The Women’s World Cup is in full swing. USA will play their third and final match of the group stage on Tuesday evening against Nigeria. Yet discussion of the team has focused on one particular player: goalkeeper Hope Solo.
Little of that has to do with her play on the field. Instead, there is a robust conversation about her arrest nearly a year ago for two counts of domestic violence in Kirkland, Washington.
The day after the kick-off the World Cup, ESPN’s Outside the Lines published a report about what took place that night between Solo, her half-sister, Teresa Obert, and Obert’s son, 17 at the time. The piece, based on police records, sworn depositions, and an interview with Obert, painted a grim picture of Solo as a violent instigator in a dispute with her family. Solo has maintained her innocence and said that she was the victim of domestic violence at the hands of her nephew.
The case has yet to be heard in court because the charges were dismissed in January. The judge, according to ESPN, said that Obert and her son were being uncooperative when they refused to give sworn depositions for a second time, and that the prosecution failed to follow “procedural discovery rules” concerning witnesses. The city has filed an appeal with the superior court of Washington and a hearing for the appeal will be heard in September.
One of the biggest reveals in the report is that US Soccer, which oversees the women’s team and with whom the players have a collective bargaining agreement, did not talk to Obert or her son, nor is there evidence that they talked to the prosecutors or the police. The president of US Soccer, Sunil Gulati, in response to a letter from senator Richard Blumenthal, confirmed that they did not talk to the Oberts, but did say they had interviewed Solo and obtained a partial but redacted police report.
Also, it’s possible Solo was punished for this incident. Most likely she was, although her 30-day suspension in January was certainly also tied to an incident involving her husband driving a US soccer van while under the influence. The confusion stems from US Soccer having been tight-lipped on what they have done with Solo, leaving everyone guessing about their commitment to dealing with allegations of violence committed by players off the field. Writers at the New York Times, the New Yorker, and Yahoo Sports have all called for more transparency from US Soccer in this particular case, as well as for a clarification in policy to guide the federation the next time a player is arrested for assault.
In all of this, there has been a move to compare US Soccer’s response to the NFL’s, since the latter has faced scrutiny how it reacted to multiple players over the last season who have been accused, arrested, or charged for assault against women and/or family members. The NFL has scrambled to implement policy and dole out punishments, though the league’s decision often appear reactive and arbitrary.
But professional football is an incredibly rich, powerful, and popular sport in the US. Women’s soccer is not, though its popularity is always increasing (and not just in the US). If the NFL suspends a player during the postseason and his team loses because that player is not on the field, there is no fear that the team, the league, or the sport will lose its financial backing, have its legitimacy questioned, or even have to justify its existence.
Women’s soccer is still treated poorly. Female soccer players, at the premier event of their sport, cannot even get the best quality turf to play on. An employee of ESPN, the so-called worldwide leader in sports, made a joke on live TV about the how best team in the World Cup did not stop a free-kick goal because “they might not have wanted to mess their hair up.”
When the women of the US soccer team step onto the pitch at the World Cup, how they perform matters greatly. USA is known as being good, athletic, and, dare I say, better than their male equivalent. During the World Cup, people who rarely pay attention to women’s sport are now watching matches, or at least highlights. Sportscenter on ESPN gave only 2% of its air time to women’s sports in 2014, an unchanging percentage since last century. The US team becomes a stand-in for all of women’s sports for people who never get or seek out an opportunity to see women play. If the team fails to meet expectations, they risk lending credence to the idea that not only is their sport not worth watching or caring about, women’s sports in general are a much lesser version of men’s.
The US Soccer federation failed in how they handled Solo’s domestic violence case. But this is as true as how necessary it is for USA to have Solo, the best goalkeeper in the game, on the field. The team needs her in order to have a chance at making a deep run in the tournament, and they do need to do a deep run. The stakes are ridiculously high when it comes to the fight for legitimacy of the sport.
The discussion we are currently having around Hope Solo is the result of the way our society downplays and ignores abuse and women’s sport. The pressure for USA to be spectacular whenever the world is watching is a thick layer of misogyny overtop of what was already a difficult situation, one made worse because of a lack of transparency from US Soccer.
