Lilly, Matriarch of U.S. Team, Refuses to Fade to Gray

June 21, 2007

By JERÉ LONGMAN

CLEVELAND, June 15 — The other day, a visitor suggested to Kristine Lilly that she might have a pair of jeans older than some of her teammates on the United States women’s soccer team.

She laughed. “It’s true,” she said.

Mia Hamm, Julie Foudy and Brandi Chastain have all retired from soccer — and uninterrupted sleep — to begin postponed careers as mothers, commentators and America’s icons. With another World Cup approaching, in China in September, the national team is now captained by Lilly, who is a month short of 36 in chronological years but seemingly ageless in soccer years.

Once, Lilly talked to Hamm and Foudy and Chastain about changing points of attack. Now they talk about changing diapers. Occasionally, they say to her, or she says to herself, “Why are you still doing this?”

Why keep playing on the national team after two decades?

Is there anything left to accomplish after two World Cup titles and two Olympic gold medals?

How can you keep up with these youngsters? (Lilly joined the national team in 1987; Stephanie Lopez, a starting defender, was born in 1986).

To all the questions, Lilly offers this answer: “I still love it. I feel like I’m contributing. If I’m not doing what I know I can do and should do, I’ll be done. But I’m having an impact.”

[Saturday, when the United States plays an exhibition against Brazil at Giants Stadium in East Rutherford, N.J., Lilly is expected to make her 327th international appearance, unsurpassed by any man or woman. Only Hamm, with 158 international goals, has scored more than Lilly’s 122.]

When she began, the American women ate candy bars on the road in China and stayed in a Haitian hotel with no running water. Now Lilly forges on toward her fifth World Cup with a pioneer’s spirit and demand for excellence, even as her teammates jokingly call her Grandma, if not often to her face.

“I’ve never met anyone who had the mentality to train as consistently and to show up every day and be good,” defender Kate Markgraf, who will play in her third World Cup, said of Lilly.

For years, when the weather was too foul, she trained by running up and down the stairs at her father’s home in Wilton, Conn. Finally, she bought him a treadmill for Christmas. Recently, Lilly drew chalk lines in her brother’s driveway in Trumbull, Conn., and got in an aerobic workout, running “suicides” with two young nephews.

“I never get unfit; that’s one of the things I’ve learned,” Lilly said.

In her doddering old age, as she accedes to ice packs on her back after training, Lilly has also come to learn that rest is as important as hard work in maintaining her stamina. And is there anyone who seems to glide so effortlessly through a game, always appearing to be in the right place at the right time?

While Chastain got all the attention for twirling her jersey above her head like a lasso after the winning penalty kick in the 1999 Women’s World Cup, there would have been no dramatic, victorious ending against China without Lilly’s fundamental perfection.

In overtime, with 90,000 on hand at the Rose Bowl and 40 million Americans watching on television, Lilly lined up at the near post, followed the indolent trajectory of a corner kick and rebuffed a Chinese shot with her head. That kept the score tied at 0-0, as Foudy screamed silently and fearfully to herself, “Noooo, this is our World Cup and it’s over.”

Lilly jumped slightly at the goal line and a photograph caught her in clinched levitation — eyes closed, arms outstretched, neck braced, the cords in her throat as thick and raised as fingers, the muscular apostrophe of her quadriceps, mouth slightly open, shoulders squared, wisps of blonde hair like solar flares, the No. 13 riding up on her jersey, gravity unbound.

Excellence is making a habit of the mundane, Hamm noted at the time, saying: “So many people don’t, because they don’t think it’s important. Kristine does the mundane.”

Lilly remembers the save now as she did then, “There was no time to think.”

In 2003, when the Women’s World Cup was moved from China to the United States after the SARS epidemic, the Americans could not conjure the same magic, falling to eventual-champion Germany in the semifinals and finishing third. There is a new coach, Greg Ryan, and many new players. And it is Lilly who now leads them.

It is not her nature to be out front or outspoken. But it is her job to be captain and she has done it with her usual alacrity. Since Ryan took over in March 2005, the United States has lost only once in 41 games — posting a record of 34-1-6 and re-establishing itself as the top international women’s team. (The team lost in penalty kicks to Germany in the 2006 Algarve Cup, but counts it officially as a draw.)

Lilly, with a knack for decisive goals, has shifted from midfield to forward in a 4-3-3 alignment, where she can avoid ceaseless running and partner with the brawny presence of Abby Wambach.

“I don’t think she’s lost a step,” Markgraf said of Lilly. “She’s pulling out moves I’ve never seen before.”

During a World Cup qualifying match against Canada, Markgraf recalled, Lilly headed or chested a ball out of the air and, before it hit the ground, back-heeled it to one side of her defender while she ran around the other side.

“She doesn’t beat you by outsprinting you,” Markgraf said. “She beats you one on one with her first two or three steps. She’s better than everyone in the world in those first five yards. If a defender stands up a little, or takes a breath, she’ll shoot right past you.”

With Lilly as captain, the atmosphere is less intimidating than in the past, several younger players said. While Hamm, Foudy and Chastain were revered, “They tested you as a player and pushed you to see if you were ready to play on the best team in the world,” forward Heather O’Reilly, 22, said.

She added: “There was a huge age gap. They were very nice people, but they were a group of untouchables. For young players, it could be intimidating. I think Kristine takes us under her wing and leaves that stuff on the field.”

Inevitably, questions of longevity come up. How long will Lilly keep playing? Will she stick around for the 2008 Olympics in Beijing? It depends, she said. She is married and wants to start a family, having met a Boston fireman in 2004 and having uttered one of the immortal pickup lines, “If we win an Olympic gold medal, I’ll bring it by and show you.”

As Lilly’s husband is learning the game — he used to ask such questions as, “Did you use the 5-5-2 formation?” to which she replied patiently, “Honey, that’s too many players” — she may be nearing the end. But not yet.

“There’s always a different satisfaction — ’91 was the first World Cup; ’96 was the first Olympics; ’99, what happened in society,” Lilly said. “This is a different team. I want people to recognize these players. They’re great.”