Instead of talking up herself at UNC, Mia Hamm spoke about selflessness | Opinion
When you purchase a ticket to see certain people perform, you expect them simply to be themselves, or what you believe them to be. Clint Eastwood is one example. Regardless of the role in which he’s cast, he plays it like Clint Eastwood. Willie Nelson’s concerts are the same way. Few earn this right.
That’s what I figured I’d get earlier this month, when I heard soccer legend Mia Hamm would be giving the commencement address to my daughter’s graduating class at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Hamm’s alma mater. Like Eastwood and Nelson, she’d have been within her rights to ham it up, so to speak.
Hamm won four NCAA championships while at Chapel Hill. She chased down that collegiate performance with two World Cups and two Olympic Gold medals. I expected her remarks to be in first-person singular voice. With such achievements, how could she choose otherwise? I was very wrong.
Instead, the athlete widely considered to be the greatest women’s soccer player of all time preached the importance of living an other-directed life. Rhetorically, it was brilliant. Her personal drive and God-given talents are so well known that to dwell on them almost inevitably would have cheapened them.
Spiritually, it was even more impactful. This titan of her sport told anecdotes mainly about others. She spoke of Carin Gabarra, her veteran teammate on the 1996 Olympic squad whose playing time, but not her competitor’s heart or love for her teammates, had been diminished.
On a rare day off from practice, Gabarra silently headed to the training center to put in extra conditioning time. Soon, every single member of Team USA canceled her plans and spent their precious rest day together running sprints. Hamm’s point was clear: Leadership isn’t a title. It’s a mindset.
Next mentioned was Carla Overbeck, former captain of both the Carolina and U.S. teams. Overbeck was always first to unload the bus before practice and first to clean up afterward. She didn’t avoid unglamorous tasks because she was the captain; that was the very reason she sought them out.
Overbeck, in Hamm’s memorable words, carried the water, literally and figuratively. She always did the little and necessary things right, even when nobody was watching, for in the end, someone’s always watching. It was an inspirational picture of servant-leadership.
The overall lesson was hard to miss: most of life’s meaningful victories are first-person plural successes. Winning happens when the greatest players by deed more than just word show no task is too small if it helps the team. Individual glory is a consequence of team victory, not the other way around.
This is true on the soccer field, in the workplace and by the family hearth. And while it gets lost in fractious times like our own, a habituation of thinking of others is the first step toward loving them by willing their good. It begins a journey that leads to living a good, happy and authentically human life.
Mia Hamm’s commencement address spoke volumes about her timeless values. As great a soccer star as she was, she was an even better teammate.This was a wonderful message to have imparted to UNC’s Class of 2025. This father of one such graduate is forever grateful.