April Heinrichs captained the US Women's National Team to win the first ever FIFA Women's World Cup in 1991, and in 1998 became the first ever female player inducted into the National Soccer Hall of Fame. She went on to be the head coach of the USWNT and led the team to a silver medal at the 2000 Olympics, 3rd place in the 2003 FIFA World Cup, and a gold medal at the 2004 Olympics. Here, she sits down with SportsEdTV for an interview about her life, story, and learnings.
SportsEdTV: The women's US national team was formed in 1985. To give some context of how recent that is, the men's team was formed exactly 100 years before that in 1885. This means that when you were growing up, there was no women's national team. As a kid, did you feel that there was a gap there, that there was a lack of either a future in the sport or role models to look up to?
April: You know, I don't think I was even aware that there was a men's team. The USA men's team wasn't like the German men's national team, where they're being highlighted every couple of weeks on their national television channels. So I don't think we felt the absence. At the time the idea of having women's soccer on TV was not common, so we weren’t really made aware of that difference, and I wasn’t caught up in thoughts of playing professionally at that age either. I was just playing and enjoying it.
April Heinrichs would go on to captain the US Women's National Team
