Mia Hamm: Career, Records and Lessons for Young Players

Who she is

Mariel Margaret Hamm was born on March 17, 1972, in Selma, Alabama. She went on to play at the University of North Carolina, where she won four NCAA championships and was a first-team All-American three times. She was also a teenager when she first played for the US women's national team in 1987, years before most people thought of women's soccer as a mainstream American sport.

By the time she stopped, she had played in four World Cups and three Olympic Games. She finished with 158 international goals, which was the world record at the time, and 144 assists, plus 276 appearances for the national team. The United States Soccer Hall of Fame inducted her in 2007.

The record, in order

• 1991: World Cup champion in China. At 19 she was the youngest player on the American squad.
• 1995: Played in her second World Cup, in Sweden.
• 1996: Olympic gold in Atlanta.
• 1999: World Cup champion on home soil, with the final at the Rose Bowl decided on penalty kicks against China.
• 2000: Olympic silver in Sydney.
• 2001 and 2002: Named FIFA Women's World Player of the Year both years.
• 2001 to 2003: Played in the WUSA, the first women's pro league in the US, for the Washington Freedom.
• 2004: Olympic gold in Athens, then retired. Her last international match was a 5 to 0 win over Mexico on December 8, 2004.

Also in 2004, Pelé included her on his FIFA 100 list of the 125 greatest living players. Two of those honors tell you the most. Winning the world's top individual award twice is rare. Finishing as her country's all-time leader in assists, while also being its leading scorer at the time, says a lot about how she played.

What the stats say about how she played

Mia Hamm was a forward who made the people around her better. She scored a lot, but she also set up a lot, and the assist total of 144 is one coaches mention when they talk to young players about being a good teammate. A striker who only wants the goal is easier to defend. A forward who might pass, shoot or dribble is a nightmare.

Her speed gets less credit than it should. Watch older clips and notice how often she scored by getting behind defenders and arriving first. That kind of running is not glamorous, and it wins games.

She also played on teams. The 1991 and 1999 championship squads were full of famous names, and Hamm spent much of her career saying publicly that the team came first. Her foundation says as much about her values. It works to raise funds and awareness for families who need a marrow or cord blood transplant, and to create opportunities for young women in sports.

A note from her college coach

You'll find plenty of quote collections online with Mia Hamm's name attached. Many of them don't tell you where she said or wrote the line, and we couldn't trace the exact wording of the popular ones to a book, interview or speech. So we're not printing them.

One story we can source. According to ESPN's biography, Anson Dorrance, who coached her at North Carolina and with the national team, first saw her at a tournament in 1986 and was struck by her work ethic. He later wrote her a note describing the vision of a champion as someone working hard, drenched in sweat and exhausted, when nobody else is watching. Dorrance later told the Daily Tar Heel that Hamm sent him a copy of her book, Go for the Goal, with that note on it. The exact wording differs between accounts, so we describe it here rather than quote it.

Lessons for young players

Start with the unglamorous part. The note from Dorrance is about what happens when nobody is watching: touches on a wall, running a mile, extra shots after practice. For a ten-year-old, this doesn't mean hours of drills. It means picking up a ball without being told.

Second, play for the team. Whether your child is a striker or a defender, the players coaches remember are the ones who pass to a teammate in a better position, talk on the field, and cheer for the player who came on for them. Hamm's assist record is a good example to show a kid who thinks the goal is the only thing that counts.

Third, a career takes years. She debuted for the national team in 1987 and was still playing in 2004. That's seventeen years. Most players in youth soccer are still working out what they're good at. If your child isn't the best player on their team at 11, that doesn't tell you much about what happens later.

Lessons for parents

Parents sometimes treat a name like Mia Hamm as proof that the right club or the right league makes a champion. The record says something different. She was an exceptional athlete who worked at it for a long time. A club can offer good coaching and games. It can't supply the will.

So choose a club that teaches well and lets your child play, then get out of the way. Our guide on choosing a soccer club covers the questions to ask, and the leagues guide explains where each level fits. Many girls play on strong teams in the middle of the pathway for years and still have a great time, and college coaches find players there too.

Why her name still comes up

The 1999 World Cup final at the Rose Bowl made that team a national story, and Hamm was its most visible face. Whatever your view of the hype, those players showed a generation of girls that a woman could be a pro athlete and a role model. Many of today's national team players and college coaches grew up watching them.

Hamm's brother Garrett died in 1997 of complications from aplastic anemia, and she founded her foundation in 1999. It's a reminder that what she did off the field mattered as much as what she did on it.