The US Women's National Team is back, and so am I (part one)
Notes on a rapid return from haunting loss, two hours out from the first friendly of a new age
Time, as ever, moves faster than any of us would like. Event to event, it carries on quicker than the mind can take. We’re on to the next challenge before we’ve processed the losses of last week.
Saturday marks the official end of summer.
And for the first time since the World Cup, the US Women’s National Team is reassembled in all its disparate parts.
They’re in Ohio. Familiar and fresh faces alike combine in Cincinnati under the tutelage of an interim coach, Twila Kilgore, who oversees a program still dwelling in the opaque miasma of whatever the hell happened last month.
Could it truly be only last month? Just 46 days since Alyssa Naeher’s indignant face pled wordlessly to the ref I saved that. 46 days since the machines marking millimeters decided she did not?
Prior to this summer (in what was a triumph for the sport but a stumble for the Americans) there had been eight total Women’s World Cups. The US won four of them. In the mere 50% they hadn’t won, they’d fallen just short.
In 2011 they were the runner-up. In 1995, 2003 and 2007, they landed in third place.
This summer, they fell short by the widening width of a cavernous gap.
It was the ninth edition of a soaring sport. Clear evidence of increased global parity– alongside a renewed and more pervasive European ascendancy– readied to make its case.
A US side in strange limbo (long unconvincing under the direction of its coach, beset by unfortunate injuries, festering structural issues finally home to roost) was anything but ready to make theirs.
They stuttered through the group stage, then lost to Sweden in the Round of 16 in the only match when they looked like themselves: confident, dominant, capable until the end.
It wasn’t enough. A long festering schadenfreude reared its happy head in response (both within the US and without).
In what may have been a blessing for some, I imagine, time offered no silent space to dwell in loss.
The tournament straddled (uniquely in world football) the American domestic league. 22 of the 23 players that suffered historic loss in Melbourne (with the sole exception of captain Lindsey Horan, who plays in Lyon) licked their wounds in the immediate and distracting chaos of NWSL. The Challenge Cup title was expeditiously on the line (And thanks to World Cup ballers from Brazil and Japan, North Carolina Courage collected it). The shield and the playoffs loom near.
The grand questions, the alleged reckoning, awaits. But forgive us… or them. For with time and chaos our mind’s master, we have been distracted. The athletes in question have been competing in the league, and I (long story) have been in the woods.
Until now!
The gang is back and they are in Ohio. I (returned to civilization) observe from PA.
They’re bidding farewell to a pair of legends. Julie Ertz and Megan Rapinoe are soon to move on.
They’re talking about redemption, but still making sense.
They’re composed of the old (all World Cup members are accounted for save for those ruled out by injury) while adding the new (Jaedyn Shaw, Mia Fishel, M.A. Vignola all appear for the very first time).
They’re as aware of the potentially restorative promise of the Olympics- just ten months off- as we are.
They play South Africa tonight. (730 ET on TNT, Universo, Peacock).