Julie Foudy
Sports build good habits, confidence, and discipline. They make players into community leaders and teach them how to strive for a goal, handle mistakes, and cherish growth opportunities.Collection: Sports
With acceptance comes opportunities. And with opportunities come numbers and, most importantly, hope.Collection: Hope
It is so easy to be pleasant and charming and positive when life is going swimmingly well. You are winning. You are healthy. You are happy. But what happens when life throws darts at you?Collection: Positive
Leadership is loud. It is quiet. It is thoughtful and emotional and cerebral and nerdy and goofy and joyful and motivating.Collection: Leadership
Sports not only build better athletes but also better people.Collection: Sports
Most sports federations, corporations, and governments don't change voluntarily. Change is brought by the disenfranchised demanding better.Collection: Sports
I believe it's our responsibility to show our communities the value of all people, to celebrate different, and to take a stand for acceptance and inclusion.
Do your homework. Find your voice. Be authentic. And then dive in with purpose.
If there is one certainty in soccer, it is this: The quickest road to becoming a winning soccer team is to have a great goalkeeper.
Life doesn't just happen. You happen to life. You decide how you want to write your story.
My teammates and I are best known for our penalty kick victory against China to win the 1999 Women's World Cup. But a lot of people don't realize that when we were first playing soccer on the Women's National Team, the Women's World Cup didn't exist. In fact, Women's Soccer wasn't even in the Olympics.
Once I was walking with teammate Joy Fawcett in a hotel in Haiti. We were barefoot, and the lights went out to save electricity. Joy felt something crunch beneath her feet, and she felt the need to shine her flashlight on the floor. It was, I swear, a five-foot cockroach.
Sports help women stay in school longer and make them less likely to use drugs, break the law, or get pregnant at an early age.
When I was growing up, you couldn't watch soccer on TV. But now, you can get it on every channel, every hour of the day, every day, literally.
That's the neat thing about the Olympics - so many of these athletes, they don't make a ton of money, they train for four years to compete, and they realize, 'Look, this is a blessing that I have this chance to represent the United States of America.'
With loss comes growth.
I tried Zumba, but I laughed the entire time! I was so bad, it's embarrassing.
I am all about big breakfasts - I love carby stuff in the morning.
Girls are so quick to say they can't do something, and they won't even try, whereas boys tend to just go for something even if it's probably a bad idea.
It's so valuable to learn that when you put yourself in an uncomfortable situation, you'll be fine, and you'll probably come out even stronger.
I grew up watching the Lakers and the Dodgers and the Rams, all local men's professional teams, and never really had any women that I grew up watching.
My role models were all men. I grew up - I was a big 1980s Laker fan: you know, the years of Worthy, Magic Johnson, Kareem Abdul Jabbar, and, you know, eight-foot-tall men that I could never emulate, and then these big 300-pound football players.
I have been involved with U.S. Soccer for 30 years, and I don't remember one senior woman in the organization that you would deal with on a daily basis in a position that was making decisions. That is a huge issue. How many times do you hear, 'There are no women around?' Well, they are fishing in the wrong pond.
For the average person walking down the street, they don't even know a women's soccer league exists in this country.
When they asked me what charity I wanted to play for on 'Who Wants to be a Millionaire?' the first thing that came to my mind was that this would be a great opportunity to let people know about TOPSoccer.
We should teach kids, whether you're on the varsity team or not, that movement is a great thing in your life.
I think that was one of my biggest worries. I didn't want to be so focused on soccer that it became my whole life.
I always thought it would be so much fun to write a book.
For too long, I equated leadership with a position. I thought leaders were presidents or politicians or celebrities or four-star generals with a horse and sword.
I'd always thought leadership was a CEO or president or person in a position of power. And honestly, to me, that meant a man - because that's what I was reading about in history books growing up.
We love to make sure all the boxes are checked - that we aren't just prepared but over-prepared before we raise our hand. It's that discipline that I love most about women, but it's also what holds us women back the most because by the time we raise our hand, that opportunity is often gone.
We women are great at underselling ourselves and not so great at owning our awesome.
Whether you empower one person or the free world, that is leadership.
As female athletes all over the world have discovered the hard way, changing cultures and mindsets takes action.
In so many ways, my soccer career taught me about seeing the value of all people, whether or not society sees it first. Relationships with people who are perceived to be 'different' have taught me the same lesson.
Having a love-hate relationship with road trips is inevitable.
I have these vivid - some fabulous, some not so fabulous - childhood memories of driving to Lake Tahoe.
Penalty kicks are so much about confidence and your mentality going into them. If you go walk up to a kick and you're not sure where you're gonna place it, or you're feeling a little uneasy, that's when you often miss it.
People will say, 'Who are your role models, and who are your pioneers?' And the first person that comes to my mind is Billie Jean King because we didn't have women that we could watch when I was growing up.
I don't know if there's any sport that's stupid, but I really don't understand curling. I guess I'm just not into brooms on ice.
I would be doing anything to avoid a 9-5 job and high heels. Lifeguard, beach volleyball player, whatever.
I once thought about being a doctor, but then I'd have to work for a living.
I remember the day I met Cammi Granato, a former star on the U.S. women's hockey team. We were at a Women's Sports Foundation dinner in 1996, and she came over to introduce herself. She had watched the U.S. women's soccer team win gold at the Atlanta Olympics and was hopeful the U.S. women's hockey team could do the same.
Inequality brings a visceral reaction. We fought many years to bring others to believe in what was possible with women's soccer, in this country and globally. Now that the possible is being realized in this country, the American women should be compensated accordingly.
In the end, we all seek one thing in life, regardless of gender: to be recognized for the hard work we have done and to leave our sport or business or entity in a better place than when we came in.
Imagine the day when girls everywhere won't have to fight for the right to be recognized for their great work or their contributions to society.
When I think about Abby Wambach's last days with the U.S. team, I am reminded of her first days with the U.S. team. The 21-year-old came bouncing in, laughing, joking and, of course, talking. An enormous personality matched only by her thirst for purpose. Because Abby didn't subscribe to external boundaries or predetermined molds.
Ask any coach in any sport, and they'll tell you that cutting players is their least favorite thing to do. No coach enjoys having to tell players who have worked so hard and for so long on a dream that they are no longer on the team.
The ebb and flow of daily life can lead to wonderful highs, crushing lows, and everything in between.
It all comes down to perspective. When I get crabby about something, like the delay that was driving me crazy because I told my kids I'd be home for dinner, I have to remind myself where it fits in the scheme of things. We have to say, 'That's life,' which can sometimes be comforting.