For one Philadelphia sports writer, Sam Coffey’s USWNT debut hits home
There is likely no women's squad in the world that is more difficult and competitive to earn a place on in soccer than the United States women's national team.
When my sister was 10 or 11 years old, she turned the basement of our house into her own training facility. She’d spend hours down there, dribbling, doing drills, conditioning. She’d come back upstairs, drenched in sweat.
It was not a state-of-the-art setup. Our house was built in the mid-19th century, and the basement, though it was part of an addition, looked like it dated back to 1865. It was covered in cobwebs. The walls weren’t painted — just gray cinder blocks — but Sam used pink neon chalk to bring them to life.
She scribbled “U.S.W.N.T.” on one cinder block and “GO USA” on another. More than a decade later, the chalk has started to fade, but her words are still visible, a reminder of all of those thankless hours spent training. The hours that no one heard about.
» READ MORE: Sam Coffey had ‘so much fun’ — and played well — in her U.S. women’s soccer team debut
Playing for the national team has been my sister’s dream for as long as I’ve known her. She grew up with an Alex Morgan poster over her bed, and, on Tuesday, in the first two minutes of her first international cap with the U.S. women’s national team, she angled a pass to Morgan that nearly scored a goal.
About 60 minutes later, she wove her way through three Nigerian players to shoot a pass to her NWSL Portland Thorns teammate, Sophia Smith. After Rose Lavelle scored a goal to give the United States a 2-1 lead, which would earn them a win in their international friendly, Sam was celebrating on the field with Megan Rapinoe, Lavelle, Mallory Pugh, and Lindsey Horan.
It was a surreal moment, but not a surprising one. Sam’s reaching the national team always felt like an inevitability, given her steady progress. First, it was winning all-American with her high school club team. Then, it was winning Big Ten midfielder of the year with Penn State. Then, the NWSL and the Thorns came calling, and shortly after she was drafted, she won rookie of the month. And now she’s wearing a red, white, and blue uniform and shooting perfect passes to her childhood idol. I learned a long time ago not to put a ceiling on what she was capable of.
We weren’t sure when Sam would get into her first game. She’d been called into camp three times, and on Saturday, in the first game of the national team’s two-game set against Nigeria, she was warming up on the sideline. I was on my way to a doctor’s appointment when my mother frantically called to let me know that this could be the moment.
I drove to a rest stop and streamed the rest of the game from my cellphone in a rental car, but she didn’t make an appearance. Then, on Monday night, I got another call. Sam would be starting in Tuesday’s game. The moment had come, and I would be ready for it.
Watching from the press box at Citizens Bank Park, an hour before the Phillies’ game against the Marlins, I pulled up ESPN just in time to see her jog onto the field. I knew that it was a moment that she’d been waiting for most of her life, ever since she scribbled those words in chalk on basement walls, but she looked calm. She looked like she belonged out there.
Before the game, while the national anthem played over the loudspeakers at Audi Field, the camera caught Sam closing her eyes, with her hand on her heart and a smile on her face, gently swaying from side to side. I didn’t think much of it, because it’s something she does before every game. But Julie Foudy, now a broadcaster for ESPN, took notice.
» READ MORE: Megan Rapinoe and Rose Lavelle spark U.S. women’s soccer team to 2-1 win over Nigeria
She praised Sam for soaking in the moment, and suddenly, I realized what the most exciting part of this new chapter of her career is.
It’s not the fact that Sam could be a permanent member of the U.S. women’s national team, or that she could win a gold medal in the Olympics someday. It’s that the world gets to know her pure passion and her tireless work ethic and her goofy personality and her wit. They get to know Sam Coffey, the ABBA super fan who can quote most episodes of Law and Order: SVU and ruin a family photograph in an instant by crossing her eyes just as the shutter snaps. The community volunteer who spends her Christmas Eves handing out backpacks full of food, water, and handwritten notes, not for publicity, but because it is the right thing to do.
They get to know the Sam Coffey that I know, that I love, and they get to love her, too.