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“I was so grateful to receive any respect at all for myself that I often missed opportunities to demand equality for all of us,” she said. She was realizing after the fact, Wambach told the audience at the 2018 Barnard College Commencement in New York City in May, that she’d spent most of her career just feeling grateful to be one of the only women to have a seat at the table. It dawned on her during an awards ceremony for retiring athletes that included former professional basketball player Kobe Bryant and football player Peyton Manning, that, unlike herself, they were leaving the sport with sizable fortunes. And after breaking a leg during a game two years earlier, Wambach called a player from the ambulance to tell her to begin getting ready immediately to take her place.īut soon after she announced her retirement from soccer in 2015, the realization that she would have to figure out how to make a living post-retirement, unlike elite professional male athletes of her stature with much bigger salaries, “hit me like a ton of bricks,” Wambach wrote in her 2016 memoir Forward. A two-time Olympic gold medalist and a FIFA Women’s World Cup champion, Wambach has scored more goals in international competition than any other player in the history of the sport, male or female.Īlong with winning, Wambach gained a reputation for her toughness and leadership - after her forehead was split open during a qualifying match in the World Cup in 2010, Wambach had the wound stapled on the field rather than stop playing. Far more than a sports memoir, Forward is gripping tale of resilience and redemption-and a reminder that heroism is, above all, about embracing life’s challenges with fearlessness and heart.Two-time Olympic soccer gold medalist Abby Wambach speaks at the Destinations International Annual Convention in Anaheim.Ībby Wambach began playing soccer at the age of five in her hometown of Rochester, New York, and went on to become one of the greatest soccer players of all time. With stunning candor, Abby shares her inspiring and often brutal journey from girl in Rochester, New York, to world-class athlete. Called an inspiration and “badass” by President Obama, Abby has become a fierce advocate for women’s rights and equal opportunity, pushing to translate the success of her team to the real world.Īs she reveals in this searching memoir, Abby’s professional success often masked her inner struggle to reconcile the various parts of herself: ferocious competitor, daughter, leader, wife. At age thirty-five she would become the highest goal scorer-male or female-in the history of soccer, capturing the nation’s heart with her team’s 2015 World Cup Championship.

At age seven she was put on the boys’ soccer team. Abby Wambach has always pushed the limits of what is possible.