Solo Hope Solo (online e book reading .TXT) 📖

made an impact. I think all of us believe in ourselves enough to think we can affect the outcome.”

“Are you even going to apologize to Bri?” someone asked.

I turned toward Bri. I wanted her to know that I wasn’t trying to hurt her, not after everything she had done for me when my father died. I felt backed against the wall.

Bri spoke first. She told me I had hurt her very much. She said she had tried to be there for me when my father died and was shocked that I would do this to her.

“I’m sorry Bri,” I said. “I really am. I didn’t mean to hurt you. My comments were directed at Greg, not at you.”

I could tell how awkward I sounded. I wanted to have a private moment with Bri but I was in a room full of angry women who demanded that I perform a public act of contrition. Everything felt forced. Staged.

“Hope, we’ve heard your side of things,” Christie Rampone said. “You’ve heard how we feel. So how are we going to move forward and make this better?”

I looked at Pearcie with gratitude. She was the only one trying to lead us through the mess, to cut through the harsh words and angry feelings. The group decided that the way to move forward was for me to apologize to the entire team. They told me there would be a team meeting in the morning.

I went back to my room for a few tortured hours. I couldn’t sleep. I cried most of the night and tried to figure out what to do. All my life I’ve said exactly what I thought and stood up for myself. But now I was in a firestorm for doing just that. I felt terrible that I had hurt Bri. She had been so kind to me when my father died. I vowed to talk to her in the morning and try to make things right between us.

The next morning when I stepped into the room, I saw Bri standing by the door and I paused. “Bri, do you have a second?” I said. “Please know I would never want to hurt you. I have so much respect for you.”

She turned away from me. “Hope, I can’t even look at you right now,” she said.

OK, I thought. This is going to take time. This is going to be on Bri’s terms. I have to be patient.

I walked into the room and felt twenty sets of eyes bore into me. I was on stage. I said the same thing I had said to the smaller group in Lil’s room the night before. “I never meant to hurt Bri,” I said. “My comments were directed at Greg and his reasoning. I said I would have made those saves because I truly have to believe I could have made a difference.”

I didn’t see any sign of support. I saw hostility and anger. Hatred, even. Hard words were flung at me.

“You don’t sound sincere.”

“Do you even care what you’ve done?”

“How can you turn your back on the team?”

“Do you know how horrible you looked on television, pouting on the bench?”

“You’ve been feeling sorry for yourself since Greg told you that you weren’t starting. Some of us sit on the bench every game.”

I looked at my few close friends, hoping for a sympathetic face, but all I saw were blank, cold stares. I looked at the faces of the younger players, like Aly and Cat and Leslie Osborne and Lori Chalupny and Tina Frimpong, my former UW teammate. I had become a pariah. Everyone was following Lil and Abby. No one would stand up for me. Only Carli seemed to have any sympathy in her expression.

“You haven’t even apologized to Bri,” someone said.

I had already apologized to Bri in Lil’s room the night before. I had just spoken to her again outside the door. But I apologized to Bri again, in front of everyone. I had maintained my composure through most of the meeting, but as I spoke, my voice broke. “I’m sorry Bri,” I said. “I never meant to hurt you. I’m sorry that I did.”

I was asked to leave the room while my fate was decided.

III.

We had a pool workout at the hotel later that morning, to help rejuvenate our legs. I felt awkward, unsure of where to go. No one spoke to me. I didn’t know what had been decided after I left the room.

When I got into the pool, my teammates stayed away from me, as though I had some disease that could be transmitted through the water. After the workout, I got out of the pool first. As soon as I did, my teammates gathered for a team cheer.

Oh, God, I thought. I don’t look like a team player.

I jumped back into the water. And then it dawned on me that the only reason they had done the cheer was because I was out of the pool.

After the workout, Greg spoke to a small gathering of press in the hotel lobby. Almost all the questions were about me. “There are always opportunities for reconciliation,” he said. “We’ll work to try to get past this hurdle.”

But my teammates had already decided that reconciliation wasn’t the answer. After I had left the meeting, they had deemed my apology insincere. I needed to be punished. They would not allow me to play in the third-place game. I couldn’t even go to the game. I couldn’t eat meals with the team. I was suspended. They also decided that I needed to call Julie Foudy to apologize to her for tarnishing the legacy she helped build, which seemed absurd to me.

Later that day, Greg called me into his room. He was smiling and friendly as he told me I was suspended. He told me that he had done bad things in his career, how once he stormed off the field after getting subbed out in a game. He suggested that I could move on, but