Benefield: Captain’s role perfect fit for Christie Rampone

Christie Rampone went to college on a basketball scholarship.

Rampone, the player with the most appearances in international soccer of any active player in the world, the captain of the United States national team for the past seven years who is a three-time Olympic gold medalist and two-time FIFA Women's World Cup, was a walk-on for the Monmouth University soccer team.

I take that to mean that soccer wasn't her best sport.

The revelations continue.

Rampone, who has made her living as one of the fastest, smartest defenders in the world, didn't start out on defense. She played forward through college, right up until the U.S. national team called her up in 1997. They liked what they saw in the supremely athletic Rampone, but wanted to try something else and promptly switched her positions. And not a minor tweak, mind you. From striker to defender. And she had to learn the new position competing against some of the greatest players ever to suit up for the U.S.

Want to try learning to play defense against Mia Hamm at practice?

'I was a forward my whole life,' Rampone said. 'You never know where you are going to end up. You have to be coachable.'

Rampone, 40, who is still in the middle of the national team's post World Cup win Victory Tour, will be at Sonoma State University tonight in a moderated discussion with a question and answer session. Her talk will cover the high of winning her second World Cup — she was on the squad that won it all in 1999. But she'll also talk leadership, women in sports and motherhood.

And she might talk about what's next for the longest tenured member of the U.S. national team, but on Monday she said she still didn't know.

'The goal is to make it through December and these four games,' she said of the team's Victory Tour. 'I would love to play in the Olympics, but it's a huge commitment. I have to sit down with the family and see if that is doable.'

The family is husband, Chris, and their two daughters, Rylie, 10, and Reece, 5.

There are often discussions of how motherhood fits into the career trajectory. That discussion for a professional athlete must be profoundly different.

'I wasn't quite ready to give up the career, but I was at a point where I might not be able to come back,' she said.

But then, apropos of a world class athlete, one called the 'probably the best captain I have ever seen' by former U.S. National team coach and current head coach of Sweden's national team, Pia Sundhage, Rampone describes her thought process.

'It was a challenge I was up for,' she said.

Regaining fitness after childbirth and in the early stages of motherhood is one thing but navigating rearing a child — and then two — within the itinerant lifestyle of a professional athlete is almost unfathomable.

'We figured out how to work with two children on the road,' she said.

When teammates were taking naps between training sessions, Rampone would find herself at the park running around — some more.

'It was my choice to have children, so I can't complain,' she said.

And she also refused give coaches any reason to leave her off a roster or remove her captain's arm band.

But the arm band has never been given to anyone else. Through two coaches, through myriad roster changes, through her role as starting defender to coming off the bench - Rampone is this team's captain.

And it's a role she didn't relish. Not at first, at least.

'Pia asked me and I said, 'Are you nuts?' ' she said.

That was in 2008.

Rampone considers herself a hard worker and a team player, but to hear her describe it, she's not a barker. She's not leading the rallying cheers in the locker room. Her leadership has a different tone.

'I realized there are different ways to lead,' she said.

'I'm a giver, I'm a team player, I'm a good listener. It's knowing your surroundings and knowing the people you are playing with.'

Motherhood helped that too.

The roster for the World Cup has 23 players. That's 23 of the best players on the planet. And some will get playing time and some won't. Some will be featured on the cover of Sports Illustrated and some won't. Some will play the position they covet and some won't.

The captain's job is to listen, to empathize, but ultimately to get the team moving forward, together, for a united goal.

'Dealing with distractions within the team, it's probably the hardest thing,' she said. 'Not everyone is going to be on the same page.'

And that job remains the same even when Rampone's on the field role changed.

She is the oldest player ever to appear in a Women's World Cup game. She didn't start the final match, but she finished it. And when the winners' trophy was raised after the game, it was Rampone and fellow veteran Abby Wambach who did it, Rampone wearing the captain's arm band for the umpteenth time.

'My role definitely changed in the World Cup but my role as a leader didn't change,' she said, calling the sound of the final whistle 'an amazing moment.'

'It just kind of wrapped it up, for everything I had done,' she said.

Rampone will continue to play for the New Jersey-based Sky Blue squad of the National Women's Soccer League but said she's waiting until December to decide her future with the national team.

There are many questions she needs to ask herself, ask her family. But one question rises above all the rest.

'I have to make sure I'm all in,' she said.

You can reach staff columnist Kerry Benefield at 526-8671 or kerry.benefield@pressdemocrat.com, on Twitter @benefield and on Instagram at kerry.benefield.