Soccer | Solo closes rift, returns to U.S. team

Last September, Hope Solo was reaping the fruits of her hard work.

She was the starting goalie on the U.S. women's soccer team. She was at the World Cup in China, honoring the memory of her father, Jeffrey, her first coach, who had died a few months before of heart failure. Before each World Cup game, she spread some of his ashes in front of the goal she was defending.

And she was on fire. The favored U.S. was heading into its semifinal match against Brazil on the strength of three consecutive Solo shutouts.

Then her world was dumped upside down.

Her coach, Greg Ryan, decided to switch keepers, benching Solo in favor of 36-year-old veteran Briana Scurry, who hadn't played a full game in three months and looked rusty. The U.S. lost that game, 4-0, and Solo lost her team.

After that game, Solo frankly and angrily said of her benching, "It was the wrong decision and I think anybody that knows anything about the game knows that."

She said there was no doubt in her mind she would have made the saves that Scurry didn't.

Her honesty cost her dearly.

Solo spent the last few days in exile in China, practically under house arrest, as her coach banned her from practice and the game. She also was not allowed to eat with her teammates, who, for the most part, treated her as if she were a pariah.

After the World Cup, it would have been easy for Solo, 26, to disappear. She could have stayed in her Kirkland home and given up her Olympic dreams.

Instead she patiently went through the grieving process. She accepted an invitation to rejoin the team for a post-World Cup tour she hoped would be the first step toward mending her broken relationships.

She apologized to Scurry and Ryan but didn't play in the three-game tour. The apology was only lukewarmly accepted and Solo said she felt like a sorority sister about to be blackballed.

What has happened subsequently is a tribute to her guts and her talent.

Ryan was fired and replaced by Pia Sundhage. Solo returned to camp, made another trip with the team and played. The ice slowly melted.

"She has given me so much confidence in being myself off the field," Solo said of her new coach in a recent e-mail. "Embracing every personality, like or different, is what really allows a team to be a team. Allowing me to be myself off the field helps make me comfortable on the field."

Now Solo is returning to China for the Olympics, the goalkeeper again for the U.S. And she never has been more important to the team.

In the final tuneup game before the Olympics, scoring machine Abby Wambach broke a leg and will miss the Games.

Without Wambach, the degree of difficulty for the United States, which has lost only one game in three Olympics, has increased dramatically. Brazil and Germany appear to be as strong as the U.S.

But through her personal purgatory, through the slow return to the team, through the exhibition matches, Solo is holding form.

"It was a tough time, extremely tough," she said. "I had many people standing in my corner that helped me stay true to myself."

A year ago, when she would spend long hours alone in her home, she didn't know if she would get another chance. At times she wasn't even sure she wanted it.

Now she is back and China looms again.