Op/ed: Solo Battle

The U.S. women’s national soccer team has gotten almost as much attention for its off-field moves to force the U.S. Soccer Federation to treat male and female players equally as it has for its brilliant play, which resulted in a World Cup championship earlier this month.

But the push for parity in U.S. women’s soccer didn’t begin with the current team, writes Washington Post columnist and journalism Professor of the Practice Kevin Blackistone. Former star goalkeeper Hope Solo, who played on the 2015 World Cup-winning team, began fighting the fight years before it became a cause célèbre, he writes.

Upon her return from France earlier this week, I asked the progenitor of the lawsuit waged by the U.S. women’s world champion soccer team how pleased she was with the national rally the squad had ignited. Its conflagration continued Wednesday during the team’s ticker-tape celebration in New York, where the head of the U.S. Soccer Federation attempted to address the throngs that turned out to fete the club, only to be drowned out by raucous chants of “Equal pay! Equal pay!”

“What hurt me the most,” she said, “is when [the new women’s rights movement] wasn’t en vogue, I didn’t have the support of the team.”

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