How The USWNT Has Paved The Way For Moms In Sports

Around seven in the morning, Alex “Mommy” Morgan gets out of bed to start a routine day, leaving behind the most priceless possession. When winning championships was the objective and pursuing them was the top focus, football used to dominate.

However, there are now preschool lunches to prepare and 3-year-old clothing to choose from as Charlie Elena Carrasco awakens. Morgan gave birth to Charlie in 2020; since then, her mornings have started as a mother. There are waffles to prepare or yoghurt to grab before she can cruise along the California coast to work. In spare time, there are swings to push or bouncy house birthday parties to arrange—and the sapping delights of parenthood to savor.

But Soccer is still around. At age 34, Morgan is still a starter and co-captain for the American women’s national team. She is in New Zealand getting ready to compete in her fourth World Cup, but this will be her first as a mother, and she will be speaking out in support of a global movement that women started.

And she’s not lonely. The roster of the USWNT includes three moms. There were five at the team’s prior training camp, which is a program record. In addition to strollers and high chairs in the dining area, five young children were running (or rolling or crawling) around, and Charlie led a dance party.

Their mothers may have held off decades ago. Because society forced them to make a difficult decision, several athletes have retired. They may start families or carry on with their jobs. It was a Herculean struggle to give birth and return to work because of the physical demands of pregnancy, the lack of an adequate maternity policy, and broader stigmas.

Pioneers nonetheless showed that it was possible. Perhaps more than any other team, the USWNT campaigned to formalize the support and safeguards for mothers in football. The three women—Morgan, Crystal Dunn, and Julie Ertz — who may guide the United States to a third consecutive Women’s World Cup victory represent their legacy the most. Their legacy spans continents and several sports where moms are more prevalent than ever.

Regarding her forerunners, Ertz remarks, “What they’ve done and what they have paved for us to have… you’re almost indebted.”

Recently, Morgan stated, “I’m really grateful for the women before me that fought for mom athletes. I mean, Joy Fawcett was the OG.”

Joy Fawcett set an example for USWNT mothers

Fawcett, a founding member of the USWNT, decided she wanted children and a lengthy football career when she was 25 years old in 1993. She says while laughing, “I knew I could make it work — but I don’t know why.” “I really had no one to look towards” for precedent.

She then went up to national team coach Anson Dorrance. She said, “I’m gonna have kids, and I want to bring ’em with me on the road.”

Numerous sports authorities have been approached with similar requests over the past three decades since that historic day and have declined. Dozens of men have misunderstood the link between a woman and her kid, and they have instead prioritized creating tight team settings that turned away potential mothers.

Regarding her children, Fawcett stated, “If I couldn’t bring them with me, then that would’ve made me choose to leave soccer.”

But Dorrance was flexible. My teammates were willing to assist. Fawcett first worried that infants would be an unwanted distraction but later discovered they were charming, welcome distractions in an often competitive or tedious industry.

Fawcett, therefore, became pregnant and left for the vast unknown. Her doctor exclaimed when she resumed training and ran full-field sprints, “Oh my god, don’t do that!” Fawcett then questioned, “Why?”

When her belly began to protrude, her male peers prevented her from playing pickup games at a nearby community college in Southern California.

The lack of available research made others look at her with disapproval, and unlike now, when professional athletes are advised to stay in shape throughout pregnancy, Fawcett had no such advice.

On May 17, 1994, she gave birth to Katelyn Fawcett. She returned to the football field two weeks later, and, in the words of teammate Carla Overbeck, “she looked like she could play an international match.” Fawcett did make history by becoming the first mother to compete for the USWNT a month later. But, in a sense, the games were the simple part.

The logistics that disrupted nights and accommodations that no one at U.S. Soccer had ever considered were the problematic elements of everything else. So Fawcett was the one who footed the bill for a babysitter and an additional hotel room. Folding cribs and car seats, strollers and diapers, infant formula, and toys were all carried by Fawcett with the help of her teammates. She had four days to arrange childcare for young Katey when she moved to Florida for a lengthy training camp. She dropped her off the first day and went to practice before breaking down in tears.

Fawcett explained, “Because I left my kid with these perfect strangers.” Her solace had to come from head coach Tony DiCicco.

Despite initially having to share a room with colleagues who insisted they didn’t mind the baby’s 3 a.m. screams, guilt nonetheless gnawed at her. The organizers “wouldn’t let me stay in the dorms because of Kate,” she claims when she arrives at the Olympic Sports Festival to check-in. The act of Fawcett nursing in the café also drew criticism from onlookers, who found it disrespectful. She faced many societal challenges, and football lacked the support to protect her from them.

However, Fawcett still paved the way. 

“I’m really grateful for the women before me who fought for mom athletes. I mean, Joy Fawcett was the OG.” 

Alex Morgan

When Overbeck watched Fawcett blow it, she had the notion, “You know, I can probably do this too,” even though she had previously stated that she would “probably retire after [the 1991 World Cup], get married, and have kids.”

She discovered it was far more challenging than Fawcett made it seem, just like practically every mom who eventually followed in their footsteps. While leg-pressing or running the stadium steps at Duke, Overbeck had comparable challenges and comments about her bulging stomach.

But six weeks after giving birth to Jackson Overbeck in August 1997, she faced her most challenging situation. Without him, she boarded a flight to Germany for two USWNT friends. Immediately after, she regretted it. She worried; what if something happened to me? Jackson’s care will be provided by who? She was overcome with worry, which highlighted how important it is to give mothers with children on the road accommodations.

The USWNT athletes recognized this. They started fighting for fundamental childcare benefits during their mid-’90s contract discussions with U.S. Soccer.

In the past, according to Overbeck, “we would get per Diem, and the team would pull per Diem together to help pay for the nanny.”

By 1996, they had started requesting assistance from the federation. In part, because the kids had grown to be vital components of the USWNT milieu, but also with a view towards the future, the team’s non-mothers would speak out for the parents.

Overbeck remembers participants discussing, 

“Listen, this is really important to us, even though we don’t have kids, for the future. We want to establish this system so that the future moms — hopefully there will be future moms, because they won’t have to quit their careers to have children.”

The majority of players said that U.S. Soccer was understood. Overbeck and Fawcett would share a nanny at first, with more later on being subsidized. Its justification was straightforward, albeit frustratingly uncommon across the world of football: it was a positive thing, not a burden, to reduce elite players’ stress and allow them to enjoy long careers.

The 1999 World Cup victory by Fawcett and Overbeck demonstrated the value of the support. They motivated a whole generation of females, including teammates who would later become mothers.

Another 99er, Kate Markgraf, didn’t have children then, but after she did in the middle of the 2000s, she says, “I learned from Joy and Carla that it could be done.”

You don’t just dismiss people, you know. Give them a chance

The USWNT athletes had, at that point, made minor improvements regarding maternity leave. At training camps, they had decided that children were more than welcome, and they had also agreed that mothers and nannies, sometimes spouses or family friends, were entitled to single hotel rooms.

Additionally, a pattern had been established: the three-year break between the Olympics and the World Cup was more than enough time for pregnancies and rehabilitation. Keegan was Markgraf’s first child, and she gave birth to him in July 2006. Markgraf returned to competition before the 2007 World Cup and later won gold at the 2008 Olympics.

Then she became pregnant once more, but this time with twins.

Markgraf, currently in charge of the USWNT, claims that she intended to retire following the 2008 Olympics. However, Markgraf had not finalized her intentions when USWNT head coach Pia Sundhage contacted her to inform her that her contract would not be renewed in the summer of 2009, three weeks after Markgraf had given birth to Carson and Xavier.

The astonished Markgraf She was relearning how to walk after being on bedrest since Week 26 of her pregnancy. To negotiate the postpartum period, she needed grace and patience. She had been abruptly robbed of both her identification and her pay.

She then phoned the USWNT players’ attorney and representative, John Langel, who responded with the same shock: “That’s pregnancy discrimination.”

Langel offered Markgraf two options during the following weeks. She could file a lawsuit, likely “make a tonne of money,” according to Markgraf, “and run away, and be able to buy a fancy house and put my kids through school.” 

Or they might use the lawsuit threat as pressure to shield USWNT mothers permanently from this abuse. They might haggle for guarantees that players would be paid while they were expecting or recovering and would be given a chance to rebuild the squad when ready.

After 13 years after the conclusion of her Hall of Fame playing career, Markgraf decided to go with the latter course, and she now views it as her “biggest legacy.”

She declares, 

“I’m incredibly glad that I didn’t take a lot of money and have someone else deal with it. Furthermore, I’m happy that Amy Rodriguez, a former USWNT mother, had the time to visit. I’m happy that Casey Krueger, Julie Ertz, and Alex Morgan participated; who knows if they would not have done so. On the other hand, I’m relieved that nobody had to deal with that phone call. Due to the fact that it took me two years and mental health counselling to overcome it.”

Since then, the “Markgraf Rule,” known informally by then-U.S. Soccer president Sunil Gulati, has been a part of every USWNT collective bargaining agreement. It is currently written down in Section C of Article 18.

A player “shall be paid 100% of the Roster Appearance Fees that would have been paid to a player appearing on all WNT rosters during the period” and “shall be invited to two (2) full WNT camps” once they are medically cleared to return, with some restrictions regarding significant tournaments.

In contrast, Markgraf had one more thing to establish in 2010. After spending months reshaping her body and attitude, she returned to professional football and eventually the national squad. After earning her 200th and 201st U.S. caps, Markgraf claims that more than a year after Sundhage cut her, “Pia was gonna offer me a contract.”

She declined since she was about to retire at the end of the year, but her argument was effectively made: She explains, “You don’t just disregard individuals. You give them a chance.”

FIFA’s maternity rules and CBAs alter the game

Athletes have been denied the opportunity over the past 20 years in a few enlightened nations due to antiquated perceptions about working mothers.

Mothers struggled and frequently gave up in the National Women’s Soccer League before its historic 2022 CBA. Before 2017, the yearly wages of athletes not in the USWNT pool may fall as low as four figures. Additionally, childcare is costly, as NWSL veteran Jessica McDonald noted in 2019. Your paycheck will be gone if you look at salaries and daycare costs. How will you provide for your family’s needs?

The majority of clubs operated on very little money. Therefore, they frequently needed to be hospitable.

In 2019, McDonald claimed that the league “doesn’t support us” as a collective. The NWSL “doesn’t have anything for moms.” She would put her son Jeremiah in a pram and leave him at practice. Some coaches would point the finger at the purported “distraction” if she took him on a road trip and then performed poorly.

The CBA made significant changes. The number of NWSL mothers increased coincidentally. Mothers are now more prevalent, and policies have also begun to permeate overseas leagues.

The stigma, on the other hand, never really went away. Even while playing for Lyon and after scoring in a Champions League final, Icelandic great Sara Björk Gunnarsdóttir lost emotional equilibrium. During her leave of absence in 2021, she became pregnant. When she sought legal help, the club refused to compensate her before threatening to bar her.

Later, as written by Gunnarsdottir, 

“I felt confused, stressed, and betrayed. The worries just kept piling up. I felt like s***.” When she eventually returned to Lyon, “they always made me feel like it was a negative thing that I had a baby.”

But she also had the support of the new FIFA regulations. All female soccer players worldwide have a right to at least 14 weeks of maternity leave that is compensated at two-thirds of their regular income, according to a declaration by the world soccer governing body in November 2020.

The revisions to Article 18 of FIFA’s Rules on the Status and Transfer of Players ensured that every new mother had the “right to return to football activity after the completion of her maternity leave.” Her club will be responsible for helping her get back into football and giving her access to sufficient continuing medical care, including breastfeeding opportunities.

They were heralded as revolutionary assurances—minimum requirements that would eventually replace the traditional either-or choice. And they appeared uncannily familiar to many Americans.

When reading about European events, Markgraf would remark, 

“Man, this already happened to us [over] a decade ago. Across the world, they look at what we’ve done.” “And club teams and federations are trying to replicate it.”

Soccer mothers who work are still around

Crystal Dunn had all this standardized support when she revealed she was pregnant in 2021. When coaches, Markgraf, and other U.S. Soccer employees contacted them, “it wasn’t like, ‘Alright, bye, fall off the face of the Earth,'” according to Dunn.

 “It said, ‘Okay, what do you need? What can we do to help you? She was welcomed during practice by her team, the Portland Thorns. And giving birth was “not a death sentence,” and it was expected by all parties that she was “just hitting pause on my career.”

Much of that support is now a contractual requirement, according to the CBA for the USWNT. Up to six caregivers and children must get transportation, accommodation, and meals from U.S. Soccer. Although U.S. Soccer frequently goes above and beyond, it is also considered minimal.

It offers stadium suites for watching games or using play areas for toys. The team’s nutritionists and officials were “always checking in” with Krueger, a defender who gave birth in July of last year and returned this spring, to ensure that her nursing body and her son, Caleb, had all they required in camp in April.

Nothing about this, however, suggests that being a football mom is now simple. There is little spare time during USWNT camp because the schedules are jam-packed with practices and meetings.

“I was a massive napper. Now, with 1-year-old Marcel along for the ride, I can’t steal a nap if I wanted to.”

Crystal Dunn

However, there are advantages, of course. The dinner hall of the team hotel is filled with chuckles and happy anarchy, which is an incomparable source of delight. As Morgan recently stated, the youngsters “humanize this environment.”

Additionally, they offer their mom’s opinion. Due to their appreciation of what is truly significant in life, the moms no longer focus on their past transgressions or potential difficulties. “In training, did you miss that pass?” Whoo cares,” Dunn exclaims with a chuckle.

At the 2023 World Cup, Dunn, Morgan, and Ertz will each bring their kids and share that perspective. Because it was still somewhat new ground, as Morgan put it, specific, precise plans were still in charge as July rolled around. Charlie, though, is undoubtedly going to be there. Since “she wants to go swimming all day, every day,” Morgan quipped, she’ll be annoyed that it’s winter. Her 3-year-old brain will nonetheless ingest the memories.

And that’s the most excellent thing, according to Mommy, “that I get to bring my daughter with me on all these trips,” Morgan added. So many powerful and self-assured women surround her, and I get to teach her what Mom does.

They all need a clearer understanding of how this event will influence their children’s developing lives. But Fawcett has only recently begun to understand it, thirty years later.

Katelyn is now an occupational therapist and a mother, while Carli is in veterinary school, and Madilyn recently finished college one year early. They tried their hand at many different things as they developed. Joy attempted to advise them on occasion to “stop overstressing yourself.”

The root of their boundless desire didn’t dawn on her until one day last decade. Katelyn told her. “No, Mom, You showed us that we could do anything.”

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