For all of her achievements, and her team’s achievements, U.S. women’s national team star Megan Rapinoe thinks the biggest point of pride in her career didn’t happen between the white lines.
Having announced that she will retire from the game at the end of the 2023 NWSL season, Rapinoe’s final press conference as a USWNT player was entirely on reflections of arguably the single most revolutionary playing career from an American in the sport.
Speaking on Saturday afternoon, a day before the U.S. takes on South Africa in what will be her 203rd and final cap, Rapinoe chuckled when asked what she was most proud of from her career.
“I think you guys know the answer to that question,” said Rapinoe with a laugh. “I think, by and a mile, what we’ve done off of the field.”
Rapinoe’s era with the USWNT has seen the team become a vehicle for equal rights, including a historic collective bargaining agreement with U.S. Soccer guaranteeing equal pay for its women’s and men’s national teams.
“I was actually talking to Becky [Sauerbrunn] on the bus today,” said Rapinoe, noting that her longtime USWNT teammate had come to Chicago despite not being on this September roster. “Just to think of obviously where the program has grown, and where the federation has grown, and where we’ve pushed the federation to grow and just the sport in general, we’ve actually made that better — in part, obviously, it’s not [only] us.”
Rapinoe and Sauerbrunn are key parts of a USWNT generation that started to make itself known at the 2012 Olympics, capturing the nation’s attention with an incredible 4-3 semifinal win over Canada and then defeating the then-World Cup champions Japan to claim gold.
💙❤️ @mPinoe ❤️💙 pic.twitter.com/DV4nWDCpQZ
— U.S. Women's National Soccer Team (@USWNT) September 23, 2023
Since then, the USWNT has won the 2015 and 2019 World Cups, spending nearly all of a decade as the world’s top-ranked side while becoming the rare soccer team in the U.S. that breaks through as a national news story on a regular basis.
“I’m incredibly proud of everything that we’ve done on the field,” said Rapinoe. “Obviously, we’ve been a really special generation of players. But I think it says a lot about us that everything on field, I feel like kind of pales in comparison to what we’ve achieved off the field.
“I think we’ve been a big part of pushing, talking about, whether it’s gay rights, or racial justice, or trans rights, more into every conversation around sports and particularly around women’s sports. We’ve been such a driver of that.”
For Rapinoe, the skills and success that have given her and the USWNT so much on-field glory are important precisely because of the doors those wins and goals opened.
“I think that has made such a lasting impact,” explained Rapinoe. “We’ve chosen to sort of throw our weight and the way that we have used what is our greatest gift and all of our talent and something that’s really special that we were all born with to try to make the world a better place and to try to leave the game in a much better place than where we found it. So I’m very proud of both, but I think the off-field stuff is what is most meaningful, and I think what I’m most proud of.”
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