There's a scene in the second act of Hamilton where George Washington decides to give it all up, to step away. Power is there for the taking, or the retaking in this case, but Washington decides to pass it on. He reveals that his legacy will be defined not by what he did when he was in charge, but by how he empowered those who came after him.
"If I say goodbye, the nation learns to move on," Washington says in the song 'One Last Time'. "It outlives me when I’m gone."
Mia Hamm remembers when she first saw that scene. A theater buff, Hamm has seen plenty of plays and projects over the years, but she points to that one specific scene as the one that really hit home. Two decades since she retired, there's still so much talk about her legacy, but,if she can boil all of her thoughts on it down to one moment, it's one featuring a fictional conversation between two founding fathers.
"In Hamilton," she begins, "there's the whole part where George Washington steps aside. He's like, 'democracy has to be able to live without me for it to be true'. That's the way I feel about the game."
Hamm is no American president, but she is an American hero. She's the player that's credited with taking women's soccer to a new stratosphere, introducing an entire generation of boys and girls to the game she loves most. Hamm and the 99ers began a revolution, too, one that has outlasted all of them and continues on to this very day.
It's now been 20 years since Hamm's active part in that revolution ended. It's been two decades since she last kicked a ball with the U.S. women's national team. When her playing career came to a close, Hamm took her step back and handed the baton off to future generations, who have continued to run faster and further than even she could have imagined.
And that's why that Hamilton scene really stuck with her. She built something, led something, revolutionized something, but that specific moment in that play really put the 'why' into perspective. When Hamm thinks about her own legacy, she doesn't necessarily sit and think about the on-field accolades, the World Cups, the goals, the advertisements, the moments. Instead, she thinks about all that has grown because of those things, of everything that this sport was able to do without her since she stepped off the field for that last time.
"I was never the game," Hamm says. "Michelle Akers was never the game. We were a part of it and we wanted to make it so much better while we were there, not for each other, but for future generations. The game is always bigger than any one player and it always will be. You just try to enhance the experience and the love for the people that play and the people that get to watch and, hopefully, inspire the next generation to be better and have more opportunities."
GOAL sat down with Hamm to discuss her legacy, the growth of the game and how she goes about watching the USWNT...
