Becky Sauerbrunn

by David Seigerman

  All the while, coaches evaluate the top players in the region. They watch practices and games, talk to the state-level coaches and get their opinions of the best players in their own programs. At the end of these regional camps, the coaches select a regional team of thirty-six players. This is a pretty big deal in the US Soccer world.

  Then the regional team goes to a national camp to train with and compete against the teams from the country’s three other regions. There is a similar evaluation process and a similar selection process. And when it is all finished, a national team is selected in each of about half a dozen age groups.

  If this sounds a little intense, well, that’s because it is. This is the time when soccer players—and their parents—have to decide just how far they want to try to take their game. It’s challenging and competitive, and these camps can be even more emotionally demanding than they are physically.

  “Physically, many of them can handle it,” Tim Boul said. “But can they accept the fact that, all of a sudden, they might not be the best player on the field anymore? Now they’re up against kids from all the different states coming together, the best of the best. They could get hurt emotionally if they don’t make the team.”

  Becky was about fourteen years old when she first played ODP at the state level. Her parents weren’t quite sure what to expect from the program; they just knew that their daughter was curious enough and dedicated enough to give it a shot.

  “By the time she was in middle school, we knew how committed she was to the sport, how much time and energy she dedicated to it,” Jane said.

  And they knew how much she liked to compete.

  “Even as a little kid, Becky always wanted to win,” Jane said. “Some people say that you shouldn’t keep score when kids are that little. It wouldn’t have mattered. Becky always knew what the score was.”

  Some kids are content to be the big fish in their little local pond, and there’s not a thing wrong with that. Some kids, though, want to see what else is out there, to measure themselves against the big fish from other ponds.

  Some kids shrink from that sort of cutthroat competition. Becky blossomed.

  She was placed into a group with players from across the state, most of whom were among the top players on their own hometown teams. Drill after drill, Becky showed she belonged with the best players the Show-Me State had to offer. She felt a familiar rush of confidence, the same awareness she once experienced with the boys on the Raiders: I can hang.

  “What I found most enjoyable was the challenge of competing, comparing myself to everyone there and getting better,” Becky said. “I was able to feel myself getting more and more comfortable and finding my way with this group.”

  Becky competed on the state level for a couple of years, each time with the goal of making the regional team. She never came out and told her J. B. Marine coaches what her ultimate goal might be. Maybe it wasn’t yet clear even to her. But she did know there was a path ahead of her, and a sequence of steps she might have the opportunity to take. And if she didn’t make the next step, she couldn’t make the one that came after.

  Even her parents didn’t know whether Becky had a long-term plan. They just knew the process was a great growing-up experience for their daughter.

  Once, Becky traveled with her team to an event in California. It was probably the first time she had been on a plane since she was very young. (Her brother Grant recalls a family ski vacation to Colorado: Little Becky wanted to follow her big brothers down the runs they were exploring. Sure enough, she picked up the brand-new sport quickly, and she spent the week snowplowing down the Rocky Mountains in her pink snowsuit, her brothers crisscrossing around her, keeping her safe.) Jane and Scott weren’t worried about how Becky would handle the caliber of soccer competition she’d face out west. They were too busy wondering how she’d make her way through the airport in Los Angeles and find a phone to call a car from the ODP training center to come pick her up.

  Becky grew up in the ODP, as a young woman and as a soccer player. When she was fifteen, Becky was competing at the U-16 level, and she went with the Missouri state team to the regional camp. The scrutiny there was tremendous, with the cream of the crop from each of twelve states hoping to rise to the top and make the thirty-six-person regional roster.

  At the end of the pressure-packed weeklong camp, the coaches and regional directors held an assembly to announce which players they had selected for the regional team. Becky listened as they read the list.

  She heard her name.

  Rebecca Sauerbrunn, from Missouri, had made the Region II team.

  They handed her an envelope, which was filled with paperwork that needed to be filled out before she could take the next step of her soccer journey. Becky clutched the envelope as she got onto the Missouri state team bus to head back home. She found a seat by herself, settled in, and sat there in silence for the longest time, clinging to that unopened envelope. For the first time in her life, the possibilities were beginning to register in her imagination.

  “I was nervous to open it,” Becky said. “I thought, ‘This envelope holds my future.’ It was the first time I wondered, how far could I take this? How far could I go?”

  For starters, she’d go as far as Florida, where the four regional teams from across the country—North, South, East, West—met to train and practice, scrimmage and compete. Sure enough, when that camp was done, Becky had taken another new next step, claiming a coveted spot on the roster for the U-16 National Team.

  It was also at that Florida camp that Becky first met Steve Swanson.

  Steve had just left Stanford University to become the head coach of the women’s soccer program at the University of Virginia. He’d coached the Stanford Cardinal to two Pac-10 Conference titles in his four seasons there. Before that, he had helped put the women’s soccer program at Dartmouth on the map. At the same time he was taking over in Charlottesville, he became the head coach of the U-16 National Team.

  His first opportunity to work with Becky came at the U-16’s first camp at the US Olympic Training Center in Chula Vista, California, a state-of-the-art training facility that today houses more than a dozen teams training for a variety of Summer Olympics sports. It has a forty-thousand-square-foot archery complex, six beach volleyball courts, and a BMX Supercross track modeled after the one used for the 2012 London Olympics. There are weight rooms and tennis courts and a track—and, of course, natural-grass fields for the US soccer programs.

  Early in the very first game she played in that very first U-16 National Team camp, Becky gave up a goal. Well, as Coach Swanson remembers it, the goal wasn’t Becky’s fault. No goal is ever any one player’s fault. She just happened to be the defender in closest proximity to the player who scored.

  The goal isn’t what made the greatest impression on the team’s head coach. It was the way Becky responded to the goal that stuck with Steve Swanson. Rather than hang her head, lose her confidence, and fret that she had blown this rarest of opportunities, Becky responded to the challenge.

  “She reacted the way you would want any competitor to react: That is not gonna happen again. That’s the last time you get something off me,” Steve said. “And she ate that kid up the rest of that camp. Even though she was faster than Becky and probably more athletic than Becky at that point in time, Becky shut her down.”

  Becky shut down attackers and opened plenty of eyes during that camp, Swanson’s most of all. About the only one unimpressed by her performance was Becky herself.

  At the end of the camp, Coach Swanson met with his players, asking each one how she felt about what she’d accomplished there. He had each player rate herself in comparison with the twenty-three other players on the team.

  Becky put herself in the bottom three or four players.

  Her coach didn’t see it quite the same way. “For my perspective, she was in the top five.”

  Steve was struck by Becky’s passion to improve as a player, something he saw right away.
He’s a big proponent of using video—shot at practice as well as during scrimmages and games—as a teaching tool, and Becky will never forget the first time Coach called her into his office to watch and evaluate films of her in action.

  This wasn’t exactly a collection of Becky Sauerbrunn’s Greatest Hits. She was just learning to play on a four-person back line, and she found herself out of position more than she was accustomed to.

  Needless to say, this film was not easy for Becky to watch. It was more lowlights than highlights, a series of clips that showed all the things she was not doing properly. She could feel her body curling into itself as she watched, almost as if it were trying to disappear from the room.

  “He said to me, ‘Becky, I know how good you can be, I know the potential you have. I believe you can reach the next level. I need to show you these things so you can learn from them,’ ” Becky said. “It was the most professional thing I had ever experienced. I remember leaving that meeting, thinking how I had this amazing coach who believed in me so much that he took the time to show me all these clips.”

  Coach Swanson remembers that session, too. And he remembers all the other conversations he had with Becky back then—in his office, on a bus, on the practice field, in the locker room, in an airport waiting area. He would spend as much time talking with a player as that player wanted. In Becky, he found someone who took an intense personal interest in her own development.

  “I felt she could get extremely far, but it wasn’t her talent alone that I was banking on,” Steve said. “It was what she had inside, coupled with her talent. I wanted to help her reach her goals.”

  Not only was he instrumental in helping Becky reach her goals, he was right there with her as she achieved many of them. A few years after playing for him on the U-16s, Becky went on to play for him at Virginia, where she became one of the most accomplished players in the history of that legendary college program.

  Then in 2014, he joined Jill Ellis’s staff as an assistant coach on the US Women’s National Team. He and Becky got to share many more moments together, including the celebration of winning the 2015 World Cup. That’s quite a journey for a coach and player to take together.

  CHAPTER 9

  THE LONG RUN

  After all their years together, Steve Swanson has no shortage of Becky Sauerbrunn stories to share. But there’s one favorite anecdote that he feels captures the essence of what makes her special.

  It happened back in Charlottesville, in the middle of Becky’s college career, maybe during her junior season. Steve liked to find ways to challenge his players, and he had one exercise that would test them mentally and physically. They called it “Lap Ahead.”

  Basically, the team would line up together along the perimeter of the practice field, adjacent to the University of Virginia’s Klöckner Stadium. Coach Swanson and his players would prepare to run around the full field—which is 120 yards long, 75 yards wide (about one-fifth of a mile; like running around the outside of a regulation-size football field, plus an extra 50 yards or so). The catch was that Coach was considered to be a lap ahead. The players would have to circle the field once more than Steve did—to lap him. Once they gained back that lap, they had to catch him and tag him. Only then could they stop running.

  It was not as easy as it sounds. Especially since Coach Swanson enjoyed toying with them. Sometimes he’d let them make up the lap, get close, just about within tagging distance, only to sprint away and out of their reach.

  One day, when Becky was away, practicing with a national team, Coach put his team through the Lap Ahead challenge. Though she’d had the good fortune of being out of town and escaping the grueling test this one time, Becky wasn’t interested in escaping.

  “She came back and told me, ‘I don’t want to not do what the rest of the team did. I need you to do this with me.’ I said, ‘Sure, pick a day.’ ”

  That Saturday morning, Becky and her coach went out to run Lap Ahead together. One-on-one.

  Becky being Becky, she had done her homework. She had prepared. She discussed with her teammates what the proper strategy should be in this head-to-head challenge. The consensus was to come out running—to go as fast as she could from the get-go, gain as much ground as she could on that first lap, then keep pressing.

  That was the plan. And Coach figured that would be her plan.

  They ran ten laps before Becky could gain any ground on her coach. He wouldn’t let her an inch in front of him, let alone a lap.

  Over the next six or so laps, she started to catch up to him and close in on that lap. He would let her get close enough to dive at him, only to pull away at the last second, leaving her first grasping at air, then gasping for air on the ground. Every time, though, Becky got up, and every time she raced back into striking position.

  At some point, he let her lap him and tag him. The race was over. And it was clear who the winner was.

  “If you had videotaped that session and watched it today, you would see everything you need to know about the internal makeup of Becky Sauerbrunn,” Steve said. “She easily could have come back to campus and not worried about missing it. But she had to do what her teammates did. She couldn’t miss anything. You would see how competitive she was. How much it mattered to her.

  “She had that look in her eye.”

  Any striker who has advanced on the USWNT goal in recent years is all too familiar with that look.

  CHAPTER 10

  THERE AND BACK AGAIN

  As the press officer for the US Women’s National Team, Aaron Heifetz has enjoyed the privilege of watching the best women’s soccer players in the United States over the years. He’s seen a lot of world-class soccer up close and personal.

  Out of all that he’s witnessed, all the spectacular moments and thrilling games, one play in the 2015 World Cup stands out among his favorites from the entire tournament. It didn’t result in a goal or a sensational Hope Solo save. It was a play so seemingly routine, it likely wouldn’t have warranted much comment from the broadcasters calling the semifinal game between Germany and the US And yet this soccer sequence is one he’ll never forget.

  It unfolded late in the scoreless first half. The ball was being brought down the right sideline by Célia Šašić, one of Germany’s top forwards (Šašić scored a hat trick—three goals—in Germany’s World Cup opening game and finished the tournament with six goals, earning her the coveted Golden Boot as the event’s top goal scorer). Becky Sauerbrunn ran from her center back position over to cover the attacker, and she promptly took the ball away.

  But that wasn’t the end of the play.

  Becky wound up with the ball in a tight spot—on the sideline, facing her own goal, with Šašić right on her back. One misstep here could turn into an attack situation for an elite goal-scorer. Many players, if not most, simply would have kicked the ball out of bounds and taken a moment for the defense to reset. Becky made a very different choice.

  She wiggled away from the pressure, spinning away from Šašić and creating enough space to make a pinpoint pass to a teammate and get the play headed back in the right direction.

  “Not only did she defuse the situation, she didn’t give the ball up, and suddenly, here we are, going down the other way,” Aaron said.

  It was a moment he was sure went unnoticed by the masses, one he appreciates having witnessed and enjoyed, almost privately. Almost.

  The masses might not have noticed. But Steve Swanson did.

  On the US sidelines, the team’s assistant coach watched Becky make just one more outstanding play for the National Team. It wasn’t the kind of play that registers on a score sheet or draws cheers from the stands, but it was a perfectly executed play nonetheless. Even if it was a little risky.

  When you watch Becky Sauerbrunn make plays like that, with such confidence and such consistency, it’s easy to see why she’s such a fixture on the US Women’s National Team back line. In 2015, she played every minute of every game played by the US,
including every minute of the FIFA Women’s World Cup. She played every minute of the 2016 Summer Olympics. She’s become so entrenched in the heart of the team’s defense that it’s really easy to forget that Becky’s spot in the lineup—let alone on the roster—wasn’t always so secure.

  After all, she got her first call-up to the National Team in 2008 only because one of the defensive starters had been injured. Becky broke her nose in that first game, missed the next, but came back in time for the final. Still, after that Four Nations Tournament ended, so did Becky’s time with the National Team.

  The woman who wasn’t inclined to leave the field even with a bloodied and broken nose now had to find a way to get back out there.

  For many players, that could have been the end. She had had her moment with the National Team, the highest-level team she could make. She had shown her talents and her toughness. She’d earned two caps for the United States, even picked up her first assist in the championship game.

  Had Becky decided to walk away at that point, thinking she’d taken soccer as far as she could, no one would have faulted her.

  Except, of course, the person looking back at her in the mirror.

  Becky didn’t quit. She accepted her coach’s decision to send her back down to the U-23s, where she’d get back to working to improve her game. Fortunately, a new women’s professional soccer league (named, appropriately, Women’s Professional Soccer) was preparing to launch in 2009. The league held its first draft in the fall of 2008. With the third pick in the first round of the inaugural WPS General Draft, the Washington Freedom selected Becky Sauerbrunn. She joined a roster that already included three players from the National Team who had been assigned to the Freedom when the league was introduced: Abby Wambach (who has scored more goals in international competition than any player in history, men’s and women’s soccer included), Cat Whitehill (who played 134 games for the US Women’s National Team), and Ali Krieger (Becky’s once and future teammate on the National Team back line).