It’s been a heady few weeks for Cincinnati’s Rose Lavelle, the U.S. Women’s soccer player who scored three pivotal goals on the team’s journey to a World Cup tournament win.
She scored one of just two goals against the Netherlands to seal the U.S. victory. She received the bronze ball, an award signifying she was one of the three best players in the Cup. She leads off a feature about the team’s victory in The New York Times and has been the subject of roughly 1 trillion fawning tweets.
The triumph represents a dizzying pinnacle for the 24-year-old.
Fifteen years ago, Lavelle was 9 years old and raptly watching the victorious 2004 U.S. women’s Olympic team play an exhibition match at Paul Brown Stadium. Soon, she was dressing like Mia Hamm, the star of the 1999 U.S. team that won the World Cup, for a school project at Cincinnati’s St. Vincent Ferrer Catholic School.
It wasn’t a phase.
Lavelle played in the Cincinnati United Premier League, graduated from Mount Notre Dame High School and went to the University of Wisconsin. Four years ago, she was playing in a summer league for the Seattle Sounders. While there, U.S. Women’s soccer coach Jill Ellis asked her to the team’s camp. She didn’t make the team in time for the Olympics, but showed promise. Then, in 2017, she suffered a hamstring injury that sidelined her for an entire year. Lavelle persevered and, with the aid of her virtuosic ball-handling abilities and quickness, scored the final goal of the second World Cup victory in a row for the U.S. Women’s team.
It would be an understatement to say people — both in Cincinnati and around the world — have taken notice. Lavelle has received congratulations from Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown and a host of other elected officials. A local sports reporter nominated her for a true Cincinnati tribute — a statue and Skyline Chili for life — and another journalist has suggested an even higher honor: leading the chicken dance at Oktoberfest.
And of course, there has been an avalanche of national plaudits, as well as eager looks to the future. Lavelle is an up-and-coming star on a team of seasoned veterans, many of whom are expected to move on soon. It will be an exciting four years both on and off the pitch as the women’s team seeks to continue its dazzling play even as it fights for pay equity in relation to the much more highly-compensated, but less successful, U.S. Men’s team.
“Megan Rapinoe Owned This World Cup,” a Slate headline trumpeted about Lavelle’s star teammate, who dominated the tournament and scored the other goal in the U.S. win over the Netherlands. “Rose Lavelle Will Own the Next Four Years.”
This article appears in Jul 3-10, 2019.
