The US said goodbye to Lauren Holiday Sunday in Orlando. (Photo, US Soccer)
Neil W. Blackmon
At a sun-splashed Citrus Bowl in Orlando Sunday, the US Women’s National Team defeated world #7 Brazil 3-1. The win extended the USWNT’s unbeaten streak in 2015 to 22 and their home unbeaten streak to 102. But on a day that saw Stephanie McCaffrey become the 18th USWNT player to score a goal on her debut, and the first since Christen Press, the story was really about goodbyes.
The crowds arrived early and stayed late, providing a raucous atmosphere that coupled with the near record-high weather suggested something grander than an autumn friendly Sunday between the world champion Americans and longtime worthy adversary Brazil. Both in terms of the soporific heat and sound, the game felt more like a summer match drenched in sweat and significance than a final October stop on a prolonged victory tour.
The grand sense of occasion was fitting, given that the match marked the end of the storied US Women’s National Team careers of a pair of midwesterners: Lori Chalupny and Lauren Holiday. For Chalupny, of St. Louis, the end came on cap 106, in a career marked by resilience and a remarkable, selfless flexibility. She lasted only 20 minutes in her final game, struggling to deal with the questions Brazil was asking down her left flank, but how she performed was of less import than the fact she was here. After 106 caps, there is little to prove. And the thunderous ovation she received, nearly a minute in length, was both sentimental and satisfactory. It was the type of applause borne from a soccer savvy crowd, and Orlando soccer fans, 2015 has shown us, are certainly that.
The other Sunday goodbye, for Lauren Holiday (née, Cheney), lasted a little longer, under an hour, before she was taken off in the 56th minute. Holiday received a similar, lengthy ovation, and an embrace from the woman with whom she shared the World Cup final glory, Carli Lloyd. Holiday’s final act? Handing Lloyd the captain’s armband.
As goodbyes go, it was a gripping script.
Sporting goodbyes are rarely the stuff of storybooks and Hollywood films. There is usually the inevitable creep of age and the attendant inelegant decline in skill. In some instances, there is even a regrettable turn in fan sentiment against the retiring or aging player, where the great memories and moments of the past lose their persuasive force to the short and brutish memory of the fan, who is forever seeking instant gratification. If you think that’s hyperbolic, just type ‘Tim Howard Everton” into your Twitter search bar and you’ll see something of what I mean.
Soccer goodbyes tend to be worse, a game that perhaps more than other games privileges the stamina and dexterity of youth. Perhaps the “testimonial”, soccer’s quirky way of saying goodbye via a half-hearted, handshake and a smile exhibition, was created precisely because soccer goodbyes are too often cruel. As fans and observers, we want to remember our heroes at their pinnacle, their muscle and vitality and youth all bundled into a myth of power and invincibility.
Holiday leaves as the rare athlete in her prime, still capable of playing into that mythology. She departs only two years removed from winning the MVP in the then nascent NWSL, where she was clearly the league’s best player for her club, Kansas City FC. She departs as the league”s all-time leading scorer (22) and assist leader (13). She also leaves the international game as the player who scored what officially was the winning goal in this summer’s FIFA World Cup, and she retires knowing every team she played on ended a champion, having just captured another NWSL championship this autumn. To paraphrase the funny fantasy football commercial from the aughts: If your team has Lauren Holiday, well, put it on the board. Championship.
Even so, her status as perhaps the best player in North America and certainly one of the world’s five best players couldn’t prevent two things from happening in the metanarrative hovering above the women’s game.
First, it couldn’t give Holiday a cultural spotlight similar to that of fellow USWNT star Alex Morgan, or to a lesser extent Christen Press. Even her World Cup heroics as the six in Ellis’s not-that-empty-after-all bucket lacked floodlights, with the lion’s share of the glory going to Carli Lloyd and her remarkable knockout stage goal-binge. None of that bothers Holiday at all, however, as Jill Ellis explained Sunday evening, calling her “the consummate, selfless teammate.”
What troubled Holiday was the forced choice between a career as a footballer and a life as a wife and in due course, a mother. Holiday took the last name of her husband, NBA guard Jrue Holiday, and the two have spent the first marital years of their love story spending almost no time in the same city, let alone the same home. Lauren Holiday is far more indispensable to her side and team than Jrue Holiday is to his team, which for now, remains the New Orleans Pelicans.
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This isn’t, in any manner, a slight to Jrue Holiday, who was an All-Star and remains a more than capable pro, it’s just the reality of the prolific talent his wife possesses, and one that Jrue Holiday certainly recognizes (above). Still, Holiday is choosing to give up the game she’s played since she was small so she can continue on the journey of being and extending a family.
“It is about the next chapter,’ Holiday said in the Citrus Bowl tunnel after the match, the sun setting fittingly in the background. “The US, this team, was one chapter. I think there’s power in making a choice. I chose this team for 10 years, and now I’m going to choose my family.”
The life of a USWNT’er isn’t easy.
There’s incredible travel demands that go beyond what any men’s international side faces, and the pay is unequal to the men despite the wild success differential between the two sides. Yet as difficult as it is to be a constant fixture on the USWNT, the life of a NWSL player is even more difficult. In a wonderfully candid and well-done piece and interview with Howard Megdal earlier this year, Holiday talked about those challenges: the economic differences between her life and Jrue’s, the round-the-clock year long demands of the USWNT, her age as it relates to becoming a mother. Those choices and burdens, more than a star’s career arc trapped in shadows, are why Lauren Holiday played her last soccer game today in Orlando.
Even if the choice to leave the game, upon reflection, was a natural one for Holiday, it didn’t make it an easy one. Even Sunday morning, her last morning as a member of the best women’s soccer team in the world, Holiday felt like a bundle of emotion.
“I was emotional this morning, talking to teammates, reminiscing, sharing stories,” Holiday said. “Plus if I see someone else cry, I cry, so it has been an emotional day. And there was an overwhelming rush of emotion coming off the field too, but I think it’s awesome and what makes it so special is how hard it will be to leave these relationships.”
But it was time. And Sunday, in soccer-crazed Orlando in front of 32,879 fans who didn’t sit for a minute after she’d left the game, and who stayed after to cheer her once again, was a fitting send-off.
Alex Morgan put in an outstanding performance on the field she’ll soon call home.
As Holiday begins a new life, the US will also. I asked Jill Ellis if she had lost sleep already over the prospect of replacing Lauren Holiday, as the team heads towards Olympic qualification in February and the games in Rio next summer. Ellis, who coached Holiday at UCLA, has already tried to replace her once. She came up with the following answer then, and said it applies now.
“Lauren is going to be hard to replace. Both of them, so hard,” Ellis said, pausing and smiling. “I’ve been a mess all day. They (Holiday and Chalupny) are remarkable teammates and remarkable human beings” But Ellis remains confident that the culture of a program that accepts nothing short of an absolute commitment to excellence can use the sum of its parts to fill the gaping void.
“Her tools and her skillset is remarkable. She also has the intangibles, competitiveness and leadership. Lauren is going to be hard to replace,” Ellis said, reflecting on one story in particular about when she asked Holiday, one of the world’s finest number tens, to play as the team’s six.
“I asked Lauren when I took over to step in and play the six role, the quarterback of the team, and I said ‘Listen, we’re going to get criticized, people are going to say we’re crazy but I said you have everything this team needs and she was willing to do anything and said ‘I’m in,'” Ellis said. “I actually gave her a day to think about it, and she said ‘I don’t need it, I’m in’, Ellis said. “And she could do it because of her high IQ. And then there’s her passing, her final pass, so many tools. So yeah, she’s going to be a challenge to replace, but again when you think about where Lauren started in the central midfield position to where she finished, the hope as a coach is that the environment and the process (around the USWNT) will bring another player to that point.”
And the coach knows the team will need to do that quickly as they prepare for the Olympics.
“I think in the simplest terms, the fact we could bring Carli Lloyd into a game off the bench, leading Brazil 2-1, not many teams can do that, so that bodes fairly well for our immediate future,” Ellis said. “These types of games are where we leave the field gaining confidence and trust in each other.”
Tobin Heath combined with Alex Morgan for the US opener. The Tar Heel will be among those asked to do more in Holiday’s absence.
There were flashes of what LAC (Life After Cheney) would like for the USWNT Sunday. Tobin Heath and Alex Morgan connected on the first goal, the pass from Heath perhaps a sign that the richly talented Tar Heel is ready for a more integral role. Crystal Dunn, deployed in midfield, looked dangerous in spots and buried a rebound of a Lindsey Horan shot late in first half stoppage time to give the US the lead at the half. As for Morgan, who will be announced as the centerpiece of a trade involving the NWSL expansion side Orlando Pride tomorrow, it was the type of game Orlando Pride supporters will hope for in the years to come. Morgan was menacing all afternoon, scoring the opening goal, drawing a foul to set up the sequence leading to the Americans second and having another waved off for offside. She was the best American player on a day when the US defeated a good side by two goals.
The debutants did well too. Gina Lewandowski played skillfully off the bench in her first cap. Emily Sonnett, a star at the University of Virginia, started in Julie Johnston’s traditional spot next to Becky Sauerbrunn, and put in several great tackles on Marta, long one of the greatest players in the world. As an added bonus, Sonnett’s Cavaliers defeated #1 FSU without her on the pitch, 1-0. Sauerbrunn, the best defender in the world, was impressed with what she saw in Sonnett’s debut, even as the college senior was a nervous wreck before the game
“She was so funny before the game becasue she seemed like her normal self and I asked Morgan Brian, who played with her a long time, if she was okay and she said ‘Oh gosh deep inside she’s freaking out,” Sauerbrunn said. “But you didn’t see that during the game. She played a great ninety minutes against a really hard opponent. She put in some great tackles, she cleared the ball really well, connected passes. For a college senior that’s pretty good.”
And Stephanie McCaffrey, who plays for the Boston Breakers in the NWSL, came on for Tobin Heath to begin the second half and was influential. She nearly teed up Holiday in the 53rd minute (the play was offside but Holiday missed the finish). McCaffrey kept going at defenders throughout the second half, but her reward ultimately came on a run off the ball, as she buried a Megan Rapinoe cross in the 90th minute to make the lead 3-1.
Next player up is a mantra in many sports, but in the USWNT program, it is a mentality and a culture. And Becky Sauerbrunn believes that no matter how hard it is to replace a Lori Chalupny or Lauren Holiday, as the NWSL grows and becomes more stable, the American team will only grow stronger.
“Absolutely (NWSL growth is) instrumental. To be able to train day in, day out with the best players in the country and then once or twice a week to have games is huge. I think you saw with Sam Mewis coming into this camp, with Steph McCaffrey today, and with Emily Sonnett next year, they’ll just keep progressing and progressing,” Sauerbrunn said. “And it’s great for Jill also so she could see each game, and ones with national team players so she can see what level new players are at.”
In the end, maybe that’s the message the US sent in saying goodbye to perhaps its finest player Sunday afternoon. There isn’t anyone who can replace Lauren Holiday. But someone will be there to carry the torch.
Neil W. Blackmon is Co-Founder of The Yanks Are Coming. He can be reached at nwblackmon@gmail.com and you can follow him on Twitter @nwblackmon.