[MUSIC PLAYING – “Merci Kylian” by Laurent Dubois]
Ron Krabill: Hello, and welcome to the Global Sport Lab podcast. I’m Ron Krabill, and I’m your host, as well as the Director of the Lab, and a professor of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences at the University of Washington Bothell. Listen to the end for a more detailed description of the Global Sport Lab, but for now let me just say that we’d love to connect with you. You can find us on the web or via email at GlobalSportlab@uw.edu. Today we are incredibly lucky to welcome an absolute legend of the game, the one and only Briana Scurry, ahead of her talk at Town Hall Seattle later this week. There really is no need to introduce Briana, but it’s still fun to do a quick rundown of some of her accomplishments. One of the most talented and influential goalkeepers of all time, 173 international appearances, national soccer hall of famer, two Olympic gold medals, and a World Cup championship. Yes, that final in the Pasadena Rose Bowl in front of 90,000 fans, where her save made possible the U.S. women national team’s most famous victory. As if all that wasn’t enough, Briana also helped found the first paid professional women’s soccer league in the U.S., became one of the first openly gay African American professional athletes, authored a best-selling memoir, “My Greatest Save”, and became a leading advocate for awareness and prevention of traumatic brain injuries following a career-ending concussion. Thanks so much for being with us today.
Briana Scurry: Thanks for having me, guys. I’m fired up. Let’s do it.
Ron: Great. We’re also joined today by my good friend and colleague, Professor Caley Cook, a teaching professor and head of the journalism program in the Communication Department here at the University of Washington, and herself an accomplished goalkeeper. Can you tell us a bit more about yourself? Caley.
Caley Cook: Hi everybody, I’m Caley Cook. I’m a faculty member at the University of Washington Department of Communication, longtime journalist and multimedia producer. I’ve written and produced stories about sports, soccer, mental health, among other things, and I’m a reluctantly retired goalkeeper in middle age now, with multiple concussions. I feel like Briana and I might have some things to talk about, but unlike Briana, my career ended a few years after college, because it turned out I like to write more than I like to hit the ground. I’m so glad that I’m here today. Cannot wait to talk with Briana.
Ron: Great, thanks so much, Caley. I’d like to begin today by letting you know, Briana, that it’s not hyperbole for me to say that you really introduced me to women’s soccer, of which I am now a huge lifelong fan. Go Rain and Go Huskies. As a lifelong soccer player growing up in rural northern Indiana in the 1980s and yes, this will, this will date me a little bit. My high school team had to travel significant distances just to find another men’s soccer team to play. I didn’t know of any women’s teams in my area. All the colleges in my area had women’s field hockey instead of soccer as their field sport. This was, of course, prior to any professional women’s leagues. I tell this story to set the stage a bit because I think it might be hard for younger fans of the sport to even imagine that landscape. Then what an incredible experience it was for me to be at the opening match of the 1999 World Cup in New Jersey and watch the U.S. kick off that tournament in front of just a gargantuan crowd, and what an incredible rush that was. What was it like for you growing up a bit later than me, but still in a time when women’s sports, and in some ways maybe especially women’s soccer, was so far from the limelight?
Briana: Oh my gosh, this is amazing. It was fascinating about what to me, what you just said was the field sport, as if a school could only have one. I think that’s what I thought. I think that my kids would think that. I think your listeners would be like, only had one field sport allowed? It’s kind of fascinating. So that, in of itself, is very interesting, and I guess more I thought about it, when I grew up, and I was born in 1971. I am a little bit younger than you, but not by much. We had a similar situation. I was born and raised originally in Minneapolis, the city proper, and then my family moved to the suburbs when I was about five or six years old. My first foray into sports was tackle football, so I played tackle football pads in the whole nine yards, you know, when I was 10 and 11, absolutely loved it. One of the only girls in the, in the whole league of lightweights, and so just had a fantastic time playing that, and my parents were very open to allowing me more or less to do whatever it is I brought them and asked for. I was very lucky in that regard, by the time I was done playing tackle football after two seasons, I had to replace the sport, and I replaced the football with football. At that point in time soccer was not on anybody’s map, especially not in rural Minnesota. I was on the boys team again, the only girl, and within a couple of years it started to grow. Soccer is an interesting sport in that regard, like once some seeds get planted around, they tend to grow quickly, and before you know it, we had other girls’ teams, and we had leagues, and then we had travel, and all these things, and it really exploded very quickly. When you look back on it, it’s actually a miracle the way it exploded, and how quickly it went from zero girls teams to several, and so we were very lucky, caught that wave, and that helped me go through the ranks, and get on a club team eventually, another year or two later, and then the rest is history, as they say.
Caley: Youth sports have to seem unrecognizable to you at this point.
Briana: Yeah, it’s crazy. I mean, for example, with the youth sport landscape, I have two kids, one just graduated from Duke, and the other one is a freshman at UVA. They’ve also played youth sports, and it was very different for them. It was different options for both the male and the female, different sports that they played. I mean, the cost was astronomical, as you can also imagine, but it just wasn’t the case back then. But now the landscape is so fascinating. Young girls can play just about anything now, and that wasn’t the case back then.
Caley: I don’t know that there’s much that parents would not change at this point. And when you’re a kid growing up and you’re playing youth sports, you don’t really notice it, but when you’re coming from a national team background, looking back in these systems, is there anything that you would change right now? What would be the first thing you go back and shift to make it easier for kids to access what you were able to do?
Briana: I think for me soccer being my vehicle, I’m a big proponent of young girls playing anything, anything that’s positive, and soccer just so happens to be my vehicle, and for me, I would go back and hopefully provide more green space in the urban areas. Because, as you know, today is the same thing, where soccer has two elements to it, an economic element, which is obviously the finances to play in a club soccer, versus rec, which is we’re talking thousands of dollars per season, which is for most families is unattainable. I would change that. And then second thing is geography. The location nowadays you can make mini pitches and whatnot, but it takes tons of money for that kind of thing. If there was any way that I could have introduced the game of soccer to the urban areas back in the day, that’s what I would have chosen to do, because you really, unfortunately, missed out on a ton of talent in our beautiful game because of that.
Ron: That really resonates with me, and we have this really wonderful organization here in the Seattle area called the King County Play Equity Coalition, that’s working a lot on a lot of the issues you’re describing, including finding more green space, field space for a play that’s not necessarily organized by big clubs and that sort of thing, but rather just accessible locally to neighborhoods and that sort of thing. I guess for me that raises the question of is as sports generally, and youth sports as well, is becoming a billion-dollar ecosystem with, you know, financing coming from sort of venture capital and those sorts of things. What concerns you most about where that’s all heading?
Briana: Well, it’s fascinating question, because on one hand, for example, I recently did an event in Atlanta with an organization, which everybody would know, it’s a multi decade old, very well known, organization charity, and they have a partner that is deep pocketed. I wouldn’t say that’s necessarily a venture capital firm, but you know, a very well-known conglomerate that have partnered together to build a mini pitch in a facility in an area that would have none, like zero. When I look at it from that point of view, that that little mini pitch is available to anybody. Anybody can come and play, and so from that point of view I’m thrilled to have the influence of big business in the game, but what, what does that mean? You know what I mean, like, does that mean that the only way that young kids whose families don’t have means or transportation, for that matter, is that the only way that they can play the beautiful game? That they get exposed to it when it’s literally going to be in their backyards for the next, three or four months, and then in 2028 when we have the Olympics here in America, in Los Angeles, and then hopefully 2031 when women’s World Cup is here, it’s like all these, all this soccer is going to be right there for all these kids to see, but that door for them to get, get in there and get a taste for it or feel for it may not be open, so that concerns me quite a bit.
Caley: I was just talking to somebody about this. I’m imagining Briana’s field of dreams fields and these cities. I was just talking to somebody about what are the things that surprise you most about U.S. Sports now, He has an elite boy soccer player, he’s like 15, I think, or something like that. This is all they do, they drive to soccer, they sit at soccer, they think about soccer while they eat, they think about soccer while they sleep, they dream about the reflective meditation, right? For a 15-year-old. Does he play video games? Does he have friends? Does he go bike riding at all? The answer was no, but, I said, what’s most surprising to you? He said it’s the stay to play, which I had never heard about. This is to go play, like you know, when we were growing up, we’d go play surf cup, or we’d go play some tournament in Bethesda, or whatever, to go do that tournament, now the teams have to sign a form that says you are going to stay at this hotel, whether you stay there or not, you pay for it, right? It’s part of the package to go play. They’re adding about $10,000 to $15,000 to each of these teams’ budgets just to go, and he said we had to drop two people to go to this tournament. I’m going to let you guess which kids those were, and they were the two kids of color. I thought exactly that was my response too, I don’t know, I don’t know that there’s a solution here, but I want to know what you think it is. How do we step in now as people who played, who had our chance, who now have a platform? What do we do to change this? Because it can’t stay that way.
Briana: That’s astonishing. First of all I’ve never heard of it state of play. I never heard of that phrase before. And it, it’s frustrating. You’re getting it, you’re getting an authentic feeling from me right now in real time because I’ve never heard that before, and that is very disheartening. There has to be a way to pull it back, because the beautiful game has gone so far that way, that example just even if I didn’t know, I had a sense that stuff like that was still going on, and now it’s literally out of reach,
Caley: And I’m not going to put that on you. There are problems with me doing that, but I think I would also say, this parent was saying it’s got to be on us as parents. It can’t – the kids aren’t going to make that choice. And so, where is this parent education happening? And it’s happening with players like you, saying, ‘I would have never been able to do this if I hadn’t had a chance, or somebody be able to reach out and give me that chance.
Briana: I will say this: it’s frustrating, because I feel like I don’t feel like I’m alone in when I speak about this, and how I don’t like the way it’s going. But I feel like one could say that if it hadn’t gone this way, then the sport’s exposure would not be as visible as it is now. Because of all the money in the game, and all this, but you have all these enormous clubs that were built originally, with good intentions and wholesome, you know, upbringings and goals and achievements, and then you get all these, unfortunately, all these high-level coaches, and the system and the business of the game took over the play part. It became a business, and now this flywheel is spinning and spinning and spinning, and similar to college tuition, it just keeps going up and up and up every year, no matter what. There’s no, it’s almost no stopping it, and I don’t really know what the answer is to pull it back, I mean, unless you were to create a whole different system outside of it, and yet almost literally trojan horse it in. Then have that system start to grow and germinate, and maybe crowd out the other one, but that’s what we’re talking about decades of time, and trust me, I’ve been at this growing the game of football in this country for 30 years, and I am thrilled at where it’s at, but I don’t necessarily like some of the smell.
Caley: New York in the summer.
Briana: I’m fighting to bring notoriety to my game, and now I have the notoriety, and the thing that made that possible was the money. So now you have the money, for example, in Women’s Soccer League fees to have teams when it was the last $205,000,000, and that is literally in a five-year time span from 2 to 3 million to $205 million. That in one hand is like, holy cow, that’s amazing. But what, you know what I mean? Now we’re like?
Caley: Did it come at the expense of something?
Briana: Always.
Ron: Yeah.
Briana: There’s always a price.
Caley: I feel like we’re always talking about the negative stuff, though, too. Let’s just have a moment for that.
Briana: I know, right?
Caley: This is yours and mine, and other people’s blood, sweat, and tears. This is that year in the WSA when we’re like, oh, this is going to work, and oh man, were you pushing just four into four cycles of this before it hit and now look at it. Let’s just have a moment. Yes, awesome, you did that.
Briana: I totally get it. The thing that you were working so hard, I consider league growth like being a farmer, and I have, I feel like I have a lot of in common with farmers. You have there’s a certain amount of time that these things take, and there’s a, there’s a natural method of seed time harvest, and you can’t take them out of order, and you can’t not do one of them. Otherwise, you’re not going to have the fruits of the labor at the end, and so I feel like this has been 30 years of seed time, where’s that harvest at? Can we get to the harvest, please? And now we’re having the harvest, and it’s just going, you know what I mean, it’s going nutsy, but I love, for example, and I know I’m totally getting, you know, going a little nutty here. But for example, or for my fellow teammates, not 99 years in particular, but the Bay FC one of them, Brandi Chastain, you know, Leslie Osborne, Danielle Slaton and Aly Wagner, four founders of Bay FC. When they came into the league two years ago, that price tag for that franchise was $53 million and look what they’ve done. It’s absolutely fantastic, but guess who the partner is? It’s State Street, it’s like major private equity hedge fund financial company is like right there with the four of them. When you look at the image of the four of my beloved teammates and State Street, two things couldn’t be further apart, but yet they came together and they created this amazing thing, and I’m grateful for that, and I know they are, and you have Aly in there, and she was broadcasting men’s soccer at the time, when she, you know, basically talked them into doing this, which was like brilliant, that’s a whole other book, or a podcast, or you know, made for TV movie, or something that should be made about her. What she did, and those guys, and that’s wonderful, and now that franchise is now worth at least $200,000,000. Two years later, which is fantastic, and I love it, and so, like, I struggle with how I feel about it, because I love it, like you said, this is the moment, but on the other hand, there’s a wake, and who’s in that wake, you know what I mean? It’s probably that young kid, young girl, young boy in the Bay Area that is never ever going to even probably be able to afford a ticket to go see that team play. When they should be in that seat every home game.
Ron: Both of those metaphors, I think, of the sort of the harvest blooming and having that long, long wait where everything’s happening underground and you’re not seeing it, and then all of a sudden it blooms in what feels like a very short period of time. It sort of erases all that long period of time that took to do the initial growth to allow that blooming moment, and then that that image of the wake is a really powerful one. I guess it makes me ask the question of how do we connect the success of the professional game, the NWSL, you know, in Europe, you’re also seeing this huge explosion of women’s football with the grassroots, or with the youth, or with the communities around them. How do we build that connective tissue? How do we make those communities, and I would argue they’re still more connected to their communities than lots of men’s professional teams, but still there is that risk as the success continues to grow that connection gets lost. How do we either maintain it, make it, or build it even more strongly than it currently exists?
Briana: I think there’s two things that I want to say to your question. For the part you mentioned about the time fading off or fading away. I’m wearing it. In my mind, my gray hair on my head is that time that, and that all of us put, you know, especially our ‘99ers, which all of us are still fighting the big fight, the good fight. My teammates Cindy Parlow Cone is the president of the federation, for crying out loud. Look what she’s doing – amazing things left to right and center. Here’s what I think, and it just occurred to me. And I think Cindy, thinking about Cindy, what she’s doing is actually the right answer. She’s in there in the presidency now, this is her second term, and she’s partnered with the Blank family, who created Home Depot, founders of Home Depot, and it’s making, and it’s basically opening literally, I think this week or something, this training facility just outside of Atlanta. 200 I think it’s 200 acres, it’s insane. It’s going to be absolutely ridiculous. That is how you do it. So you marry the golden tension of Cindy’s heart, and she’s the perfect person to do this to an international mega company, like Home Depot and the Blank family, and you marry the two together, and you create this thing that has never been created before. That’s how you do it. So, more examples of the intention that’s pure, if you will, connected to the financial piece that has never been into the women’s sports arena before, or is has been, and it has never gone this big before. You create that partnership, and then you make that basically the birth of that thing that those two entities created, you make that be the stage of where all these things can be righted. I think to have something like that in different areas of the of the country where there is some access and different companies coming together and maybe creating, you know, some kind of financial arm of that company or of a partnership that’s sole purpose is to bring access to this game to people who don’t have it. I think that’s how you do it. I thought of something.
Caley: That’s pretty good. That’s pretty on the spot.
Briana: Cindy is inspiring us all left and right center. Still, I mean, talk about a tall job that she’s doing exceptionally well, and I’m not surprised.
Caley: All of us who are fans, yes, are thanking Cindy. Not just for her playing career, right, which was awesome too. Yes, I was just looking it up because you were talking about BFC, yeah, so they’re valued up above $200 million now. Well, right, and I was thinking about this, OL Reign, well anymore, but when it was OL Reign. OL purchased the Reign, right? This was pre-COVID, I think it was 2019 for less than $3 million.
Briana: Yes, same with Spirit at the time.
Caley: How does that happen in that period of time? I just had to follow up on that, because I knew you were talking about that valuation, and I’m sure the Reign is right in there.
Briana: Yeah, the Reign is right in there. That all started with Michelle Kang, when, and 2019. The Spirit came to my wife and I, and asked us if we wanted to be part of the investor group, and they changed ownership right before that, and Steve, who was the owner lead owner at the time, brought my wife and I in, and several other international and national well-known athletes and business people in this. community where we live now in D.C. Including Michelle Kang, who also had a business here, and then she took the team basically over, if you recall, later I think at 2020 right during Covid, and made that valuation go from $2million – $3 million to $35 million so she was the first. The first light, match that was lit there for the ascension, and then after that, now that made every other team at least somewhat close to $20 million, maybe low $20 millions. Even though the Spirit was $35 million and then the league took it from there and made put a pin in that $35 million, and then every team that came in after that, except for the ones that were grandfathered, which I think was Utah and Boston, came in at the lower number. Then every team from then on the in it went, so you had Angel City, you had San Diego, all these new ownerships that wanted to come in, that stair step was built, and now you had Boston Legacy, was recent on in Denver, I think, was at $165 million and then now you have this newer club, Atlanta’s $165 million, also I think, and then the newer club at $205 million. Now every ship has been raised because the waters have risen, and so now you have these valuations, and Bay FC is special. I mean, they’re special, they’re a special team, they’re doing some amazing things there, and so I’m not surprised their valuation is higher times four.
Caley: Well, and I think this – the reason I bring it up – is I think it speaks to a lot of us have a distaste for where we’re at in some ways, right? We want this to be more inclusive, we want this to be accessible, we want this to be something that still reflects the things that built us inside and outside, right? Some things I would send back, like the concussion and everything else. But all of those things, right, that made us, we want that to happen, but I think we kind of have to grin and bear it in working together with people who maybe we didn’t envision being part of this, right? Are we going to have business partners who can grow this, who can keep this reflecting what we love about it? And I’m not sure we’re doing, I don’t know if we’re doing a good enough job doing that. Maybe you see more of that than I do. You’ve been part of this.
Briana: I do see more of that, and I think I think now that you have it’s like I said earlier about the trojan horse. Now that you have these, these amazing companies and people who have a different mindset about the game, they – they’re not charity-minded. They are business-minded, and so now that you, and that was the evolution that happened about three years ago, four years ago, from the charity-minded, which was the first several iterations, like we’re talking about WSA, WPS, NWS sells to some level initially, and then it moved to two more business-minded people. Now you have these business-minded people that are in there, and you have situations and examples that are fantastic, and then you have situations and examples and clubs that need improvement. But the good news is you now have the people who have the money in the positions as owners, and now you can bring that next trojan horse in, which is someone like me that says, Hey, what about this? Let’s try that. Let’s try this. Maybe now you have the platform built, you can add different things onto it that are more community oriented, and then you can create something in that regard, and water that, and seed that in time, and harvest that, and now maybe you can do that. Because before you didn’t have the money, and if you don’t have the money, you really don’t have anything, so now at least you have the money, and you can go back to the older roots and I still think there’s time for that.
Caley: So, what you’re saying is grin and bear the capitalist hellscape, so we can sew.
Briana: Yeah, you can change.
Caley: Enjoy the fruits of our labor.
Briana: Yeah, you can transform it.
Ron: I think it’s such a good reminder that it’s easy to bemoan the changes we don’t like, as if those are inevitable, forever changes. As opposed to the idea that those other roots, those other histories, those other sort of beginnings are still part of the game, still shape the game people still feel those sort of core roots that I think being able to go back to are still there. I think it’s easy to get into a really negative loop where you feel like it’s just never going to be able to recover any of the positives of that piece.
Briana: Oh you totally can. I think that’s somewhat human nature to do that. But I feel like for me, if you were to look at my journey on its face, you would see great achievement, and then you would see literally nearly disastrous events as well. If you looked at it with a clear eye, an objective eye, and you might think, well, this young woman, she’s lucky to even be here, really. But that’s okay, because that’s the arc of most things. When you look, when you take a snapshot of something, whether it’s business or, societal, or whatever. You’ll see that it’s an S shape, it’s not straight up to the right for anything. There’s always going to be an area where, in a time where the whole thing could have broke, but somehow, some way, something came together, and it didn’t, and that all starts from the resilience piece. It really does, because you have to have a vision of something, and maybe the order in which things grow is not necessarily ideal, and maybe you got to grow, you know the big mean nasty part first, so that out of that you can evolve it until something that’s more beautiful and more pure. I think because you can’t do either without money, you got to have the money first, and then you can bring in other things, because you can do stuff in a different way, and in this day and age, in with light speed, really, depending on how you do it, once you have that money piece in place, and I was always someone that said, even from the WSA days, looking at salaries for not the top 11 players on a team, the starters, but everyone else. So, from number 12 to number 20, I mean, the salaries were barely enough to pay your electric bills and your rent and stuff, and it’s like that’s why you have the turnover. You can’t expect someone to stay and play in a league if they can’t pay their electric bill or their car note. That’s the reality of it. And a lot of people don’t want to hear that, but I’ve always been time like, look, here’s the math. If math doesn’t happen, this won’t work. And sure enough, it didn’t, it just went and imploded, basically, because of that. So, I think we’re on the right track now with the WSL.
Ron: It speaks to that, the romanticization of sports that so many people have, that sort of like, oh, you should do it just for the love of the game, and that may be true if you’re playing, sort of, you know, Tuesday night, over 50 league, you know, whatever.
Briana: Ouch.
Caley: I know, Ron.
Ron: Clearly speaking from experience, my own, not yours.
Briana: Let me tell you a story about that, that I know incredibly well. My own career. If you know my story at all, you know that I wasn’t born and raised to a family that had a lot of money. I played club soccer for five years, and if you think about what we were talking about in terms of the fees for club soccer, there is no way at all on earth that my mom and dad were able to afford those fees. I find out later, three years ago, in my book research, that my coach paid for me every single season. He paid, it was a secret between my mom and dad and him that it would never be revealed to me that that was the case, unless years later I asked. The reason I asked, because I was writing my book, I knew, you know what, there’s no way that they had $500 or $1,000 or whatever, gloves and shoes, and all. There’s no way they had the money to pay for any of that stuff. And as it turned out, they didn’t. He did. And so when I found that out, it really changed how I saw certain things in my career. The money did end up being one of the linchpins in my career, because my family did not have it. It came from someplace else, and had it not come from someplace else, we wouldn’t be talking right now. At all. And because of that, that’s why I understand that the way I thought about things with regards to the money piece has to be there, that helped me understand that’s reality. I am as positive a person as you will meet, I mean, I get up in the morning, I am glass half full all day long every day, but I also understand that things cost money, and it’s important to eat, to be able to build and inspire and do some amazing things. It’s important.
Caley: Motion to induct your former coach into the hall of fame, can we get him a little plaque in there?
Briana: I would love. It would have to be a posthumously because he passed. But I was able to go to his funeral two years ago. He literally passed away the year after he told me that he had paid, and I wasn’t the only person he did it for, either. That’s the other thing.
Caley: Coaches will change the world.
Briana: Thank goodness he saw in me something special.
Ron: Not to bring it back to the sort of, but just thinking about, when fees are lower, that’s possible for a coach to cover one or two players in a way that you know, if you’re paying $10,000 a year, it’s just a different economy of scale that makes it that much more challenging.
Briana: It would not have been possible today, probably, had I been in a similar situation. My club team still exists, so it would be interesting to go back and see how much that particular key would be now for that exact same club, however many years later.
Ron: Yeah.
Caley: I feel like we would be remiss if we didn’t, in the time we have left, at least shift to talk about head injury a little bit. Ron, is that okay if I shift over to that?
Ron: Absolutely.
Caley: But I do want to ask you about TBI [Traumatic Brain Injury] and concussion. I mean, I think that it is interesting. It is always us goalkeepers, not always, but it’s a lot of times it’s us. I’m really curious about, I’m very familiar with your career and with all of the ways that you developed resilience and mental toughness, and I’m curious if you think that your journey – I’m not going to say healing, because it never heals, but your journey through TBI is different because you’re a goalkeeper.
Briana: I think you could say yes. One of the reasons I think you can say yes to that is because I think goalkeepers are a rare breed, we are. I consider us to be like a fine wine. Goalkeeping is not for everybody. You have to really-
Caley: Understatement of the century. Thank you.
Briana: Because if you look at it from one point of view, it’s crazy. But if you look at it from the point of view that I had, which was control freak, and I can keep you from winning, then it makes all the sense in the world that I would want to be a goalkeeper. I think obviously goalkeepers are vulnerable in so many different ways when we go up for a ball, when we stick our head, we’re literally sticking our head into places we shouldn’t be sticking them into. Knees, feet, into big old crowds, and we are literally, elbows, the target of the ball is coming to me, so everybody is going to converge upon me, and literally try to rip this thing away from me. By nature, it’s highly dangerous, and exposed because of that position to play in. But for me, with regards to my head injury, I’d had a few, I found out now that I’ve had hundreds, but we didn’t understand it at the time, concussions that were documented, but that one in particular, I know that it was incredibly bad because of the fact that I didn’t see it coming, and because she hit me in the temple. Now we know that for women the severity is deeper, and the duration tends to be longer for many different reasons. That’s why we need more research to truly understand these things. And at the time, when I had my head injury in 2010, nobody knew anything about any of this stuff, and it was all NFL football players and CTE and all that, and that makes complete sense, because football players are literally like gladiators in the arena, smashing into each other on a regular basis. But in soccer there’s a ton of collisions that aren’t so obvious. Mine was, but a lot of times they’re not, and so as a goalkeeper, I think I had a unique journey, also because the mental piece of the game for myself was one of my superpowers, and what kind of messed me up a little bit was my superpower got wrecked in that hit. So the thing that I would use to get myself through things was the thing that was damaged. I had to get to a point where I was comfortable with the information I was being given, because I knew I could come back, but I think I was like the only person that felt that way, you know. All the doctors that I had been had met said, oh, well, you know, this is just how it’s going to be for you, and you know you’re imagining it, and I’m like, come on, you’re not talking to, no offense, an 85 year old woman with Alzheimer’s, here. You’re not talking to that person, you’re talking to an athlete who wants to get back to how I was, as fast as I can, and I’m telling you that there’s something wrong still, because there is, and so just, just believe me. So then I came into the realm of, unfortunately, in the medical industry, how women aren’t heard, or nor are we often believed about how we’re feeling and what’s going on with us. I had all these different things, like circling against me, and you know, thank goodness I had great lawyers on my side who were like, just keep going, because we’re going to be here for you, and we know that you’re going to get there, and so just keep going. I don’t know how much goalkeeping and lawyering have to do with each other, but I think you know, because my lawyers saw me play, and they knew that, Ben Bascolo was my guy. He’s like, I know this is not you, because I saw you play, and I know you’re this person that I’m seeing that I’m helping is not who you are, and going to get you back there, and so I guess you could say that the goalkeeping helped in that regard as well.
Caley: I don’t think just anybody, I think most people probably would have let it go after six insurance denials, or whatever it was.
Briana: And going to court, yeah.
Caley: And going to court, I think a lot of people would have let it go, and I don’t, I think it takes somebody who is truly determined and knows themselves, which you have to, if you’re a goalkeeper, you have to know yourself really well and be okay with being the last stop, even if it fails. You kept pushing, and I imagine all the people that didn’t have a lawyer and didn’t have the energy, or had the migraine because of the concussion, or couldn’t do the paperwork, that’s how many people fell through the woodwork.
Briana: That’s why I became an advocate, because of that. Every time I speak, and I speak regularly, that’s what I do for my day job, I do keynote speaking, and corporate, and organizations, and all these different things for teams and big companies, Fortune 500. Every single time I am done speaking, I have Q&A, or I have meet and greet right after that, and every single time, without fail, somebody comes up to me, not in front of everybody, but quietly with tears in their eyes, and they’re like, please, and I said, I know what you’re going to ask me. You know, can you help me? Can you help my daughter? Can you help my friend? Can you help my grandson, was one recently, really struggling with head injury, and we don’t know what to do. It’s heartbreaking, yeah, it is heartbreaking, but it’s part of the reason I’m like, and I always say to them, I said, “You’re the reason I’m here; I came here for you”.
Ron: Yeah.
Briana: Yeah.
Ron: How do you, as an advocate, how would you advocate U.S. soccer approach head injuries, or head injury prevention, more specifically, especially for youth, but also for players on every level?
Briana: In all sports, as you know, it all starts from the bigger high visibility teams. For example, if young players see someone like Sam Coffey for example, big name on the women’s national team now. See Sam Coffey doing some kind of advertising or some kind of public service announcement about head injuries. Then that club, or clubs that see that, parents that see that, other people, referees, whoever, coaches that see that will think about it more. It has to start from the top, and it has to start from a player or an organization that has high visibility on the men’s side as well. It’s not even just U.S. soccer, it’s FIFA, it’s FIFA that has to start it, and so I do a lot of stuff with FIFA. Now I’m in the FIFA Legends program. I’m also a player’s voice panel, which is anti-racism. I’m in there trying to get it, trying to bend some ears here and there when I need to, so to help with the visibility of that, because it’s hard. If you recall, wearing shin guards used to be voluntary. Shin guards took forever.
Caley: I forgot about that.
Briana: Exactly! Forever to get to mandatory. I think head injuries is similar to that until we have some kind of wearable that can, not even prevent, it’s not prevention, I don’t believe prevention is even possible because of the collisions. It really doesn’t have anything to do with heading, necessarily. It has to do with all these other things. But if you can mitigate, that’s my word, mitigate, diffuse the severity, so if a hit comes in at, say, a 90% you know, for example, 90%. If you can have a wearable that diminishes that 90% damage to 65% to 60% to 50%, that’s a huge difference in someone’s life. That’s the difference between sitting up, not being able to go to school or learn or educate or play or whatever, to actually being able to do some stuff. Then, like we said earlier, for women in particular, about the depth of the injury and the severity and the duration, mitigating will minimize all of that, and so that’s what I’m an advocate for. I’ve got to start somewhere.
Caley: You’ve put your time in. The minute I saw your book, I was like, maybe I need to call her. I know you feel like this, but it’s like, which injury this week are we going to do?
Briana: Yeah.
Caley: Right? Like, are we going to deal with the ankle, is it the back today, or is we going to do the head injury today? I don’t know, which one are we? Just roll the dice, yes, let’s do that one.
Briana: I tell you what, though, I consider myself lucky, even though this head injury almost was the end of me. I consider myself lucky because I had a relatively injury free career until the very end. Which obviously made up for all of that, but I now consider that hit to be the greatest gift I’ve ever gotten, because I don’t have my wife without it, so it’s come full circle.
Ron: Wow.
Caley: Gave me the chills.
Ron: Yeah, that’s beautiful.
Briana: It’s hard to come around that way, but I finally made it.
Caley: Man, look at you. Glass half fulling a near death experience. This is the most Briana Scurry thing.
Ron: That’s leveling up the silver lining.
Caley: We have already gone over our allotted time by a bit. Ron, do you want to finish up with a question? Is there anything that we didn’t get to?
Ron: Sure you know, I wonder if you have time for one more question?
Briana: Sure.
Ron: I would actually love to hear how you think about or feel when you watch today’s U.S. women’s national team? What feels familiar? What feels different? The ‘99ers were at least in retrospect criticized quite a bit for not being more diverse than they were, and you see a much, much more diverse national team today than in past years. The sort of vibe around the team is definitely a generational shift. There’s a lot of social media presence, a lot of entertainment value there. I would just love to hear sort of how you experience that as someone who was the heart and soul of the national team for a really significant period of the national team’s growth that really put the national team on the map, and how you see where it’s gone since then.
Briana: Oh, it’s fantastic. First of all, the diversity is obviously the biggest thing. That’s the most obvious thing. You have triple espresso in and of itself, just like I love it. I love Mal, I love Trinity, I love Soph. These three young players, these three women are dynamic in and of themselves. But together they are literally probably the best three-pronged strike force in the history of women’s soccer and probably will be. And they’re all still in their 20s, and they’re just absolutely amazing, and I feel like I’m so lucky that I saw that too, because I wasn’t sure I’m going to see that kind of dramatic diversity in a club that’s so dynamic and young. I mean, these players are fantastic, and not only that, but these young girls are doing some amazing things, not only on the pitch but off the pitch. Like you said about the social media piece. I mean, Trinity is like the queen of social media, I mean, and she just taken that by the scruff and just using it like a superpower. That’s her thing, doing tick tocks and all this stuff, and none of this stuff existed when I played. But I tell you what, she knows what she’s doing, and she’s just an all-around fantastic player and a person as well. Then also you have someone like Naomi Girma, who is also one of the foundational players on that team now as a defender. I met her a few years back and got to interview her right before on the 2023 World Cup, and she was a truly striking human being. Her story is worthy of an Oscar level movie. She comes from a great family, and she went to Stanford, and she’s on top of it, and she’s an old soul, she’s barley in her 20s, and she plays like she’s been there forever, and she’s brilliant in her mind, and just the way she sees things, and what she wants to do, and you know that smile, you know what I mean. She’s the total package, and she’s in, she’s a defender, which is awesome, there’s all kinds of great things going on. For me it’s just really great to see that, and then of course having Emma Hayes as the coach. I’ve known Emma for a long, long time, and I was absolutely thrilled for her to get that position, and I’m not surprised either, because obviously Cindy saw in her what I saw in her, and her story is amazing too. You have this great young player component, and then you have some of the old hands, like Lindsey Horan in there, and you know, Roosevelt [Rose Lavelle] now seems old because she’s been there for a mixture of all these great talents. Who knows what’s going to happen. We still have the record of winning at least one event every cycle. Because they pulled it off in the Olympics in 2024 in Paris. Which was like, I almost lost my mind. So we’ll see. And the thing is, that’s different. I will say one more thing. We don’t know about the goalkeeping, right? We’ve always known that the goalkeeping would be solid, that goalkeeping would be a big advantage, that we probably had the goalkeeping card, better than any other team in whatever tournament it was, Olympics or World Cup. Now we don’t know, so that’s going to be interesting as well to see how that pans out, and I’m sure I’m sure Emma has something up her sleeve with that as well. I’m excited, I can’t wait to see. It’s going to be fun.
Caley: I know, yeah, all of us in Seattle are like Valentola’s choice. Well, we really, really appreciate your time. This is just a wonderful moment. We cannot wait to see you on Wednesday.
Briana: I know, it’s going to be crazy.
Caley: Yep. So glad to have you at the helm, really in so many ways, in soccer and women’s soccer in the world, making changes that matter. So, thank you for all you’ve done, all you continue to do. I’m so excited to see what you do. Ron, you want to do the closeout?
Ron: Sure. So, thank you so much for the conversation today, Briana. As Caley says, we really just can’t thank you enough. And special thanks to all of you for listening as well. To say a bit more about the Global Support Lab, we are a new collaboration based in the Jackson School of International Studies at the University of Washington Seattle. In partnership with my own school, Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences, at University of Washington Bothell, the lab uses the lens of sport to explore the big issues of our global world, from migration, politics, inequity, racism, and gender discrimination to popular culture, democracy, human rights, and the economy, to name just a few. We are particularly focused on the global sport of football, better known as soccer in the United States, during the run-up to Seattle’s hosting of the FIFA men’s World Cup in 2026 but we are interested in a wide range of sports, well-known and less well known, from the grassroots to the professional levels, and how they help us make meaning of the world. Special thanks to musician and scholar of global football, Laurent Dubois, and WOTI production for the use of our theme music “Merci Kylian”, available on Spotify and Apple Music. If you would like to join more conversations like this, please reach out to us at Global Sport lab@uw.edu. We look forward to hearing from you. Thanks, and keep playing.
[MUSIC PLAYING – “Merci Kylian” by Laurent Dubois]
