Hope Solo

We are excited to share one of our favorite stories from espnW here on FitSugar!

By Kate Fagan

What to do about Hope Solo?

That's a question nobody is asking yet — not publicly, anyway.

On Jan. 1, Tom Sermanni takes over as coach of the US women's national soccer team, a change that ensures that fresh eyes are about to evaluate every player on the roster, including the one who currently starts at goalkeeper: Solo.

To some people, this coaching change feels like switching the hood ornament on a luxury vehicle. The engine remains the same, doesn't it? We're talking about a team with significant momentum, only a few months removed from winning Olympic gold in London. The squad, which features several marketable women, is in the middle of a Fan Tribute Tour. For the next month, everything is smiles, high fives and no-pressure matches. This is the happy-go-lucky portion of the team's schedule, as "Fan Tribute Tour" is synonymous, of course, with "victory tour."

Hope Solo: 'I'm happy in my life'

But we are still two-and-a-half years removed from the team's next marquee event: the 2015 Women's World Cup. And anyone who thinks Sermanni won't be building his own engine, to match his brand of soccer, is kidding herself. Just as Pia Sundhage, the team's former coach, put her own stamp on things when she took over in 2007, Sermanni will have a new take on the roster, on what works and what doesn't, on who fits and who doesn't.

More specifically, he will need to decide whether Solo, who will be 34 years old in the summer of 2015, is still worth the occasional PR headache or if she's a case of diminished returns.

Keep reading for more.

We are pumped to share one of our fave stories from espnW here on FitSugar!

By Jim Caple

While Hope Solo blocked shots during Tuesday's U.S. women's soccer team training session for an upcoming game against Ireland, 11-year-old Natalie Sacker stood near the goal at Jeld-Wen Field wearing a black Solo jersey with a cardboard sign at her side that read, "FC Salmon Creek Loves Hope Solo."

Alex Morgan's medal

In other words, Sacker is a big Solo fan. She has a 6-by-9-foot Fathead poster of the goalkeeper on her bedroom wall in her family's Vancouver, Wash., home. A goalkeeper too, Sacker also writes notes reminding herself to do things Solo does as a player.

So how did this girl respond two weeks ago when she read the bizarre story that her favorite player had married Jerramy Stevens just one day after the former football player had been arrested on suspicion of fourth-degree domestic violence?

Natalie simply told her mother, "I hope the marriage works out, and she is still a great soccer player."

"I think coming from someone that young, that's very wise," Stephanie Sacker said of her daughter's comments. "Not everything in your personal life is worth copying, but that certainly doesn't take away from you as an athlete and a role model in the sport. I thought that was very mature of her to recognize that. ... "You hope for the best and hope there is more to the story that maybe isn't quite as dramatic as it seems."

Read on for more.

We are excited to share one of our fave stories from espnW here on FitSugar! This week, espnW shares an excerpt from soccer star Hope Solo's new memoir, published earlier this week.

By Hope Solo

A hot-button topic the first week of the Olympics was Hope Solo's reaction on social media to Brandi Chastain's analysis of the match between the U.S. and Colombia. Solo writes about the experience in the epilogue of her new book, SOLO: A Memoir of Hope. Here is what ensued in the aftermath of Solo's tweets:

We knew France was good. But we knew we were better. Alex Morgan, with her lightning speed, kept getting behind France's defense. She got her second goal late in the game on a tap-in. We won 4 to 2, beating the best team in our preliminary group.

I was kind of pissed after the game when coach Pia Sundhage told reporters that the sun had been in my eyes on the first goal. Sure, there was glare. But I would never use the conditions as an excuse.

Solo Talks Gold Medal, Chastain Controversy

More annoying was the feedback I heard from home and from fans on Twitter about the way the game was being broadcast on television. NBC had hired Brandi Chastain to do the color commentary on our games. She had been relentlessly negative during our qualifying matches, nitpicking little details and criticizing Pia's strategy. I had tweeted back in January, "Hey brandi did you find anything positive in our game? Curious minds over here ..."

I'm not looking for a cheerleader — far from it. We're all soccer junkies, and we hear a lot of expert commentary while we travel the world. I want the best of the best for our games, and I just don't feel that Brandi is very good at articulating the game. I love that ESPN added Ian Darke to their team for our World Cup, and I like Arlo White on NBC, but I feel that our networks too often take the easy way out: "Oh, let's hire Brandi. She's a world champion who took off her shirt, and people know her name. It doesn't really matter if she's a good analyst or not."

Read on for more.

Planks are great for working your core, but it's important to challenge your center while upright too. Standing core work is functional fitness that more closely mimics moves we do everyday. While we all might not kick a soccer ball halfway down the field on a daily basis like USA goal keeper Hope Solo (pictured here); everyday we do many things standing that require our abs and back to work in tandem, making it essential to move off the ground to train our cores. Plus standing core work means you can't use the old "the floor is too dirty" excuse to skip working your middle, and it's always good to excuse-proof your workout.

My Equinox trainer has been introducing me to a variety of ways to target my core while upright, and I am feeling the benefits on long runs and when lifting my very heavy carry-on luggage into the overhead bin. One of trainer Lauren's tricks is to perform a basic exercise on just one leg. No doubt about it, balancing on one leg is less stable than standing on two. Your core needs to kick in so you don't topple over, and if you actively engage it (meaning you consciously stabilize your torso by pulling your deep abs toward your spine), everything feels just a little bit easier. Try just doing your basic bicep curl to an overhead press with only one foot on the floor, and you will feel what I mean. Single-leg squats and single-leg dead lifts are so much easier (read: stable) when you consciously work your abs.

Keep on reading for more core moves.

"They go and make this padded goal-keeper jersey and it's hot pink — it just looks girly, it looks juvenile, it doesn't look professional. And so I said, 'There's no way in hell I'm wearing this.'"

— Hope Solo, goalie for the St. Louis Athletica, quoted in The Atlantic magazine's September issue about her reaction to the uniforms Puma designed for the league's seven teams. Both beloved and reviled for her cocky ways, Solo, considered by some to be the best goalkeeper in the world, is getting endorsement deals from VitaminWater and Nike. The self-described "loudmouth goalkeeper" is shown here in Beijing after winning the Women's Football Gold Medal match between Brazil and the US in August. Many were not amused by her victory dance around the field wearing a fake gold medal dangling from her neck.