CNN/SI - SI for Women - Dear Diary: A Welcome Timeout - Monday September 13, 1999 04:12 PM

A Welcome Timeout

By Michelle Akers

The ever-tough Akers missed overtime but made it back to get her medal. Peter Read Miller
Want to know a secret? Brandi wasn't the only player who lost her shirt when we won the World Cup. I lost mine too: Team doctors had to cut it off me after I got knocked out late in the game and staggered off the field. All I remember was lying in the fetal position in a Rose Bowl exam room while they snipped off my jersey and attached me to two IV's, an oxygen mask and an EKG machine.

I'll never know how I made it to the podium for the trophy presentation, but I'm glad I did. Standing there with the team was such an intense moment, and so was the scene afterward when I wobbled off the stage and the crowd started chanting, "Akers! Akers! Akers!" I was blown away! To be acknowledged like that was one of the most incredible gifts of my career.

Since then, everyone has been asking me why I didn't join the team for its coast-to-coast publicity tour. The answer is simple: Because I suffer from chronic fatigue syndrome, I was so physically spent that there was no way I could have handled the demands of such a trip. Think about it. In little more than a week the team went from a Disneyland parade to the New York City talk shows to a White House visit to a space shuttle launch in Florida.

Know what I did? The day after the final, while the team was at Disneyland, I relaxed on the beach in Santa Monica [Calif.] with my friend, and former national teamer, Amanda Cromwell. I was dead tired, so I took a catnap, then waded into the Pacific. All the pain and pressure from the previous month -- from the previous five years, really -- dissolved in the cool salt water. Later we ate at a Mexican restaurant, where I sat in a corner and tried to hide. No chance! Fans kept coming up to offer congratulations. I must have signed at least a dozen dollar bills. (I know that's a federal offense, but I hope the cops don't come after me.)

The next day I flew to Seattle, where my parents live, and a horde of media was waiting for me. For a solid week I got up at 4 a.m. to do interviews. Then I'd spend the day working at the Northwest Soccer Camp on Whidbey Island, where I had attended camps as a kid. All the while, offers rolled in: book proposals, movie deals, speaking engagements, endorsements. One of my biggest tasks will be to decide which ones I have the energy, and the desire, to do. Already I've had a conference call with my "advisory board" -- my agent, my personal assistant and the director of my foundation, Soccer Outreach International -- and we've hired two new assistants to handle the crush.

Of course, as a 33-year-old who has endured CFS and a dozen knee surgeries, I need to decide whether to retire from the sport that has given me so much. I'll make up my mind after I join the team for our indoor barnstorming tour of the U.S., in October. Part of me says it's logical to play through next year's Olympics, that I can gut it out for one more year. But another part of me knows how much I have to sacrifice -- from relationships to my foundation to all the other things I want to do with my life off the field. I need to be convinced this is the path God wants me to take; if I have any doubts, I'll be happy to retire.

Either way, I'll be forever proud of what we accomplished this summer. We've worked so hard to achieve recognition and respect over the past decade. Now we have both. Looking back on all that's happened in 1999, there's only one thing missing from my World Cup experience: the jersey I wore in the final. I still don't know what happened to it! If you come across a tattered, bloodstained, grass-graffitied number 10 shirt, please give me a call.

Also: Brandi Chastain