Alex Morgan Finds the Silver Lining
But she was certain about three things: She’d be giving birth to a baby girl in April, she would be competing at the Olympics less than three months after that, and she would figure out all the details eventually.
But then, of course, everything changed.
On March 24, the International Olympic Committee announced that in the face of the coronavirus pandemic, the Games will be postponed to 2021, bringing Morgan’s molten-hot momentum to a skidding halt. “Overall it’s just the right decision,” she says when we speak by phone within hours of the announcement, calm despite the monumental decision. Days earlier, the U.S. Olympic Committee asked athletes to weigh in on a potential postponement. “I tried to look at it more from a team perspective, but I couldn’t help but think of myself with all of the stress that’s going on from the coronavirus on top of trying to get back in shape in such a short amount of time.” Taking all factors into account, she voted to postpone. “That’s the best decision to level the playing field for all athletes in all events.”
Morgan’s image as America’s soccer sweetheart, with the pink headband and a perfect ponytail, doesn’t always do her justice. Yes, she’s friendly and polite, the kind of person who asks whether she’s pronouncing your name correctly and then uses it in conversation. But she also has a relentlessness about her, her drive like the scorching tail of a comet ripping through the headlines and leaving the rest of us wondering how she does it.
“She’s all or nothing in every aspect of her life,” says Morgan’s husband, Servando Carrasco. “She approaches everything with an insane amount of work ethic. I've never seen someone work as hard as her.” Carrasco met Morgan at the University of California, Berkeley, where they both played. “She was coming off an ACL injury, and she recovered in six months, which, if you know anything about sports, that's pretty crazy,” he says. “She was playing the first game of the season with a brace like RoboCop—she just had that drive and that hunger to be the best.”
That’s the first thing you need to know about Morgan. “When she was maybe about nine years old,” says Jenny Morgan, her older sister, “she would have a notepad and be counting all of her crunches while watching TV. She would be doing squats, lunges—I mean, at nine years old!” She’s always been her own biggest competitor. “She would sit in her room for four hours and play Monopoly to try to beat herself,” Jenny says. “She’s always been like that.”
