On August 14, 2022, Tobin Heath played her final match. Goodbye football, hello purgatory. While not knowing when death may take us terrifies civilians and athletes alike, for Tobin, the hardest part of this journey may have been not knowing that it had already come.
When Tobin calls my cell phone, an image that a fan drew of her juggling a soccer ball pops up on my screen. The ball has been attached to her foot since she was four years old. If she ever lost it for the next 30 years, she’d hunt it down so fiercely and so competitively, it scared opposing players and teammates all the same. A game face so mean, it’d make you wonder if she was truly having fun. But don’t be fooled. She was, indeed, having fun.
What I learned about Tobin early and often was that while she herself believed and insisted that she was playing for the love of it, football was something more. The ball was a lifestyle. An identity. A reason for being. With the ball at her foot, she learned to dream… to believe in herself. She learned the power of hard work and the magic of teamwork. As a young girl, she escaped her family troubles on wet grass pitches in the forests of New Jersey. She learned focus and friendship. She learned how to play the long game. The pillars of football became the pillars of her life.
When it was time to leave home, the ball introduced her to the first group of peers that ever understood her. Growing up, she never knew there were others like her. Gals that dreamed of greatness. Those damn Tar Heels. They gave her the best years of her life. She left college with infinite memories, unbreakable bonds, and three national championships. She spent countless hours training in a dark stadium after it was long closed and locked.
Over the next few years of her life, football showed her love. It came in the form of God’s greatest gift to us all: Women. Living near her aunt Loraine in Atlanta for the last year of her life. Sneaking through the window to see her first girlfriend. Her mother’s pain about it, prayers over it, and then acceptance. Romantic dates in three languages under the Eiffel Tower, accompanied by God’s second greatest gift to us all: Baguettes.
And then, there was Portland. A place so special that for the first time since being away from her family, she finally felt at home again. In Portland, she built the first women’s soccer fandom in the world. As 20,000 fans hooped and hollered while she nutmegged defenders, she showed them that women are great athletes. They showed her that what she did had value beyond her. Monetary value. Societal impact. The promise of progress. She saw that her lifelong love of the ball was worth something more in this world, and that passion would take care of her for the rest of her life. If you go to Portland today, you’ll find dogs and children named Tobin. And a generation of young people that will only ever know a world where women are celebrated in sport.
Much of this — the friendships, the dark stadiums, the baguettes, the dogs, the NWSL Championships (yes there were 2) — won’t be widely remembered. When somebody speaks of Tobin, they’ll talk about one thing: the golden generation of the U.S. Women’s National Team. The team that she joined at 17 years old, when she was all teeth and calves and cockiness. The team that she helped win 2 World Cup and 2 Olympic Gold medals… where she just may have grown into her teeth and out of her cockiness. I have no notes on the calves.
They’ll definitely remember those larger-than-life wins. Off the field, people will remember how hard Tobin fought for the USWNT to be valued, to win equal pay. Yes, they know we won that. And yet, one of the most important legacies of the equal pay fight is that they also saw (the winningest) team (in the world) struggling and losing. And in those painful moments when we were losing, Tobin’s stubbornness and evenhandedness and unending loyalty were just as defining of that time as the headiness that ultimately came when we busted through all the barriers and shattered every ceiling trying to hold us down. This drive, this sense of purpose, this unshakable belief, are some of Tobin’s greatest strengths.
Tobin Heath knows about winning. She’s always won. And she learned it and taught it in the best locker room in the world. How laughing, dancing, yelling, crying and sharing contribute to greatness. She knows how to learn from the competition, as well as she knows how to squash them, humiliate them, and come out on top. She knows the importance of leadership, but even more so the importance of creating space for others to shine.
And so, perhaps her greatest contribution was not a win at all. It was carrying the torch — a culture — in the pursuit of greatness for all to see and follow. She messages each player that gets her first USWNT cap. She advocates in the biggest rooms with the highest stakes for folks to invest in women’s sports. She studies the tactical nuance of the game to a degree that few will ever understand. To keep pushing our game forward. To keep carrying…
How do you say goodbye to something you’re not ready to let go of? Tobin didn’t. She said no. When the doctor in Manchester called in March 2021 with news of a career-ending injury, she didn’t accept it. Instead, she rehabbed relentlessly—scraping, fighting, clawing her way back onto another Olympic roster. She got the treatment. Took the injections. Signed with her childhood dream club: The Arsenal. Still: NO.
She cried. Loaded and deloaded. Scanned. Tried again. And again. She pushed through one final season in Seattle on limited minutes, but enough to score a last, defiant goal against LA at BMO Stadium. The home crowd couldn’t help but cheer. No. No. No. There’s no measure for the effort an athlete puts into overcoming injury. No limit to the will…until, finally, there is. It was too soon, and she hadn’t seen it coming.
Tobin was the one who told me that athletes die two deaths. And Tobin Heath won’t play soccer again...
But because of her, so many will.
