll found that 67.6 percent of Americans were opposed to same-sex marriage. In 2006, a Pew survey found that figure had dropped to 51 percent. And in May 2011, a Gallup poll was among the first to show that a majority of Americans supported gay marriage. Consciousness could be changed. Speaking out, coming out, being an out gay figure in public life: all of these actions helped. I thought of all the love and support I’d had when I’d decided to come out, and it seemed to beg an obvious question: If we worked together, what else might we change?

  Getting back to the US after the World Cup had brought more immediate challenges. The Women’s Professional Soccer league had always been underfunded and badly organized, but that summer it seemed as if many of the league teams were on the brink of collapse. At the end of 2010, the Chicago Red Stars had gotten into financial difficulty and left the WPS, and I had left the Chicago Red Stars. I had signed briefly with a team in Philadelphia, before being bought, just before the World Cup, by a Florida-based team called magicJack, for a hundred-thousand-dollar transfer fee. It was pocket change compared to the men’s game (a few years later, Christian Pulisic was bought by Chelsea, the English Premier League side, for $73 mill
ion, the most expensive transfer in American soccer history) and none of it came to me, but it was still the highest transfer fee in the history of women’s soccer and a rare injection of cash into the ailing league. magicJack was owned by Dan Borislow, a billionaire mired in legal disputes with the WPS and some of his own players, but who had splashed a ton of money on the team, which that season included Abby Wambach, Shannon Boxx, and Hope Solo. After the World Cup, down we all went to Boca Raton.

  It was strange to settle into life after the tournament. For several months, we’d been the toast of the nation, flying in chartered planes, appearing on TV, playing in front of millions of people. Now we were back to the reality of life in the league. It was a relief in some ways. The league wasn’t perfect, but for those of us on the national team, it was a welcome retreat from the craziness. When you play internationally, you go to training camp, play two games in a row, and boom, you’re done. If you’re not in the starting lineup, you might not even see that much game time. In the league, you can settle into the season and have the time and space to work on your game.

  The downside is tiny crowds and a sense of frustration that gains made by the national team never trickled down to the league. This made sense in some ways. There’s a difference between cheering on Team USA during a big international tournament and turning up for an underpromoted Wednesday-night game between two teams you’ve never heard of. But that didn’t entirely explain the disconnect. The average league player earned twenty-five thousand dollars a year, and so many had to quit to find a job long before they were ready to retire. There was inadequate investment in marketing and promotion. And the fortunes of most individual league teams were dependent on the whims of their billionaire owners—not an entirely reliable funding model.