Retiring star Megan Rapinoe was honored by membership staff OL Reign on Friday evening in entrance of a Nationwide Ladies’s Soccer League file crowd of 34,130 followers, lots of whom wore pink wigs in her honor.
Along with her household and fiancé Sue Chicken wanting on, Rapinoe began for the Reign in a scoreless draw towards the Washington Spirit as Lumen Area’s public deal with system performed “Ain’t No Sunshine When She’s Gone” when she took to the sphere along with her teammates.
Rapinoe had already performed her ultimate match with the U.S. national team last month in Chicago, however Friday marked her ultimate regular-season dwelling recreation for the Reign.
A video performed earlier than the match included well-wishes from such luminaries as Abby Wambach, Ken Griffey Jr. and Magic Johnson.
Rapinoe has performed in 114 regular-season video games for the Reign and scored 49 targets. Her membership profession is not fairly over: Subsequent week the Reign wrap up the season on the highway towards the Chicago Purple Stars.
And there is a chance the Reign make the playoffs. With Racing Louisville’s 3-2 victory over the Orlando Pleasure earlier Friday, the Reign moved into sixth place within the standings, simply above the playoff line.
Rapinoe introduced earlier than this summer season’s Ladies’s World Cup in Australia and New Zealand that she was stepping away from the sport after an illustrious profession that included two World Cup titles, an Olympic gold medal and an Olympic bronze.
On the 2019 World Cup in France, Rapinoe scored six targets, including a penalty in the final against the Netherlands. Along with her lavender hair, her victory pose, arms outstretched, turned one of many iconic pictures of the dominant U.S. run.
She claimed the match’s Golden Boot and the Golden Ball for the perfect total participant, and later that 12 months was named the Finest FIFA Ladies’s Participant and won the prestigious Ballon d’Or.
She has been with the Reign since 2013, and is one in all simply 5 gamers league-wide who’ve remained with the identical staff because the NWSL’s launch.
Commissioner Jessica Berman hopes Rapinoe will proceed to play a job within the league.
“It is laborious to place into phrases the influence she’s had on the sport, each on the pitch and off the pitch. She has embodied braveness and bravado in a approach that I do not know many athletes have completed,” Berman stated. “And he or she’s actually embraced her function along with her full genuine self.”
Rapinoe can also be identified for her social justice activism. She led the nationwide staff’s lengthy battle for equal pay with the boys’s nationwide staff, which began with an EEOC grievance again in 2016. It was lastly resolved final 12 months, when both teams reached contracts with U.S. Soccer that paid them equally and split tournament prize money.
Among the many first distinguished athletes to publicly come out, Rapinoe has been outspoken about LGBTQ points, together with transgender rights. She has additionally advocated for racial fairness, and was amongst those that knelt in solidarity with former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick.
Reporting by The Related Press.
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