Rapinoe in Review, 2019

I have not had a subscription to Sports Illustrated since I was in middle school, but there are three I have purchased off the shelf and saved as a middle-aged adult.
Two of them are from this year.
Both of those have Megan Rapinoe on the cover.

I don’t know exactly what I can add to the choir, or rather this swelling Rapinoe overture, except that it is maybe just that; despite Rapinoe’s shelf life in her sport being closer to an end, her impact is just beginning.This is her overture; the music played before the curtain lifts. 

I’ve always been a Rapinoe fan. I fell for her during her 2011 World Cup performance. Her laser foot, delivering that heat-seeking cross to Abby Wambach’s head was one of the most beautiful goals I’ve ever witnessed. Period.

She was a good pack member. She was a support player to the larger stars around her. She was quiet in her role, but intense, and scrappy as hell.

Rapinoe’s rise to leadership happened rather quietly. She just did what she felt was right, on and off the field. No grandstanding, very little talk actually, just living, in action.

Let public record of this action officially open on September 4, 2016. This is the date Rapinoe chose to kneel in support of NFL quarterback, Colin Kaepernick’s protest of racial injustice in America. This action brought instant attention and ire. The reaction from the USSF was to doubled down on their national anthem player policy driving Rapinoe to the bench until she complied. But she was resolute in her support.

“Being a gay American, I know what it means to look at the flag and not have it protect all of your liberties,” Rapinoe told John D. Halloran of American Soccer Now, explaining why she took a knee in 2016. “It was something small that I could do and something that I plan to keep doing in the future and hopefully spark some meaningful conversation around it.”

That was it. Someone who could play the game that well and whose words reflected my own disenfranchised feelings about patriotism and injustice in this country? I was sold. I looked up to a lot of male athletes as a kid. Outside of tennis (more on that in a minute), there really wasn’t a pro anything women’s team or player. It was time to gather the kids, point to this woman and say this is the kind of human I want you to be. You need to watch her. You need to hear her.

So, we did just that. My wife and I decided that in three years we’d take the kids (who would then be 8 and 14) to France and come hell or high water… or, as it turned out, the worst heat wave on record, we’d go to a World Cup match. We landed tickets to the championship in Lyon.

This was a momentous, life-affirming, and full circle moment for me for many, many reasons, all too lengthy to get into here, but the bottom line is this: My children witnessed the championship match of the most dominant national soccer team in the world. They witnessed the physical power and grace of women at sport. We lost our minds cheering and in the end chanted in unison, “EQUAL PAY!” in solidarity with 57,000 fans.

Because there is also that: the fact that these women are paid a fraction of what their male counterparts are paid. The overall prize purse for the 2018 FIFA World Cup was $400 million, and the winning team, France, got $38 million of that to divvy up among its players and staff. By comparison, the 2019 FIFA Women’s World Cup purse was $30 million, and the USWNT got $4 million of that. 

Which brings me to back to tennis. There is no distinction between a professional male or female tennis player in terms of prize money. The endorsement deals may be different, and sure, there is still a pay gap in play at other tournaments, but where it really counts, the Grand Slam tournament pots are equal. And we have Billie Jean King to thank for it.

Billie Jean King threatened to boycott the US Open in 1973 if the tournament didn’t provide equal prizes for the men’s and women’s champion. The best player in the world wasn’t going to show unless she was promised equal prize money. The potential of losing Billie Jean forced USTA’s hand.

King said at the time, a sentiment still resonating with female athletes today, “Unless I was number 1, I wouldn’t be listened to.”

In the recent web series The Tea, produced by the Player’s Tribune, current USWNT member Ali Krieger echoes King, commenting that there is additional pressure to remain number one to be deemed as worthy. “We have to win in order to have this platform to speak and for people to listen. I don’t think we’ve always felt valuable or powerful; it’s had to be earned”.

Billie Jean King’s time is not yet over. She is working closely with the USWNT players and their representation in the current lawsuit and she is doing similar work with the NWHL and USA Hockey. But let me be clear, in this year, Megan Rapinoe is King’s heir apparent.

I took my children to France to see Megan Rapinoe. I took my children to France to show them women at work together in sport. I wanted to show them the next Billie Jean King. I want them to both be the next Billie Jean King. I want them to be articulate about and tenacious against inequity wherever they see it.

I love a pink-haired, hero with raised arms carrying her teammate on her back (a pose both literal and metaphoric), on a French pitch, but I might love the calm, steady stare of a woman, yielding a sledgehammer in an evening gown even more.

She’s here to smash it all down. And build it back up.