‘This team has gone through a lot’: How the USWNT overcame a year of change to win Olympic gold

PARIS — When the final whistle came, mercifully, Crystal Dunn collapsed forward onto her knees and pounded her fists into the grass. The bench emptied onto the field, the stadium — fans long eager, and waiting, for a fifth Olympic gold medal — erupted. But in that moment, Dunn was alone and thinking of her own journey to this point.

“You think about all the sacrifices you made,” she said. “Yeah, this game is hard but it’s not just this game. It’s everything you went through. It’s the whole tournament, the buildup.”

For Dunn, it’s not just the buildup of the last year after this program went through a historically disastrous early departure from the 2023 World Cup. It’s not just the last three months, when new head coach Emma Hayes was finally installed at the helm of the U.S. women’s national team program. For Dunn, the player who has the longest history with the senior national team, it’s everything she has gone through since 2013. The rosters she made, the rosters she didn’t. The tournaments they won, and more often, the tournaments they didn’t. The highs and lows. The injuries. The comebacks. All of it.

And on Saturday evening in Parc des Princes — sacrifices and buildup behind her, a 1-0 win against Brazil on the scoreboard, 106 minutes under her weary legs — Dunn finally stood atop an Olympic podium, a gold medal across her chest.

As the team waited to be honored, they talked amongst themselves: What should they do when they stand up there? They should do something as a team, right? Not just step up there and stand? The Germans were introduced as bronze medalists. Then the Brazilians with the same treatment for silver. Finally, 12 minutes and much discussion later, the gold medalists were asked to take the podium. The Americans held hands, threw them into the air and took a bow. It wasn’t quite in unison, a subtle and fitting reminder that this is a team and group of players that isn’t necessarily practiced in the act of standing on podiums and accepting medals. They turned and waved to the fans behind them and then back to the front where their names were being read. One by one, the players had the gold medals awarded.

Off to the left, Hayes stood and watched. The field was finally fully shaded from the sun that had scorched it all day and Hayes, in her black suit, couldn’t take her eyes off her team.

Seventy-nine days ago, she named this Olympic roster. Seventy-two days ago she had her first Olympic practice. And now, they were back on the podium, a space that had eluded more experienced, more cohesive, more famous American rosters than the one she had put together. But none of those teams, since 2012, had finished the job like this team.

She raised her fist to her team.

That American women’s soccer being back here is perhaps not a surprise to anyone. But that it was this group, this coach, and most impressively, this fast is nothing short of incredible. In Hayes’ 10th game leading the group, they are Olympic champs once again.

The last time the Americans stood atop the Olympic podium — at the London Games in 2012 — there was no NWSL in the United States. Women’s Professional Soccer, the most recent league in the states, had announced its suspension eight months earlier. The team’s youngest member — 19-year-old Jaedyn Shaw — had just finished kindergarten. Captain Lindsay Horan had just opted to forgo her college career, a rare decision for American women at that point, to sign with Paris Saint Germain. And Hayes, during that Olympic break, had been named the new manager for Chelsea Women.

A year and four days before this team reclaimed Olympic gold, the Americans had their earliest exit in any international tournament ever — a round of 16 loss to Sweden on penalty kicks in the World Cup. After the game, Horan said the team didn’t get the best out of each individual. They weren’t fully prepared, players were tense and “just not enjoying their football or they weren’t enjoying individually playing,” she said on “The RE-CAP Show” last year.

Then Megan Rapinoe retired, as did Julie Ertz. Two rocks of the national team were gone. When Hayes announced her Olympic roster last month, it didn’t include other cornerstones of the team; neither Alex Morgan nor Becky Sauerbrunn made the cut. The group was turning over, and the 18-player roster included just three players — Dunn, Alyssa Naeher and Rose Lavelle — who had previously appeared in a major tournament final. Those three helped lift the U.S. to a 2019 World Cup win.

Amid the major tournament victory drought that followed, they were criticized. They went through three head coaching changes, which led to more criticisms. And when Hayes entered, the players said they began to play with and exude more joy. They have been criticized even for that.

“This team has gone through a lot,” Trinity Rodman said. “Different coaches, losses, just off the field stuff. And to be here right now — such a great group, such a great coach. I’m just in awe of how hard everyone’s worked to get here.”

Rodman, 22, was one of the youngest to be named to this final roster and a part of the three-headed scoring machine along with Sophia Smith and Mallory Swanson — nicknamed “Triple Espresso” — who re-sparked an offensive energy that the USWNT had missed in recent iterations. The trio scored or assisted on 11 of the team’s 12 goals in the Olympics with each taking their turn to star in the knockout rounds.

First, it was Rodman in extra time against Japan in the quarterfinals. Smith was next in extra time against Germany in the semifinals. Finally, it was Swanson in the finals. In the first half, she had a chance and didn’t capitalize, so when the perfect ball came through in the 57th minute she screamed to Smith (who was offsides) to get out of the way. (“It was scary,” Smith joked, “I didn’t see her coming until she shouted”).

Rodman had told herself she wouldn’t cry if they won, and she broke that promise almost immediately. She said she was mostly just so happy for everyone else — for Naeher, who despite her incredible play, often goes overlooked because of her quiet nature; for Swanson, who 18 months ago suffered an injury that kept her out of commission for 11 months, including the World Cup; for Naomi Girma, whose steadiness on the backline has made everyone else look better for the entire journey.

They cried. They cheered. They hugged one another and Hayes. They outran even their own security to bullrush their families in the front row of the stadium.

The American women are champions once again. In journeys both long and short, in struggles both made known and kept hidden, they made it to the top of the Olympic podium.

“I always believe this team can do absolutely anything,” Dunn said. “If we are at our best, if we are clicking, if all things are firing on all cylinders, I truly believe this team can be unstoppable, but it’s not easy. It’s about showing up every day and really believing in the system and believing in the players.”

When they all stood on top of the podium, gold medals in tow, they danced and laughed. Perhaps some did not see them landing here, did not see this kind of turnaround. But they’re here now on a journey that is entirely and uniquely, and joyfully, their own.

(Top photo: Justin Setterfield/Getty Images)