Solo by Hope Solo (best books to read for women .txt) 📗

into a condo near the Grove in West Hollywood, which would be my base for Dancing with the Stars. But that August, I really felt that my home was seat 5A on a 727 crossing the country.

My partner in my travels was Whitney Unruh, Rich’s assistant. She was a godsend, not only keeping my schedule and appearances organized, but also becoming a close friend. On my thirtieth birthday, I celebrated in Indianapolis—the Brickyard 400 was the next day—with Whitney and Adrian. We toasted the future: thirty is a significant milestone for anyone, but especially for a professional athlete. I was pretty confident—with my repaired shoulder and wisdom gained over the years—that I had several more years left.

There was one weekend that I kept free of commitments. Cheryl and her longtime boyfriend, Galen, were getting married on the water in Port Ludlow, Washington. I was so happy for Cheryl, but I was also wounded. She hadn’t asked me to be her maid of honor, a decision that hurt me. I understood, of course, that Megan was the right choice. I had been committed to the World Cup for the last several months; there was no way I would have been able to organize everything or fulfill all those duties that a maid of honor has. But it stung. We had been like sisters for twenty-two years.

The day before the wedding, Cheryl and I finally spoke about the pain we’d caused each other. I told her how hurt I was to not have a special place in her wedding; she said she and our other college friends had been hurt by my inability to stay in regular touch and participate in their big moments. They didn’t seem to understand my life and the commitments I had. I couldn’t just walk away from a national-team camp in order to make a social engagement. It was a hard conversation but long overdue. When I get married, I don’t think I’ll even have a maid of honor; I’ll include all my friends equally—Cheryl, Tina, Malia, Terry, Debbie, Sofia, Whitney. That might not be conventional, but I’ve never been very interested in “conventional” anything.

Not that anyone should need further proof of that, but one day in the weeks after the World Cup, I was standing bare-ass naked on a lawn on the Warner Bros. studio lot in Burbank. ESPN magazine was shooting its Body issue, and I was going to be on the cover. I was excited—I loved powerful images of the human body. In 1999 Brandi Chastain was criticized for her nude photo—crouched over a soccer ball—on the cover of Gear magazine, but I loved that shot—it showed strength and beauty.

But admiring such a photo and preparing for one are two different things. “Do you want to start out wearing underwear?” the director asked. “To ease into it?”

“What’s the point? Won’t that just prolong it?”

I’ve never been a prude, but I was extremely nervous. I figured it was best to just get it over with, so I dropped my robe, stepped out of the tent, and was quickly surrounded by about eight strangers—makeup artists, photographers, and their assistants. We were out there for almost six hours, shooting on the same neighborhood set where Bewitched was filmed. It’s funny how quickly I got used to it—just another job. Soon, I was sprinting down the empty street—I’d always wanted to run naked outside. It felt liberating.

Because I was going to be on the cover in an athletic action pose, they needed some different shots of me for the inside pages. At one point, the photographer handed me a garden hose and asked me to hold it in front of me and spray. The imagery was obvious and distasteful. After a minute—during which Whitney and a few other people, including an ESPN representative, expressed their displeasure with the shot—I dropped the hose. “Let’s do something else,” I said.

When I was in the trailer after the shoot, the photographer came in and showed us his work. I loved all of the images except one. “I don’t like that,” I said of the hose shot. “You won’t use that, will you?”

We were verbally assured that the hose shot wouldn’t run in the magazine, that at worst it would be online with an album of other photos. I was putting myself out there with ESPN, pushing outside my comfort zone. Standing naked in front of photographers was difficult and scary. But it was relatively easy compared to what I was facing next—dancing in front of millions of people.

III.

I sat in a car next to a soccer field in Westchester, not far from the Los Angeles Airport. The cameras were all set to capture the moment I met my DWTS partner, the pro I would rely on. I suspected that my partner was going to be Maksim Chmerkovskiy—the handsome “bad boy” of the show, who liked to keep his shirt unbuttoned. He also was the only pro dancer tall enough to pair with me.

A red Rolls-Royce pulled up to the soccer field and Maks got out. I started laughing—what a Hollywood entrance. As my producers requested, I got out of my car and began warming up in goal, and they shot Maks walking across the field to meet me. It was so staged and awkward. I tried to keep it real and cut the ice—I started giving Maks a hard time. “Wow, those are some tight jeans you’re wearing,” I said. And, “Are dancers even real athletes?”

I could tell Maks was a little surprised. He’s used to women fawning all over him, but I figured I should put us on even ground while I could. The producers were encouraging me to stand up to him. I figured Maks knew what was going on.

When he assured me that he was very athletic, I said, “Come on Maks—let’s see how good you are at my profession. Block some of my shots.”

I started shooting balls at him and he shuffled back and forth in