This essay was originally published on Dec. 16, 2019 to nominate Rapinoe for that year’s The Athletic’s Person of the Year award. It is being republished here in light of Rapinoe’s announcement that she will retire from playing soccer at the end of the 2023 NWSL season.
I’ve seen Megan Rapinoe in all kinds of moods over the last year: focused, frustrated, flip, funny, euphoric. But for all the attention she has attracted, all the highlight-reel moments and stop-the-press speeches, all the interviews and mixed zones I’ve shared with her across a couple of countries, it’s a moment of generosity while discussing a teammate one night in North Carolina that sticks with me as the ultimate distillation of Megan Rapinoe’s character.
We’re in Charlotte. It’s early October, but it’s hot. The weather reminds me of the heatwave that followed us around France this summer, but at least North Carolina knows its air conditioning. The night is one long celebration of Ali Krieger, who had earned her 100th cap with the national team before the World Cup, and who is finally getting her celebration game. Everyone’s emotional, reminiscing about her fortitude to make it onto the World Cup roster.
And even though Krieger’s hurt and can’t actually play in the friendly against South Korea — her fiancée, Ashlyn Harris, wears the captain’s armband for the game — she’s still all anyone is talking about as they walk through the postgame mixed zone in the tunnel right off the field at Bank of America Stadium.
I’m waiting on Rapinoe, who’s stuck in the locker room getting some minor treatment. It’s getting later and later, and I watch the local news crews give up and drift out into the parking lot. Unlike them, I’m not on deadline. When she does finally appear, hair wet from a shower, dressed in street clothes, she doesn’t actually let me get a question in until she weighs in on my fashion choices for the game (a positive review of my tie-dye Ben & Jerry’s T-shirt).
When I do finally ask her about Krieger, I have barely said the name before Rapinoe is clutching at her chest with the kind of joy only a ride-or-die friend can muster.
“There are just certain moments when everything comes together,” she says, “and someone really deserves what’s happening, and this was one of those nights.”
For as much as Rapinoe’s seen the spotlight this year, she has always been more than ready to shine the light back on her teammates, her support system, her friends.
Maybe it’s even a little bit of a relief, to be asked about someone else’s accomplishments for a change. After all, this has been the year of Megan Rapinoe, full of all sorts of awards and attention, both positive and negative. But it didn’t just happen, all of a sudden, with a spitfire quote caught on a camera and a couple of goals at the World Cup. She’s been on her way to this moment for more than a decade, and I’ve watched that journey — both as a writer, from press boxes and postgame press conferences, and, before that, as a fan in the stands.
Seeing all that work, all the listening and learning, the building of a platform and then its deployment to ask people to be better, to do more?
Yeah. She deserves it.
August 6, 2011 – Boston, Mass.
Bon Iver or Breakers vs. magicJack? This is the dilemma I face one Saturday in early August, weeks after the USWNT lost to Japan in the World Cup final. I already have the Bon Iver tickets. But magicJack have Abby Wambach, Christie Rampone, Becky Sauerbrunn, Megan Rapinoe — so many of the women I’ve been watching all summer. And so I put the pair of Bon Iver tickets on Craigslist (face value of course), and when they are snapped up five minutes later, I’m free to hop in the car on my own and wade through the traffic on the Mass Pike to Harvard Stadium.
I’m used to Red Sox and Celtics games, blending in with a bustling crowd as it streams into Fenway or the Garden. Now I skirt past the tailgate and enter the stadium, trying to find my seat on the poorly marked concrete bleachers. The soccer lines are drawn over others, for football and lacrosse, and the endzones are still marked for the Crimson. The crowd — families, youth teams, adults in USA or Revs jerseys and a sizeable contigent of overexcited queer women like me — is all on one side of the stadium, just over 7,000 of us. This is what a World Cup bump looks like at the beginning of the decade.
It’s my first women’s soccer game in person in years, thanks to the distractions of college and retail gigs right out of school. I’m back home, just starting a new day job in biotech and reconnecting with women’s soccer in the afterglow of a World Cup that has rekindled my love for the game, a love that began with the ’99ers and WUSA.
I’m far from the only local in the crowd who came out for the players on the opposing team, far from the only one betraying the Breakers by cheering for every single World Cup player as they take the field for magicJack, trying to snap a photo of Rapinoe and Wambach heading the ball back and forth during warm-ups.
It’s the first time I’ve seen Rapinoe play in person. Toward the end of the first half, she’s cruising up the left wing when Sophie Schmidt finds her with a pass. Before it even reaches Rapinoe, Wambach’s arm is in the air. Rapinoe dribbles another 10 yards, swivels her hips, sends her left foot through the ball and finds the crown of Wambach’s head. Goal. The crowd, myself included, erupts. We are traitors.
It looks a lot like that goal, the one in the quarterfinal against Brazil. But it’s another moment from the 2011 World Cup that is even more vivid in my memory. After Rapinoe scored a goal of her own, against Colombia, she made a bee-line for the on-field mic behind the corner flag, picked it up, tapped it a few times and bellowed, “Born in the USA!” before finally turning to accept her teammates’ hugs.
There’s one more thing I remember from the game, though I can’t quite place it in time, before the game or after, as though that matters: It’s Rapinoe, flanked by police, walking through a crowd of people who are utterly losing their minds.
If she’s thrown by the extra security measures, she doesn’t show it. She looks collected, a little distant. Fame rests easily within her. She already looks like — she already is — a rockstar.
January 31, 2014 – Frisco, Texas
It’s absolutely freezing in Frisco, something none of us media types are truly prepared for. Texas in January, who knew? We’re all standing in the corner of Toyota Stadium, behind some stanchions that mark off an impromptu mixed zone. FC Dallas’ stadium is empty in front of us, minus the hustle of the technical staff setting up the field. It’s the day before the national team’s first match of 2014, a friendly against Canada, the beginning of a year that will end with World Cup qualifying, and today’s practice is closed to the public.
I’m hustling on this beat as a part-timer, pretty much entirely unpaid. I like Texas, even though it’s cold, because my money stretches farther. I’m in a nicer hotel, driving a better rental car. We pass the time waiting for the players to emerge from the locker room by complaining about the weather and speculating about head coach Tom Sermanni’s starting XI.
When the door finally bangs open, most of the players head for the field. Those who are on the hook to speak with us are bundled up but happy to talk. The demand is still such that, when I ask the press liaison for Rapinoe, Sermanni and Kelley O’Hara, all of the interviews end up as one-on-ones.
My first interview with Rapinoe is kind of a dud. That’s on me. She’s out of focus on my camera, bundled up with a snood around her neck and blonde hair up top, her natural brown plenty visible.
“Yeah, I think people are actually shocked to see me in consecutive camps,” laughs Rapinoe, who looks more like she’s about to enjoy a snow day off from school than head to training. “I haven’t done that for over a year.”
I have no recollection of this interview. There’s only one answer on tape, and I’m not sure if I only asked the one question, or if my others were terrible, or if she got moved along to another reporter. But looking back on it now, while my content is boring, nothing has changed about Rapinoe’s approach: a straight-up answer, a self-deprecating joke, a willingness to treat every person covering the game, no matter their level of professionalism, with respect and attention.
July 10, 2015 – New York, NY
Broadway is stuffed to capacity along both sides of the route, and everyone is wearing red, white and blue. The sidewalks are a sea of face paint and homemade posters. Never before has New York held a ticker-tape parade to honor a women’s team, and the U.S. national team is loving the adoration.
Rapinoe is on the final float of the parade with Carli Lloyd, Jill Ellis and NYC mayor Bill de Blasio. As they pass me along the parade route, Lloyd is filming the crowd on a GoPro and De Blasio is looming awkwardly over everyone else, waving non-stop and not talking to anyone. But Rapinoe is the center of attention. She’s in charge of the World Cup trophy at the moment, and Ellis is mostly trying to stay out of the way of her more exuberant celebrations, most of which, judging by the photos, involve her putting the World Cup trophy on top of her head.
I’m on a freelance assignment, having driven down for the day from Boston, camera in hand. I didn’t go to a single match of the 2015 World Cup as a credentialed member of the press, just a single game in Montreal, as a fan. At the parade, after months of discussing the team via social media, I meet someone in person who will end up hiring me for my first full-time job covering women’s sports.
At the ceremony outside of city hall, when Rapinoe receives her key to the city, she plays it up for the crowd and the cameras.

(Photo: Brad Smith / ISI Photos)
The confetti guns begin their salutes. The air becomes a cloud of red, white and blue. Queen’s “We Are the Champions” starts to play. They put their arms around each other and sway back and forth as they sing along. Rapinoe’s near the end of the line, stage left, singing as loudly as she can.
July 22, 2016 – Kansas City, Kan.
My journey from the press box to the mixed zone includes an elevator ride with Rapinoe and a few other U.S. internationals who are making their way from a suite at Children’s Mercy Park to the locker room. The U.S. has just won their final send-off game before the 2016 Olympics. After a couple of polite nods and a little bit of small talk while waiting for the elevator to arrive, I turn to the age-old trick of checking my phone once we’re actually on our way down.
Roughly 2,000 miles away, Seattle Storm players are in the midst of making statements via social media, protesting WNBA fines for violations of uniform policies. The league has seen a swell of player-driven support for Black Lives Matter and other social movements, and the tweets from the Storm — who play in the same city as Rapinoe’s club, Reign FC — are only the latest pushback against the WNBA’s handling of it.
I must react when I catch Sue Bird’s tweet, because suddenly I’m filling Rapinoe in on what’s happening in Seattle. It’s months before she’ll kneel during the anthem for the first time, and a few days before her first tweet with the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter. It’s also about a month before she’ll cross paths with Bird, who is now her girlfriend, at the Rio Olympics.
“There comes a time when silence is betrayal” – MLK @wnba #WewillNOTbesilenced#Blacklivesmatter pic.twitter.com/s3Od7E2MfJ
— Sue Bird (@S10Bird) July 22, 2016
I flip my phone around so she can see the tweet. I don’t remember what she says in response — only that, in the moment before the door opens and we go our separate ways, she closes her right fist and raises it, just for a second, in solidarity.
May 24, 2019 – New York, NY
Twitter’s HQ in New York City is decked in national team paraphernalia for the team’s media day ahead of a friendly against Mexico at Red Bull Arena, the final game on American soil before the team goes to France. For me, it’s a straight shot down to Chelsea on the A train, but reporters have flown in from across the country for the event.
Everyone’s looking for their story, that one clip or quote that will tie the whole thing together. The day starts with a standard press conference set up, with Jill Ellis, then the three captains — Rapinoe, Lloyd and Alex Morgan — taking questions. Then the roundtable sessions begin, with four or five players brought out at a time.
The day ends with one player on her own and no one else scheduled for her time slot. Of course, it’s Megan Rapinoe, who proceeds to hold court for her 15 minutes, every seat occupied, reporters standing three and four deep, just trying to catch her answers. The table is a mess of cell phones and recorders, red lights glaring.
I’m stuck in an awkward spot behind Rapinoe. From this vantage point, I am seeing what she sees, and I can’t stop myself from thinking about how big this feels. The moment, the attention, the reach of the women who have come through this room, none more so than Rapinoe. What, I allow myself to wonder, if it keeps getting bigger?
Rapinoe’s hair is still blonde, her mood as buoyant as ever, and while most of the other players address the matter of the World Cup, Rapinoe doesn’t mind going off-topic, discussing politics and sports for almost every question.

It’s not a U.S. women’s national team event if their photographer doesn’t catch me looking awkward while doing my job. (Photo: Brad Smith / ISI Photos)
This is what I’m most interested in writing about — how it feels to represent the United States at this particular moment, the dissonance of wearing that crest over your heart even as you’re suing your own federation for equal pay. It’s not that I don’t care about the soccer, the upcoming tournament — I do — but it’s hard to ignore how much hangs in the balance, how much the team’s performance in France will weigh on their success in the public struggle against their employer.
Two days later, moments after the team defeats Mexico in New Jersey, there’s a send-off ceremony, a final bit of pomp before the U.S. women head to a secluded training session on Tottenham’s grounds outside of London.
Rapinoe comes through the arch, strikes a pose. It’s The Pose, we just don’t know it as such, not yet.
June 28 & July 3, 2019 – Paris & Lyon, France
My wife is texting me via WhatsApp in the middle of the USA-France quarterfinal, asking for updates. She’s in California for a conference, but I’ve been talking about this match-up for months, ever since the draw made it feel all but inevitable. She’s not exactly a sports person, but she has, over the course of our relationship, certainly heard plenty about women’s soccer and the players I cover. She has been fond of Rapinoe — especially her activism — for a while, but when Rapinoe chose to wear Audre Lorde’s name on her jersey for International Women’s Day, it sealed the deal for a doctoral candidate writing a dissertation on black liberation theology.
I text her when Rapinoe scores in the fifth minute, and again in the 65th. Her response is gold: “Does she get extra superpowers during pride?”
She gets her answer less than an hour later, when Rapinoe comes through the mixed zone at Parc des Princes. These post-game interactions have been intense throughout the World Cup; time is limited, and the U.S. national team isn’t just in demand with the American media, but with everybody. The press officers do what they can to move the players from spot to spot, but when Rapinoe comes through after games, sometimes the best I can hope for is not to get crushed up against the railing that separates the reporters from the players.
Someone asks her where she gets her motivation, if there’s a little extra pep in her step thanks to Pride, and Rapinoe — who could write her own dissertation on the shit-eating grin — can’t hold one back.
“Go gays!” she says, and in this moment, I have never wished more that I could film what she’s about to say. That’s not allowed in the mixed zone, but there’s not even enough time for me to debate just how bad the punishment from FIFA would be.
“You can’t win a championship without gays on your team, it’s pretty much never been done before, ever,” she says. “Science right there.”
Even as she’s saying it, and I’m laughing while listening to her, I know how big this is going to blow up. I’m already composing my story in my head, not to mention the text I’m going to send my wife once I’m back upstairs in the press area, where I’ll try furiously to balance transcribing and writing and hoping I manage to file before we all get kicked out of the stadium.
It’s not that there haven’t been big players in the world of women’s soccer before, or big personalities, but I’ve never been in a moment like this, in a foreign country, turning features around on deadline, trying to capture the essence of Megan Rapinoe on and off the field in a thousand words, trying to do a moment like this justice. Trying, as well, to hide what her words mean to me behind a sheen of journalistic distance and objectivity.
The quotes only get better.
We’re in Lyon now, the canicule has fully set in and I have spent the first day in town in an AirBNB with no air-conditioning and no fan, freezing a wet T-shirt over and over again to stay cool in triple-digit temperatures. The team’s at a nice hotel on the opposite side of town; a fellow reporter and I rent scooters and ride along the river to get a glimpse of the scenery on the way. There’s a small area set up outside for interviews; a couple of fans hanging around, who must have spotted the team’s bus covered in FIFA designs. As Rapinoe steps up at the team’s media availability, I can see heat shimmering off the asphalt of the hotel’s parking lot. She’s in team gear and one of her many pairs of sunglasses, and there are 20 or so reporters hanging on her every word.
We’re a few days into the absurdity of Rapinoe vs. Trump, eight days after she’s gone viral for saying she’s not going to “the fucking White House”. The Fourth of July — not just a holiday back home, but a rare rest day for those of us in France, players and media alike — is at the front of everyone’s mind.
Rapinoe takes one final question, on the concept of patriotism. She begins by saying that she feels “particularly and uniquely and very deeply American,” before launching into an off-the-cuff speech about what she stands for, the actions she’s taken over the course of her career. Maybe she hasn’t seen the articles complaining, even now that she’s no longer kneeling, about her behavior during the national anthem, how she stands with her hands behind her back, at attention, declining to sing. Maybe she has. Either way, she’s been thinking about what the anthem actually means.
“If we want to talk about the ideals that we stand for, the song and the anthem, and what we were founded on, I think I’m extremely American,” she tells us. “I think for the detractors, I would have them look hard into what I’m actually saying, the actions that I’m doing. Maybe you don’t agree with every single way that I do it, and that can be discussed. I know that I’m not perfect. But I think that I stand for honesty and for truth and for wanting to have the conversation.”
After she wraps up, the team is off the hook through the holiday, and I hop on the media bus heading to the Sweden-Netherlands semifinal, trying to transcribe as fast as I possibly can.
Megan Rapinoe just had one hell of an answer about how she feels to be an American and on the #USA during a #USWNT media availability.#FIFAWWC pic.twitter.com/nL3MEC8ufb
— Meg Linehan (@itsmeglinehan) July 3, 2019
Like everything else Rapinoe-related, it drives yet another World Cup news cycle.
July 7, 2019 – Lyon, France
If you actually want to ask a question during a World Cup press conference, don’t arrive without a strategy. I suggest sitting up front, desperately trying to make eye contact with the communications officer in charge of the event, raising your hand politely while someone else is asking their question, getting more aggressive with the hand-raising while that person is deciding who to pick next.
The stress of trying to manage a question in the postgame press conference after the United States national team has just won the World Cup is a new level, though. First, FIFA tells us that the player of the match — Rapinoe, obviously — has been chosen for doping control. I’m on the hook for another Rapinoe feature on deadline. I’m full of instant coffee and nerves. A ham and cheese baguette is in my backpack, uneaten because every time I looked at it during the match, I wanted to throw up. And I have to ask her about The Pose.
So when Rapinoe bounds into the room, all smiles but extremely ready to get the questions over and done with so she can celebrate with her team in the locker room, all I feel is relief. The story is still on, so long as I get the quote. So when I get the nod from the FIFA communications officer and the mic pressed into my hand, the fact that I am supposed to state my name and my outlet flies completely out of my head as I launch into my question.
“Please introduce yourself,” the FIFA officer cuts in. I have forgotten this is live-streaming via FIFA, maybe even on TV back home as well.
“Oh,” I say, “Meg Linehan, The Athletic.”
Pinoe laughs and leans down to her mic.
“We go way back,” she says.
In the moment, I don’t hear it. I’m too busy trying to make sure I don’t sound like an idiot in this room full of people. It’s an hour later, as I’m sitting on the floor in the media room and listening back to the recording, that I catch it, along with the rest of her answer:
“To have me, and the person that I am and the things that I stand for, with a big shit-eating grin on your face, just in all of our glory….”
I begin to write.
July 10, 2019 – New York, NY
It’s the exact same date as the last time we did this, four years ago down the streets of New York City — another ticker-tape parade, another city hall celebration, another round of confetti, workers leaning out of windows and balconies, dumping the contents of their office shredders out over Broadway. This time, the summer heat feels charged — Rapinoe, the team, the fans, the moment, everything is aligned.
“This might sound crazy,” Jill Ellis will tell me five months later, during a phone call for another story, as she sits in the Zurich airport on her way back from a FIFA event, “but had (Rapinoe’s breakout) happened in 2015, it might have been too premature for the time, if that makes sense. It almost seems like it was a perfect alignment of the timing of women in society and advocating for social movements, the Time’s Up movement.”
It’s hard to not compare the two victory celebrations, the crowd size, the diversity along the route, even how my own life has changed. Four years ago, covering the team was a passion project. Today, I am jet-lagged and sleep-deprived, having only just gotten back from France myself after 33 days following the team around the United States and France for The Athletic.
But the joy, that stays the same — and the mugging for the cameras. Once again I am standing at the foot of the stage as another round of red, white and blue confetti is blasted into the air, as Rapinoe holds the trophy up, surrounded by her team. After the rest of the players retreat back inside to move onto the next event, Rapinoe stays, savoring one last moment with her arms outstretched to the rapturous crowd, sneakers kicking up confetti.
August 7, 2019 – Tacoma, Wash.
Rapinoe’s running late. I’m sitting in a suite at Cheney Field, feeling oddly nervous. I have a small notebook with me, even though I have never taken notes mid-interview before in my entire life. There’s a small part of me that hopes it makes me look like I actually know what I’m doing, flying across the country to get a few minutes one-on-one for a feature.
“There’s traffic between Seattle and Tacoma,” I’m told. “She left an hour ago, she should be in soon, how much time do you need again?”
When she does get in, trailing a video crew, the Reign’s PR person, someone there for security purposes, it’s clear she doesn’t mind spending some extra time to make up for the fact that she’s running some 30 minutes behind schedule.
“Megan, do you want a water?” someone says behind us. We both look, and I start laughing, completely embarrassed. But when we get down to it and just start talking, nothing’s really changed. The recorder stays on for 20 minutes or so as we discuss her post-World Cup life, the fact that U.S. Soccer has hired lobbyists to discuss equal pay. But even after we wrap up and we drift over to the balcony to watch a little bit of the pregame warmups for this Cascadia match against the Thorns, most of her entourage hanging around outside of the suite, we end up just shooting the shit for a little while longer, talking about vacations we want to take, the NWSL, life in general.
It’s strange to think how this one person has unknowingly changed the direction of my life, the way that 2011 World Cup — the quarterfinal against Brazil, that goal — got me back into women’s soccer, into the hustle of media coverage, full-time jobs, then working for the NWSL and in France to cover the World Cup. I’m in Tacoma to talk about all the ways her life has changed, but she’s not the only one who has had this experience.
It’s a little selfish of me, to take up a little bit more of her time like this, but on some level I think there’s just an instinct to try to have a human moment, a small connection, even if we’re not friends. Because the truth is I’m not just there to get a story — it means more than that — and she’s not just a player, an activist, a larger-than-life presence as she exists as now in 2019.
Mostly, I want her to know that I remember she’s a person, complicated, talented, imperfect, funny, inspiring, badass. So we keep chatting, before she heads off to find a group of teammates, and I head back to the press box to watch another game of soccer, to find another story to tell.
(Top photo: Brad Smith/USSF/Getty Images for USSF)