CHICAGO — U.S. women’s national team midfielder Megan Rapinoe said her off-field accomplishments will have a deeper impact “by a mile” than what she achieved on the field.
Rapinoe, 38, will play her final game for the USWNT on Sunday in a friendly against South Africa at Soldier Field. She will finish with 203 international appearances and at least 63 goals for the U.S. In that time, she has been part of two World Cup-winning teams — in 2015 and 2019 — as well as one that claimed the gold medal at the 2012 Summer Olympics.
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But Rapinoe has also been a staunch advocate of LGBTQIA+ rights and racial equality. And she was at the forefront of the ultimately successful push to achieve equal pay with the team’s U.S. male counterparts at the international level.
“I think, yeah, by and a mile, what we’ve done off of the field, I think that has made such a lasting impact,” she said during her final prematch news conference for the USWNT on Saturday.
“I was actually talking to Becky [Sauerbrunn] on the bus today, and just to think of obviously where the program has grown and where the federation has grown and where we pushed the federation to grow the sport in general.”
She added: “I think we’ve been a big part of pushing, talking about whether it’s gay rights or racial justice or trans rights, more into every conversation around sports, in particular around women’s sports. We’ve been such a driver of that and have made that just as important as what we are doing on the field. I think we really believe it is just as important.”
