To that she added Ambien and caffeine pills. The drugs seem to have begun around then as well, with a series of injuries piling up and getting Wambach a prescription for Vicodin. A team trainer tried to gently address her concerns about Wambach’s attitude, but the drinking continued. Her drinking was already a problem by 2007, when she got into a bar fight in West Hollywood. That mental permission allows her to sink back into bad habits like drinking and overeating, until she gets called out again, like when then-WNT coach April Heinrichs called her unfit, lazy, and uncompetitive as the team began preparing for the 2003 World Cup.īy Wambach’s account, her original vices were food, booze, and tobacco. That becomes a pattern for Wambach: building herself up, doing well for a time, then mentally loosening up, thinking she can coast for a while. She still scored, still garnered accolades, but was called out in her junior year by then-U21 coach Jerry Smith, who called her “unfit” and a “defensive liability” who was only “good at attacking when you’re in a scoring position.” Wambach seemingly took these criticisms to heart, especially with a shot at the WNT youth teams on the line. In high school she got by on raw talent alone but in college, found herself falling behind. Wambach reveals things she’s hinted at previously, like her struggles with fitness. From there she details her rise through soccer, how she needed the sport and hated it at the same time, her first fumbling attempts at dating women, partying heavily in college but performing well enough to get drafted in the Women’s United Soccer Association, and her career with the women’s national team. Wambach traces it all back to her roots, growing up desperate for attention from her parents while competing with a large family of siblings, and rebelling against her strict Catholic upbringing.

It’s a fairly quick read, just a couple of hours, but in that couple of hours she manages to paint an intense picture of a high-performing athlete filled with such self-loathing that she swung from basking in praise for her athletic accomplishments to self-medicating with vodka and prescription pills to numb the doubts. Abby Wambach released her memoir Forward today.

Forward book abby wambach