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Emotional insurance
Pictures of polliwogs, first baths and birthdays preserve my children in time, but I am always standing just out of the frame.
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[06/21/99]

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[06/17/99]

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[06/16/99]

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By Esmé Raji Codell
[06/14/99]

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Unlike virtually any other team sport, soccer embraces players of all shapes and skill sets. For those fleet of foot, the sport offers the position of striker. Slower, stronger athletes can be put to work at the back as defenders. Those with titanium lungs and exceptional vision are best in the midfield. Nerves of steel and hands of leather are prerequisites for the role of goalkeeper.

With relatively few rules and a clock that never stops, "the beautiful game" thrives on individuality and expression, its field offering acres of canvas upon which masterpieces can be created by players of various styles.

To non-soccer fanatics, that may sound like hyperbole. But there can be little doubt that the game served as an outlet of expression for a gangly 13-year-old from north Texas named Mia Hamm. At the awkward arrival of adolescence, soccer was a refuge for the quiet teenager.

Her recently published "Go for the Goal: A Champion's Guide to Winning in Soccer and Life" consists of memoirs, words of advice to young female athletes and a regimen of soccer training drills. Hamm describes how as a teen she would spend hours alone on the practice field honing her skills long after others had called it a day. Amid the media maelstrom of recent weeks, Hamm says she still finds "a haven and security inside the lines." She recently told ESPN, "the field is where I express myself."

By age 15, Hamm had been competing on boys teams for years, even leading them in scoring at times. Already focused on the long term, she dreamed of playing for the University of North Carolina's legendary Tar Heels, and then landing a spot on the U.S. Women's National Team. Both goals were achieved in short, but reverse order. That year, she became the youngest woman ever to play for the United States and traveled with the team to Taiwan. A couple of seasons later, she set off for Chapel Hill to join the Tar Heels.

At the time, both squads were led by coach Anson Dorrance, whom Hamm calls "the driving force behind my growth as a person and a player." Known for his intense and even controversial motivational tactics, Dorrance took her aside several months after she had joined the national team. In her memoirs, Hamm recalls him saying, "You can become the best soccer player in the world." Whether these words were sincere or merely meant to bolster the confidence of a young player coming into her own, they proved prophetic.

Like many female athletes who came of age in the 1980s, Hamm had few female predecessors in her sport on which to model her game. Not surprisingly, men served as her primary athletic mentors. Years before she met Dorrance, it was her older brother Garrett who served as soccer sparring partner, motivator and idol. Hamm credits him for being the single most influential person in her career.

Garrett was plagued for years by the blood disease aplastic anemia, and died of complications related to bone-marrow transplants shortly after the United States won the Olympic Gold Medal in 1996. Hamm was devastated and has since devoted herself to raising awareness of the disease through a charitable foundation that bears her name. The U.S. team has played several benefit matches to raise money for the foundation. As another tribute, every pair of the Nike soccer shoes she endorses has Garrett's initials on the bottom.

The relative lack of female soccer superstars of the past may also help explain the close-knit nature of the U.S. Women's National Team. Lacking idols to emulate and, until now, lacking public interest, its players have been forced to look inward and to one another for inspiration. Hamm is no exception. In her book, she lavishes pages of praise on teammates Kristine Lilly and Michelle Akers who are clearly her soccer heroes.

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At just 5 feet 5 inches tall, Hamm is an offensive force of nature. With an explosive first step, she blows by defenders with the ball seemingly tied to her feet on a short string. In the open field, she can be unstoppable, zigging and zagging, cutting and slashing past the opposition. Often, opponents are reduced to grabbing her jersey or jamming a foot in her wheels as she flies by.

In addition to her grass-singeing speed, Hamm possesses impeccable "touch," as it is known in soccer. Try catching a 40-yard touchdown pass with your foot and you'll understand the term. As she showed Saturday, Hamm can pull down a ball traveling through the air at high speed with her insole, settle it on the ground and pound it toward the goal, all in an instant.

Finally, Hamm has that intangible quality that defines great strikers: the ability to capitalize on even the slightest opportunity to score. Soccer matches last 90 minutes and are often decided by no more than a single goal. Moments when the ball can be deposited in the back of the net come and go in a split second, at which time the 24-foot-wide goal can seem to shrink drastically even for many experienced players.

At such moments, exceptional scorers like Hamm enter a zone where time slows and the goal beckons. On a breakaway with the goalkeeper flying toward her at top speed, Hamm can calmly chip the ball over her opponent's head into the net beyond, not just because it's a move she has practiced 1,000 times before but because of an innate belief in herself.

Next page | Can Hamm handle the pressure?