Hope Solo has been through plenty of highs and lows — both personal and professional — since beginning her U.S. soccer career.
Solo was a goalkeeper for the U.S. Women’s National Soccer Team from 2000 to 2016, winning two Olympic gold medals and a FIFA World Cup title. She was widely considered the best in her field, but her legacy has been tarnished for some fans due to multiple controversies.
Before her contract was officially terminated, Solo was suspended more than once by the U.S. Soccer Federation, most notably in 2016 after the Rio Olympics. When the American athletes were defeated by the Swedish team and knocked out of medal contention, Solo called her opponents “a bunch of cowards.” She was officially axed from the team following her comments.
“For 17 years, I dedicated my life to the U.S. Women’s National Team and did the job of a pro athlete the only way I knew how — with passion, tenacity, an unrelenting commitment to be the best goalkeeper in the world, not just for my country, but to elevate the sport for the next generation of female athletes,” she wrote in a social media statement in August 2016. “In those commitments, I have never wavered. And with so much more to give, I am saddened by the Federation’s decision to terminate my contract.”
Scroll down to look back at Solo’s ups and downs over the years:
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Jerramy Stevens Relationship
The athletes met in college, but when Stevens professed his love for Solo in 2011, she blew him off. “I didn’t know what to say,” she recalled during a 2019 Elle interview. “So I said, ‘F–k you,’ and we didn’t talk for a year.”
The pair tied the knot in November 2012, days after Stevens was arrested and investigated for allegedly assaulting Solo. At the time, a judge determined that there wasn’t enough evidence to charge Stevens. “It was the most triumphant day,” Solo gushed of her wedding in the same interview.
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Career Wins
Solo is a two-time Olympic gold medalist and a two-time CONCACAF Women’s Championship winner. She helped the U.S. national team to a World Cup victory 2015 and was awarded FIFA’s coveted Golden Boot trophy that same year, previously accepting the honor in 2011. Following her retirement from the spot, Solo was announced as one of the 2022 inductees into the National Soccer Hall of Fame.
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Nude Photo Scandal
The former U.S. Soccer Female Athlete of the Year winner was one of many famous women whose private photos were leaked as part of a massive breach in 2014. She broke her silence on the scandal in September of that year, writing via Facebook, “It is extremely sad and unfortunate that the rights of so many women were violated by the unauthorized release of private photographs. This act goes beyond the bounds of human decency and, as such, I stand united with all the women affected and am exploring every option to protect my privacy.”
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Feuding With Maks
The Keeping Score star was paired with Maksim Chmerkovskiy on season 13 of Dancing With the Stars, which aired in 2011. The duo landed in fourth place overall, and Solo later claimed in her 2012 memoir that the ballroom pro got aggressive during rehearsals. “One day, Maks was trying to put me in a certain position and hit my stomach so hard with his open palm that I had a red handprint there for the rest of the day,” she alleged. “He manhandled me in rehearsals from the start, pushing me, whacking my stomach, bending my arms roughly.”
In October 2015, Chmerkovskiy called his former partner a “s–tty person” during an episode of the “Allegedly” podcast. “You can have a s–tty life growing up, but if you’re a bad person, there’s no excuse for that,” he said.
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Slamming the Swedes
After losing the quarterfinals of the Summer Olympics in Rio to the Swedish women, Solo slammed the “cowards” on the opposing team and was subsequently suspended by U.S. Soccer for six months. She defended her “passion, tenacity, an unrelenting commitment to be the best” in a lengthy social media statement in August 2016, writing, “I am saddened by the Federation’s decision to terminate my contract. I could not be the player I am without being the person I am, even when I haven’t made the best choices or said the right things.”
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Fertility Struggles
Two years before welcoming twins Lozen and Vittorio in 2020, Solo suffered a miscarriage. “The doctor said I was hours from dying,” she recalled during a 2019 Elle interview. “They ended up having to remove my fallopian tube.”
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Moving Forward
In May 2019, Solo told AP that she has no regrets about the trajectory of her career — even her lowest moments. “I will tell you that I am really happy where I am in life, that I fulfilled everything that I wanted to fulfill on the field,” she said. “If I would have retired without a World Cup trophy, I think I never would have been able to settle into my new lifestyle. But luckily we won that 2015 World Cup and I was able to win a couple of Golden Gloves, which was a personal goal of mine, and a couple of gold medals. I hold almost every goalkeeping record. I am not sure there is much more that I could have done.”
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DUI Arrest
In March 2022, Us confirmed that the former goalkeeper was arrested in North Carolina on charges of impaired driving (DWI) and resisting arrest. At the time, authorities alleged that Solo’s two children were in the vehicle at the time of her arrest, and she was booked for a third charge of misdemeanor child abuse. She was subsequently released from police custody and addressed the news in a statement.
“For those who have reached out showing love and support, thank you. Our family is strong and surrounded with love,” she wrote via Instagram. “Our kids are strong, intelligent, happy and vibrant, and we are present everyday giving them the best life possible. We will be able to share the facts in due time. … I feel blessed to have this kind of love in my life.”
Solo reflected on the incident during the aforementioned Netflix doc calling it the “worst day” of her life. “There’s no pointing fingers. I made a bad decision, a bad mistake,” she said. “And it’s something that I’m going to have to answer to to my kids later in life. Something I will never live down.”
