Abby Wambach Quotes

CALL TO THE WOLFPACK: Be grateful. But do not JUST be grateful. Be grateful AND brave. Be grateful AND ambitious. Be grateful AND righteous. Be grateful AND persistent. Be grateful AND loud. Be grateful for what you have AND demand what you deserve.

Failure is not something to be ashamed of—nor is it proof of unworthiness. Failure is something to be powered by. When we live afraid to fail, we don’t take risks. We don’t bring our entire selves to the table—so we end up failing before we even begin. Let’s stop worrying: What if I fail? Instead, let’s promise ourselves: When I fail, I’ll stick around.

CALL TO THE WOLFPACK: Her victory is your victory. Celebrate with her. Your victory is her victory. Point to her.

Note: When they say you're ridiculous, you know you're onto something.

You will not always be the goal scorer. When you are not, you better be rushing toward her.

Strength is a full gamut. You’ve got to be strong from top to bottom, but you also have to raise your hand and say, “I’m feeling weak right now. I need some help.” There is true strength in being able to ask for help.

A woman who doesn’t give up can never lose.

Claim your power, and bring along your full humanity. Clear the way for others to do the same. Because what our families, our companies, and the world needs is nothing more—and nothing less— than exactly who we are.

I don't care who scores the goals, I'm going to leave my human beingness on the field!

You were never Little Red Riding Hood. You were always the Wolf.

A champion never allows a short-term failure to take her out of a long-term game.

When we live afraid to fail, we don’t take risks. We don’t bring our entire selves to the table—so we end up failing before we even begin.

CALL TO THE WOLFPACK: Believe in yourselves. Stand up and say: GIVE ME THE EFFING BALL. GIVE ME THE EFFING JOB. GIVE ME THE SAME PAY THAT THE GUY NEXT TO ME GETS. GIVE ME THE PROMOTION. GIVE ME THE MICROPHONE. GIVE ME THE OVAL OFFICE. GIVE ME THE RESPECT I DESERVE— AND GIVE IT TO MY WOLFPACK, TOO.

Recently, on a call with a company hiring me to teach about leadership, a man said, "Excuse me, Abby, I just need to ensure that what you present is applicable to men, too." I said, "Good question! But only if you've asked every male speaker you;ve hired if his message is applicable to women, too.

Leadership is taking care of yourself and empowering others to do the same. Leadership is not a position to earn, it’s an inherent power to claim. Leadership is the blood that runs through your veins—it’s born in you. It’s not the privilege of a few, it is the right and responsibility of all. Leader is not a title that the world gives to you—it’s an offering that you give to the world.

CALL TO THE WOLFPACK: Wear what you want. Love who you love. Become what you imagine. Create what you need. You were never Little Red Riding Hood. You were always the Wolf.

You might find yourself holding a baby instead of a briefcase and fearing that your colleagues are “getting ahead” and leaving you behind. Here’s what’s important: You are allowed to be disappointed when it feels like life’s benched you. What you aren’t allowed to do is miss your opportunity to lead from the bench. If you’re not a leader on the bench, don’t call yourself a leader on the field. You’re either a leader everywhere or nowhere.

We can choose our own comfort even if it makes other people uncomfortable.

Women - who are feared by many to be a threat to our system - will become our society's salvation.

We are the ones we've been waiting for. WE. ARE. THE. WOLVES.

Old Rule: Stay on the path. New Rule: Create your own path.

Wear what you want. Love who you love. Become what you imagine. Create what you need. You were never Little Red Riding Hood. You were always the Wolf.

Old Rule: Wait for permission to lead. New Rule: Lead now - from wherever you are.

Women must stop following the Old Rules, which exist only to maintain the status quo. If we follow the rules we've always followed, the game will remain the same. Old ways of thinking will never help us build a new world. Out with the Old. In with the New.

The world needs to see women take risks, fail big, and insist on their right to stick around and try again. And again. And again. A champion never allows a short-term failure to take her out of the long-term game. A woman who doesn't give up can never lose.

What keeps the pay gap in existence is not just the entitlement and complicity of men. It's the gratitude of women. Our gratitude is how power uses the tokenism of a few women to keep the rest of us in line.

Leadership is volunteering at the local school, speaking encouraging words to a friend, and holding the hand of a dying parent. It’s tying dirty shoelaces and going to therapy and saying to our families and friends: No. We don’t do unkindness here. It’s signing up to run for the school board and it’s driving that single mom’s kid home from practice and it’s creating boundaries that prove to the world that you value yourself. Leadership is taking care of yourself and empowering others to do the same.

New Rule: Be grateful for what you have AND demand what you deserve.

You see, soccer didn’t make me who I am. I brought who I am to soccer, and I get to bring who I am wherever I go. So do you.

[...] insist upon remembering. Because we know that the lessons of yesterday's loss become the fuel for tomorrow's win.

Because no matter who you are or what you’ve done with your life, you recognize the feeling I’ve described, that private, flailing terror that makes you wonder if you’re lost for good.

Here’s what’s important: You are allowed to be disappointed when it feels like life’s benched you. What you aren’t allowed to do is miss your opportunity to lead from the bench. If you’re not a leader on the bench, don’t call yourself a leader on the field. You’re either a leader everywhere or nowhere.

Here are just a few of my labels: tomboy, dyke, lesbian, butch, bitch, coward, failure, control freak, rebel, fraud. And a few more, on the flip side: phenom, inspiration, captain, champion, advocate. At a young age I learned that you own labels by defying them, and defy them by owning them. I know that the final word on me will be one that I choose. Seventy-seven

Abby, You were never Little Red Riding Hood. You were always the Wolf. There is a wolf inside of every woman. Her wolf is who she was made to be before the world told her who to be. Her wolf is her talent, her power, her dreams, her voice, her curiosity, her courage, her dignity, her choices—her truest identity.

NEW RULES 1. Create your own path. 2. Be grateful for what you have AND demand what you deserve. 3. Lead now—from wherever you are. 4. Failure means you’re finally IN the game. 5. Be FOR each other. 6. Believe in yourself. Demand the ball. 7. Lead with humanity. Cultivate Leaders. 8. You’re not alone. You’ve got your Pack.

They laid that new path—brick by brick—for generations of wolves to follow.

Leadership is volunteering at the local school, speaking encouraging words to a friend, and holding the hand of a dying parent.

At a young age I learned that you own labels by defying them, and defy them by owning them. I know that the final word on me will be one that I choose.

Be grateful AND loud.

When you stand up and demand the ball, you give others permission to do the same.

GIVE ME THE RESPECT I DESERVE— AND GIVE IT TO MY WOLFPACK, TOO.

Your speech is our new bedtime story.

CALL TO THE WOLFPACK: Try. Fail. Feel it burn. Then transform Failure into your Fuel.

Her victory is your victory. Celebrate with her. Your victory is her victory. Point to her.

Old Rule: Lead with dominance. Create Followers. New Rule: Lead with humanity. Cultivate Leaders.

Old Rule: Play it safe. Pass the ball. New Rule: Believe in yourself. Demand the ball.

If you have a voice, you have influence to spread. If you have relationships, you have hearts to guide. If you know young people, you have futures to mold. If you have privilege, you have power to share. If you have money, you have support to give. If you have a ballot, you have policy to shape. If you have pain, you have empathy to offer. If you have freedom, you have others to fight for. If you are alive, you are a leader.

Be grateful. But do not JUST be grateful. Be grateful AND brave. Be grateful AND ambitious. Be grateful AND righteous. Be grateful AND persistent. Be grateful AND loud. Be grateful for what you have AND demand what you deserve.

U.S. Soccer’s monetary figures are equally unsettling. In 2017, the women’s team is expected to generate $17 million in revenue compared to $9 million by the men, and yet the men’s salaries still dwarf the women’s across the board. For wins, the women’s team earns thirty-seven cents to every dollar earned by men. Players in the National Women’s Soccer League earn between $6,842 and $37,800, while members of Major League Soccer earn an average salary exceeding $200,000.

There is a wolf inside of every woman. Her wolf is who she was made to be before the world told her who to be. Her wolf is her talent, her power, her dreams, her voice, her curiosity, her courage, her dignity, her choices—her truest identity.

Believe in yourselves. Stand up and say: GIVE ME THE EFFING BALL. GIVE ME THE EFFING JOB. GIVE ME THE SAME PAY THAT THE GUY NEXT TO ME GETS. GIVE ME THE PROMOTION. GIVE ME THE MICROPHONE. GIVE ME THE OVAL OFFICE. GIVE ME THE RESPECT I DESERVE - AND GIVE IT TO MY WOLFPACK, TOO.

Here's what's imporant: You are allowed to be dissapointed when it feels like life's benched you. What you aren't allowed to do is miss your opportunity to lead from the bench. If you're not a leader on the bench, don't call yourself a leader on the field. You're either a leader everywhere or nowhere.

With each passing day soccer carves a larger scoop of my life. I love it for what it gives me: praise, affection, and, above all, attention. When I'm on the field I don't have to plead to be noticed, either silently or aloud; it is a natural by-product of my talent. I loathe it for the same reason, terrified that soccer is the only worthwile thing about me, that stripping it from my identity might make me disappear. My future teammate and friend Mia Hamm will one day offer this advice: "Somewhere behind the athlete you've become and the hours of practice and the coaches who have pushed you is a little girl who fell in love with the game and never looked back... play for her." I am not, and never will be, that little girl. Already I know I'm incapable of falling in love with the game itself--only with the validation that comes from mastering it, from bending it to my will.

Women must stop accepting failure as our destruction and start using failure as our fuel. Failure is not something to be ashamed of—nor is it proof of unworthiness. Failure is something to be powered by.

I meditate with my mala beads and ask myself hard questions: "Can I accept responsability for the things that happened, the things I created? Can I accept responsability for the hurt I've caused? That's why people get divorced--because they can't deal with the sad feelings they created. And until you can get right and accept the fact that you've shattered somebody, that you've broken their heart in more ways than one, there's no way that you've ever going to be able to survive.

One of the like-minded, badass women I've been speaking to offers a metaphor that perfectly captures this moment in my life. We're talking about retirement and transitions, the challenges involved in letting go of the only work and life you've ever known. Trapeze artists are so amazing in so many ways, she says, because they are grounded to one rung for a long time, and in order to get to the other rung they have to let go. What makes them so brilliant and beautiful and courageous and strong is that they execute flips in the middle. The middle is their magic. And if you're brave enough to let go of that first rung, she concludes, you can create your own magic in the middle.

What keeps the pay gap in existence is not just the entitlement and complicity of men. It’s the gratitude of women. Our gratitude is how power uses the tokenism of a few women to keep the rest of us in line.

No one has ever spoken to me like that in my life, and I gratefully internalize every word. I'm tired of hearing about my talent and am desperate to know my flaws; I want to corner and confront them and coax them into improvement. I want to be better, if only because being better ensures more attention.

Abby Wambach, #20, one of the best players in the world, two-time Olympic gold medalist, FIFA World Cup champion, top international goal scorer. During her last game she didn't start, but she cheered so hard and so loud -from the bench- that the US won anyway.

Sometimes there are no second chances, no next time. Sometimes it's now or never. -soccer great, Abby Wambach

We’re talking about them as athletes, rather than some of the conversations we had in ’99: My god, who are these women? They’re kind of hot!” Julie Foudy said. After the team won in 1999, the players turned into one-of-a-kind heroes, pioneers, and role models overnight. Many people rooted for them as a larger statement about women in sports. But by 2015, the players of the national team were athletes that America grew to love simply as athletes. If fans were going to be jubilant about a victory in the 2015 World Cup final, it wouldn’t just be because of some deeper meaning or greater impact—it would be because fans knew these players and wanted them to win. It was evidenced by Alex Morgan’s almost 2 million followers on Twitter, Hope Solo’s autobiography becoming a New York Times bestseller, and Abby Wambach appearing in Gatorade television ads on heavy rotation. No longer did the players need to show up at schools and youth clinics to hand out flyers, like the 1999 team did. The word about the national team was already out. In the team’s three May 2015 send-off games, they sold out every match, drawing capacity crowds at Avaya Stadium, the StubHub Center, and Red Bull Arena. Consider what Foudy told reporters in 1999 after the World Cup win: “It transcends soccer. There’s a bigger message out there: When people tell you no, you just smile and tell them, Yes, I can.” By 2015? Players like Carli Lloyd were talking about world domination. It was all about the soccer—and that, in and of itself, was something special and powerful.

Other than Christie Pearce, who was on the 1999 World Cup team as a depth piece, none of the players had experienced anything like what they saw when they returned from Germany. The team surged back into the American mainstream practically overnight. Hope Solo, a breakout star, appeared on the cover of Sports Illustrated and was asked to compete on ABC’s Dancing with the Stars. Everyone on the team was more famous than they had ever been. At one point in New York City as the players looked out from their bus onto the crowd of fans who had gathered to catch a glimpse of the team, a scream came from Abby Wambach. “Fuck!” she shouted. Those around her—startled and worried that something bad had just happened—turned to her and asked her what was wrong. Wambach, with resignation in her voice, responded: “We didn’t win.” It hit Wambach like a ton of bricks. She saw the response the team had gotten—a massive surge of fan support—and she saw the missed opportunity. If the national team had actually won the World Cup, how much bigger could it have been for the sport?

The reality is, the men would never play the World Cup on field turf,” Abby Wambach said after the complaint was filed. “So for me, it’s a women’s rights issue—it’s an equality issue.” Of course, FIFA treating the Women’s World Cup like it was less important than the men’s event wasn’t new. Take, for instance, the prize money that FIFA offered the winners. For whoever won the 2015 World Cup, a $2 million team prize was on the line. If that seems like a lot, it shouldn’t—the German men’s team won $35 million for winning the 2014 World Cup. That’s roughly six cents on the dollar for the women. The last-place men’s team at the 2014 World Cup earned $8 million, four times what the winner of the 2015 Women’s World Cup would earn. FIFA may have been a so-called not-for-profit organization that was heading into the 2015 Women’s World Cup with around $1.5 billion in cash reserves, but FIFA secretary general Jérôme Valcke argued the women would have to wait 13 more World Cups to see the sort of cash prize the men get.

Next up was the match with North Korea, where the national team showed off another choreographed goal celebration in a 1–0 win. After Abby Wambach’s first goal, the team lined up and held hands, raising their arms in succession to create a rolling wave—a break dancing–type move. When it reached the last player in the line, the players turned and pointed to the midfield, where Hope Solo and Christie Pearce were doing the dance move known as “the Worm.” “Sometimes Hope doesn’t get involved in our celebrations, and she said before the game that the Worm is the only thing she can do,” Wambach said afterward. “So we just tried to set her up for something.

The plant ecosystem regenerated. The animal ecosystem regenerated. The entire landscape changed. All because of the wolves’ presence.

Once a small number of wolves arrived, big changes started happening almost immediately

CALL TO THE WOLFPACK: Believe in yourselves. Stand up and say: GIVE ME THE EFFING BALL. GIVE ME THE EFFING JOB. GIVE ME THE SAME PAY THAT THE GUY NEXT TO ME GETS. GIVE ME THE PROMOTION. GIVE ME THE MICROPHONE.

Old Rule: Be grateful for what you have. New Rule: Be grateful for what you have AND demand what you deserve.

Soccer star and Olympic gold medalist Abby Wambach points out that failure means you are “in the game.” In her 2018 commencement speech at Barnard College in New York, Wambach exhorted graduates to make failure their “fuel.” Failure, she explained, “is not something to be ashamed of, it’s something to be powered by. Failure is the highest-octane fuel your life can run on.

Men have been allowed to fail and keep playing forever. Why do we let failure take us out of the game? Imperfect men have been empowered and permitted to run the world since the beginning of time. It's time for imperfect women to grant themselves permission to join them.

Good question! But only if you’ve asked every male speaker you’ve hired if his message is applicable to women, too.

It will happen so often, for so long, that it will become a joke to me and my teammates, yet a part of me will always find it hurtful and want people to pay better attention, to take the time to look. To see me.

President Obama recently called me and my teammates "badass" and I feel entirely unworthy of the term... Five months ago at the World Cup final, my wife Sarah and I made international news with a celebration kiss, and now she isn't speaking to me. We'd renovated a beautiful, sprawling house tucked in the hills outside of Portland, Oregon, and I can't consider it home. I'm thirty-five years old and had planned on being pregnant by now. My body feels like a foreign object and I am desperate to escape my own mind.

I'm the saddest person I have ever known

I think I'm in love with you in this moment

Your drinking is killing us. When you drink it feels like you're leaving me, like you don't want to be with me, like you want to be by yourself.

Trapeze artists are so amazing in so many ways, she says, because they are grounded to one rung for a long time, and in order to get to the other rung they have to let go.

When Solo went up to her coach’s room to talk with him, she found out she was right to be worried. Ryan was going to start Briana Scurry in goal for the semifinal instead of Solo. “Bri has a winning record against Brazil,” he told her. “Her style just matches up better with Brazil’s style.” Scurry had been a fantastic goalkeeper for the national team, to be sure, and some of her best performances had indeed come against Brazil. In 12 career matches versus Brazil, Scurry averaged just .41 goals conceded per game. Only three months earlier, Scurry recorded a shutout versus Brazil in a friendly when Solo was away dealing with the death of her father. The problem, however, was that friendly versus Brazil in June was the last time Scurry started for the national team. By now it was September and in the middle of the knockout round of a World Cup. There was no way Scurry could be at her sharpest. If Ryan’s decision wasn’t fair to Solo, who had done nothing to lose her spot, it really wasn’t fair to Scurry, who didn’t have the proper preparation to perform at her best. The decision—as stunning as it was—was bad enough. But making it worse was that Ryan admitted he made it with input from Abby Wambach and Kristine Lilly.

In the shootout that followed, Hope Solo saved one of Brazil’s penalty kicks, while the Americans buried all theirs. The Americans were advancing to the semifinal. The stunning last-second goal—Rapinoe’s cross and Wambach’s header—would captivate the nation back home. Suddenly a country that hadn’t been particularly attuned to this Women’s World Cup fell back in love with its national team. A team that had fallen off the radar since 2005 was thrust back into the spotlight again. If Abby Wambach worried in 2008 about the team not needing her, she proved her fears wrong at the perfect time.

Now the Americans were at risk of not even qualifying for a tournament that they were the favorites to win. Suddenly, the media that hadn’t paid attention to Women’s World Cup qualifying became interested. “The irony of the whole thing is that when the U.S. men win, they get the coverage, but when the U.S. women lose, we get the coverage,” striker Abby Wambach said.

Instead, Wambach planted her feet and jumped straight up into the air, thrusting her head toward the ball. She beat Andréia to the ball and snapped it toward the goal. Wambach’s eyes were closed, but the sound of the ball rattling the back of the net was unmistakable. Goal, USA. The score: 2–2. “OH, CAN YOU BELIEVE THIS?!” ESPN announcer Ian Darke shouted at the top of his lungs to American viewers through their TV sets. “ABBY WAMBACH HAS SAVED THE USA’S LIFE IN THIS WORLD CUP!” Wambach ran over to the corner flag and slid, releasing a primal scream. The players closest to her—Tobin Heath and Alex Morgan—hugged her first. Kelley O’Hara leapt off the bench and raced over to Wambach, and everyone else soon followed. Rapinoe fist-pumped furiously and pounded on her chest. It was perhaps the most exhilarating moment in the national team’s history—perhaps it could rival the 1999 World Cup win, which had fittingly happened exactly 12 years earlier. Either way, coming after 121 minutes and 19 seconds, it was the latest goal in World Cup history—men’s or women’s—and it was a thrilling boost for the Americans. There was no way they were going to lose to Brazil on penalty kicks now.

Forgiveness is an act of self-love,” she says. “You’ve suffered enough. You owe it to yourself, dude.

My self-loathing has been killing me.

Leadership is not a position to earn, it’s an inherent power to claim. Leadership is the blood that runs through your veins—it’s born in you. It’s not the privilege of a few, it is the right and responsibility of all. Leader is not a title that the world gives to you—it’s an offering that you give to the world.