Mia Hamm Provides A Connection -- Olympic Soccer Star Carries Banner Of Women's Sports

SAN JOSE - Mia Hamm's hands are small and delicate. One slender gold wedding band encircles her left ring finger. She holds her hands gently clasped as she speaks.

They don't look like a laborer's hands, but they are. For the past few years they have been hoisting a heavy banner, carrying it back and forth across this country, hauling it over to Sweden and down to Atlanta and onto David Letterman's stage and to a People Magazine photo shoot.

The banner is women's sports and Hamm, 25, knows she is one of its primary caretakers. She set it down temporarily to be at her brother's bedside this spring, but after his death, she returned to her charge, spreading the word.

"We need the momentum to continue," Hamm said last week. "We need people to see the players, identify with them, get a connection with them."

Hamm is providing a connection. The linchpin of the U.S. Olympic team that won a gold medal last summer, she is widely considered the best female soccer player in the world. She is the best player in the team sport that more little girls play than any other.

Her popularity is obvious. She was in the Bay Area last week with the rest of the U.S. national team, and Tuesday, Hamm took her message to Niketown in San Francisco where a huge photo of her chasing down a ball greets visitors on the escalator. She took it across the street to a soccer clinic for young girls in Union Square. Wednesday she brought it to Spartan Stadium for an open practice and another clinic, and Friday night, while she played an exhibition game against England, her banner was waving.

This evangelism isn't just about soccer or the hopes of a professional league. It's about recognition, about the future, about little girls' pride.

"Soccer has given me so much confidence," she confides at the clinic to a group of wide-eyed 11-year-olds, girls who studies show will have their self-image threatened in the coming years of adolescence.

Other faces staring down from the walls of Niketown may shun the job of "role model," but not Hamm. And even though she is a shy person at heart, she doesn't flinch at her newfound celebrity. She is a shampoo seller, seen nationally in a commercial that is remarkable for the fact that it doesn't put her in a soccer context. She was on the Letterman show after the Olympics and found a fear she has never faced in a penalty kick situation.

"I was petrified," she said, though she didn't look it, kicking balls at the goofy host.

This week she is in People Magazine, named one of "the 50 most beautiful people in the world." In the story, she says she has taken an interest in lipstick. She was the only female athlete selected.

"It was a great honor," she said. "And it was great publicity for women's soccer."

That's what it's all about - getting out the message: that women are strong, that women play sports. Hamm did the narration to Nike's "There's a girl being born in America" campaign that aired last summer. She didn't write the words, but she understands the concept. She was born in 1972, the year Title IX was adopted. She left ballet class in tears when she was 6. She wanted to play soccer, like her big brother Garrett.

"He got us all involved," Hamm said.

Garrett had been sick in recent years. But he was in Athens, Ga., last summer, along with the rest of the family. He saw his sister make history, playing in the gold medal game on a badly sprained ankle before the biggest crowd to ever see a women's sporting event.

Garrett wasn't producing healthy red blood cells and had a bone marrow transplant on Valentine's Day. The family had so much hope; he seemed to be recovering well. But he contracted a fungal infection from the transplant and his immune system was so weakened he was unable to fight it off. He died last month in South Carolina at 28.

Hamm missed the first two matches of the team's tour but returned to play against South Korea, scoring 49 seconds into the match and again 17 minutes later.

Unlike many of her teammates who have jobs, she has been training full time in Pensacola, Fla., where she lives with her husband, Christian Corry, who is in flight school for the U.S. Marine Corps. She tries to find people to work out with, but often it's just her and a ball.

"It's frustrating," she said. "When I rejoin the national team, I have a lot of nervousness and anxiety. By the time I feel comfortable, it's over, and I go back and try to figure out how to maintain what I just reached."

She feels an urgency for a professional league. No one knows what the competitive window is for a female soccer player, because no one has ever tested the limits, except in some leagues in Northern Europe.

"We run the risk of losing our veteran players who don't have a chance to train and play on a competitive level," she said. "We rely solely on the national team."

There will be another match against England soon in Portland, Ore. The team will play in the U.S. Women's Cup in early June and in an early August tournament, but the future is uncertain. Hamm's husband will be transferred in six months to North Carolina, Japan or Southern California. She has considered playing in Europe. She's not sure what lies ahead.

"I know I want to play as long as I can," she said.

And she will continue to carry her banner. Everywhere she goes.