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Barely anyone noticed the first time Megan Rapinoe took a seat and then took a stand.
It was protest on a whim: unplanned and virtually unseen. Back on September 2, 2016, the USWNT star was in the crowd to watch women’s basketball: Seattle Storm at Chicago Sky.
When the arena rose for the national anthem, Rapinoe stayed put. She later called it ‘a reflex reaction’ borne out of ‘outrage’ and ‘a desire to show solidarity’ with NFL player Colin Kaepernick, who a day earlier begun to knee in protest at police brutality and racial injustice.
It took a few more days before controversy began to swell. On September 4, Rapinoe’s Seattle Reign played at Chicago Red Stars. She started as a substitute and, this time, she became America’s first white athlete to take a knee.
In 2016, before Seattle Reign vs. Chicago Red Stars, Megan Rapinoe became America’s first white athlete to take a knee
Rapinoe will play her final game for the United States against South Africa on Sunday
She first took the knee while wearing national team colors against Thailand later in September
‘I assumed I’d be little more than an irritant,’ Rapinoe later admitted. ‘In the days after… I realised I had called it wrong.’
Before long, one of the USWNT’s most successful players had become one of sport’s most polarising, significant figures. ‘Hate mail poured into my agent’s office. People called for me to be fired from the team. My social media feeds filled up with abuse,’ she recalled.
Since those three days in Chicago, Rapinoe, now 38, has been accused of bullying teammates and disrespecting her country. She earned a ticking off from US Soccer but has left an indelible mark on her sport and her peers. She boiled the blood of one former president and earned the Medal of Freedom from another.
‘A backbone of this team,’ Alex Morgan called her. ‘Someone who is going to stand up for (something) when it’s not always a popular opinion… she hasn’t had an easy time on the national team, especially in the last five years.’
This week, Rapinoe returns for another September Sunday in Chicago. To face South Africa, to make one final appearance for the United States. To wave goodbye in the place where something changed and everything began to snowball.
The 38-year-old was described as ‘a backbone of this team’ by teammate Alex Morgan (right)
‘When I’d campaigned for LGBTQ rights or pay equity, I (was) warmly received,’ Rapinoe said
By September 2016, Rapinoe had already won the World Cup (2015) and captured Olympic gold (2012). She had been a US international for a decade and already she had built a lasting legacy. Sports had been only one strand of her story for a while – Rapinoe was known to speak her mind and had fought to combat homophobia and to secure equal pay.
But by dropping to one knee, she moved into the firing line and flirted with infamy.
The 38-year-old’s first protest from the bench often gets lost in the fog of what followed. One ex- Reign teammate, who played that day, didn’t remember that Chicago was where it all began.
Not everyone cared at the time, either. Some match reports focus only on the Red Stars’ recovery from 2-0 to snatch a 2-2 tie.
But many people did notice, including the owner of Washington Spirit – Seattle’s next opponents. A few days later, to prevent the game being ‘hijacked’, the team took the ‘extraordinary step’ of playing Star Spangled Banner while the teams were in the locker room – ‘rather than subject our fans and friends to the disrespect we feel such an act would represent.’ Rapinoe’s response? ‘F****** unbelievable’.
Alas, the controversy only intensified again when she took her protest to the international stage. Before the USWNT faced Thailand, the following week, Rapinoe knelt during the anthem for the first time in her country’s colors.
US Soccer released a statement which read: ‘As part of the privilege to represent your country, we have an expectation that our players and coaches will stand and honor our flag while the national anthem is played.’
Rapinoe came under the fire after missing a penalty in the 2023 World Cup and then smiling
Supporters made their feelings known, too. During the USA’s next match, after she knelt once more, Rapinoe was booed. Then captain Carli Lloyd, admitted that Rapinoe’s protests were becoming a distraction. Coach Jill Ellis soon left her out entirely and in 2017, US Soccer formally banned national team players from kneeling during the anthem.
‘I hadn’t been expecting anything like this scale of outrage,’ Rapinoe later admitted. ‘When I’d campaigned for LGBTQ rights or pay equity, I had always been warmly received… there is a particular kind of baffled outrage reserved by white people for other white people they consider to be “betraying” their race and that week I felt the full force of it.’
Neither her exile nor US Soccer’s policy lasted. But the dye had been cast. For the next seven years, Rapinoe has lived at the center of a cultural tug of war. ‘I feel like I’m a walking protest,’ as she once put it.
Few athletes, in any sport, straddle such deep dividing lines. It’s a tale that can be told through two presidents and two teammates.
Hope Solo once claimed she had seen Megan Rapinoe ‘almost bully players into kneeling because she really wants to stand up for something in her particular way.’
Rapinoe triggered a feud with Donald Trump when she said she wouldn’t go the White House
In 2022, Rapinoe became the first soccer player to earn the Presidential Medal of Freedom
But for Beverly Yanez, who played that day in Chicago, what lingers is all the fun and laughter and dancing they would share. ‘If you needed anything, you could call her, she would pick you up and take care of you,’ she tells Mail Sport.
In 2019, Rapinoe led the US to a second-straight World Cup triumphy but became embroiled in war of words with Donald Trump.
At this year’s tournament, when the anthem again became a lightning rod for frustration back home, Rapinoe’s final act was to miss a penalty. And then smile.
‘Many of our players were openly hostile to America – no other country behaved in such a manner, or even close,’ Trump wrote. ‘WOKE EQUALS FAILURE. Nice shot Megan, the USA is going to Hell!!!!’
Only a year earlier, Rapinoe had become the first soccer player to earn the Presidential Medal of Freedom. ‘Megan is a champion for essential American truth that everyone is entitled to be treated with dignity and respect,’ Joe Biden said. On Sunday, back in Chicago, it’s time for the walking protest to say farewell.
