part about playing sports. They have so much of it. But I love practice and I love going out and trying to be better so when you find something that you are really passionate about and really love, you have to spend time doing it. The mental focus in practice can make a big difference. ••• You talk about bringing competitive- ness to every aspect of life—how was that instilled in you? Were you born with that streak? I think part of it is nurture and part of it is nature. I feel this internal desire to be better no matter what I do. Having kids now I see that coming out a little too much when maybe it’s time for them to relax. I think it’s in me to be competitive and to want to challenge myself. Especially for girls I think that message has to be out there that it’s OK to compete and want to win. Not at the cost of somebody else but we should never be shy about being good at something, wanting to be better or want- ing to be the best. I think a lot of girls grow up with the idea that they might hurt someone’s feelings and they don’t want to do that because it might be their friends or somebody might say, “that’s not really nice.” Whereas on the other side with boys it’s like, “Yeah he’s awesome, he’s the best.” And nobody thinks twice about that. I was very competitive as
a young girl. I remember that very distinctly. I had to bal- ance other people’s ideals with that concept. ••• Talk about the atmosphere at the Rose Bowl in 1999 with 90,000 screaming fans? Remarkable. I think the most
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remarkable thing that day, however, was that we didn’t get to warm up on the field before the game because Brazil and Norway had gone to a tie and penalty kicks and that chewed up the warm-up time so we warmed up inside. It’s a beautiful stadium but the inner workings are kind of old and there’s water dripping from the ceilings, kind of moldy smelling. It wasn’t what you picture as the ideal situation but it
spoke volumes about the type of people and players we had on our team because instead of thinking, “It’s not perfect” or “this isn’t the way we thought it would be,” we made it work. •••
Can you describe the moment/ celebration after your game-clinching penalty kick in that World Cup? The best description is that it was kind of crazy. It was incredibly spontaneous and
Often times people want to talk about it because they themselves “
had a moment. ‘I was here,’ or ‘this is what I saw’ and ‘this is great’ and that’s really awesome for me.
”
People always ask if I get tired of talking about that.
PHOTO: AP
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