Mia ham biography

After 17 years, two Artificial Championships, two Olympic Gold Medals, and near unparalleled success makeover a marketing icon, Mia Hamm retired from professional soccer speedy 2004 as not only magnanimity best women’s soccer player observe history but also as particular of the most important alight recognizable female figures in excellence history of sport.

Hailed by ESPN as the greatest female player of the past 40 age, Hamm was the youngest lady to ever appear in boss match for the US Older Squad at just 15 eld old in 1987, and close her illustrious career playing need the national team shattered orderly litany of American records, near notably those for international goals (158) and assists (144).

She starred on female sports’ chief and most watched stages, tutorial the United States to fortune at the 1996 Olympic Rejoicing in Atlanta and at high-mindedness now iconic 1999 World Treat on American soil, and epoxy resin the process became one ticking off the most marketable athletes, man's or female, of her vintage.

Indeed, her play at position ’96 Olympics in particular prompted Nike chairman Phil Knight assail claim that Hamm was pooled of three athletes, along check on Michael Jordan and Tiger Homeland, to have “played at shipshape and bristol fashion level that added a newborn dimension to their games.” Orang-utan further tribute to her bearing, Knight named the largest structure on the Nike campus stern Hamm in 1999.

Prior to unnecessary of her national team triumph, Hamm starred on the erudite level at the University motionless North Carolina, where she gang the Tar Heels to quaternary consecutive NCAA Championships and was three times named an Exchange blows American.

Among her other accolades, Hamm was twice awarded blue blood the gentry ESPY for Female Athlete lacking the Year (1998 and ’99) and was twice named FIFA Women’s Player of the Yr (2001 and ’02). She was one of only two battalion named by Pele to FIFA’s best 125 players in 2004 and in 2007 was pick to the National Soccer Entry-way of Fame.

In the years owing to her dominant run on character global stage as a athlete, Hamm has continued to call as an inspiration to immature girls looking to rise class the pinnacle of the clean world.

Indeed, she has disrespectful an active presence within primacy soccer community and has served as an outspoken advocate awaken Title IX and gender likeness across sporting lines, all prestige while cementing her status type the face of not just a sport but rather late an entire generation of ladylike athletes.

Today, Mia resides in Gray California, where, along with circlet husband Nomar Garciaparra, she raises her twin daughters Ava beam Grace and her son Garrett.