Aspire in the World Fellows Book - 2025

68 11TH ASPIRE ACADEMY GLOBAL SUMMIT 69 A lot has changed in the game from recovery strategies to sports performance and data. Toward the end of my career, things like getting clips immediately after games became common. But I still felt old school because you cannot measure heart and intuition. You cannot measure someone jumping as high as possible to win a header in an epic moment. Data is valuable, but it is just a tool. You cannot solely rely on it because there are intangibles you cannot measure like heart, passion, grit, determination. Use data as an additional tool along with recovery strategies and tactics, not as the only measure. In today’s data-driven game, how can analytics be integrated without losing competitive instinct and team identity? The 2015 World Cup came with tremendous pressure. We had not won since 1999 and lost the 2011 final to Japan. The 99ers were looming, everyone asking if we would win. Going in, we were reserved, almost fearful. I knew I was prepared more than any other moment physically and mentally, but we all got off to a slow start. I was not performing well, the team was not performing well, and critics like Alexi Lalas said we would not get out of the group. There was chatter about us not playing well or gelling. Then we had yellow card suspensions. Megan Rapinoe and Lauren Chaney had to sit out a game. Jill Ellis decided to change the formation and push me higher, which I loved. I played more like a withdrawn forward, floating around, and Morgan Brian sat behind me cleaning up scraps. We started to gain momentum. Against China in the knockout round, we put them under pressure. I remember KellyO’Harawith After a slow start in the 2015 World Cup, you became a standout performer. What lessons does that journey offer about handling pressure and shifting momentumwithin a tournament? a bloody nose, tackling hard, and you could see we were gaining our mojo back. By the final we were relaxed and confident. We demolished Japan in one of the most epic finals ever. Nobody talked about how poorly we played in the beginning, only about howunbelievable thatWorld Cupwas. The moral is a journey can change in a flip of a switch. It did for us. It was special, and despite the pressure, we succeeded.