When I first met Carli Lloyd, she was in 8th grade, not much over five feet tall and playing for the U-15 Medford Strikers, New Jersey team I had just joined as an assistant to Joe Dadura.
Today Carli is playing for the World Cup. She’s grown to about 5’-8”, wears the USA logo instead of the Medford Strikers or Rutgers University.
We won the State Cup that first year I helped coach, in a shoot-out over defending champs Voorhees. Carli wasn’t the best player on the team, but was very good, with a magic touch on the ball. She did not take one of our five penalty kicks that day in the Spring of 1997, and in fact she was never one of our PK shooters, which went on to be a running joke among us for years. So I was happy to see her make one of the kicks in the dramatic shootout over Brazil.
We had a lot of good times on the Strikers team – two NJ State Cups, a Dallas Cup, a JAGS championship, and many other victories. I watched Carli play a number of games for Rutgers and also saw most of the other team members play at least once in college. Many of us have stayed in touch over the years, at least on Facebook, and had a reunion two years ago, which Carli attended. (See the post from 9/7/09.)
Which brings us to Memory Lane. I knew Carli had played many times for youth national teams and was hoping she’d get a crack at the full national team. She finally made her first appearance against Ukraine on July 10, 2005.
A year later Louise and I went out to Minnesota to visit our daughter, Kirsten. It just so happened the U.S. team had a friendly against Sweden in Blaine, Minnesota and Carli was kind enough to get four tickets for us – in the shade. It was in the mid-90s all day and still about 90 at game time at 5 p.m.
It was, as a good friend described it, a “lump in the throat” moment seeing Carli marching out on the field and standing there during the National Anthem representing her country and the dreams of who knows how many thousands of girls who want to be just like her. To anyone who knows her, she also represented what pure hard work will get you.
The United States won the game in dramatic fashion in the closing seconds and afterwards Carli told me it was the hottest she’d ever been on a field. Since then, Carli has been capped more than 100 times (the Sweden match was her 10th cap), has scored the winning goal in the Olympic gold medal game and played in two World Cups, with hopefully a championship today.
I’ve seen Carli play three other games for the national team and many times on TV. But the first time was the most memorable.
No comments:
Post a Comment