Mia Hamm

Mia Hamm Profile

Mia Hamm is largely considered the best female soccer player in history and the player who put women’s soccer on the map. As a keynote speaker, Mia continues to inspire a new generation of young girls and audiences worldwide.

She played with the U.S. women’s national soccer team for 17 years, building one of the biggest fan bases of any American athlete. She won the Women’s World Cup in 1991 and 1999, and took Olympic gold medals in 1996 and 2004. Hamm held the record for most international goals scored until June 2013, when her record was broken by fellow American player Abby Wambach.

At the age of 15, Hamm was the youngest soccer player to play for the national team. Hamm attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she helped take the team to four consecutive NCAA women’s championships.

In 1991, at the age of 19, Hamm was the youngest team member in history to win the World Cup. Five years later, Hamm and her teammates, including Michelle Akers, Brandi Chastain and Kristine Lilly, secured the gold medal at the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta, Georgia. (They would return to win gold again in 2004.)

Hamm’s other accolades include being elected Soccer USA’s “Female Athlete of the Year” five years in a row (1994-98), being named MVP of the Women’s Cup (1995) and winning three ESPY Awards, including in the “Soccer Player of the Year” and “Female Athlete of the Year” categories. In 2004, she and teammate Michelle Akers were named on FIFA’s list of the “125 Greatest Living Soccer Players”—becoming the only women and only Americans to be named to the list at that time.

In 1999, Hamm founded her foundation, which is dedicated to bone marrow research, after her brother, Garrett, died of complications from a rare blood disease called aplastic anemia shortly after the 1996 Olympics.

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  • Mia Hamm is widely recognized as the world′s best all-around women′s soccer player. In Atlanta at the 1996 Centennial Olympic Games, she proved it by leading her team to Gold in front of 80,000 screaming fans. Never in history had so many spectators come out to watch a women′s sporting event. The Games highlighted female athletes like no other time in modern history and Mia emerged as one of the Game′s true examples for people of all ages who have a dream and go for it.

  The 1999 Women′s World Cup, where the USA took home the championship in front of 40 million viewers in this country alone, sold over 650,000 tickets, including sellouts at Giants Stadium and the Rose Bowl. There is no stopping women′s soccer and Mia′s enormous impact, both on and off the field.

  Mia played collegiately at UNC and led her team to four consecutive NCAA championships. Her awards and accomplishments only tell part of the story of this remarkable athlete; she gives much of her precious free time to charitable causes and strives, in anything she does, to promote women′s athletics, the sport of soccer, and a feeling of confidence and sense of purpose in young people.

  Mia was the youngest player ever to play for our National Team (age 15) and retired in 2004 after 17 years, 2 World Championships, and 2 Olympic Gold medals. Her records in appearances and goals, MVP awards and overall performance put her at the top of the sport. As Phil Knight, Chairman of Nike says, “I think we′ve had three athletes who just played at a level that added a new dimension to their games. That′s been Michael Jordan, in basketball, and in some ways Mia Hamm in women′s soccer and Tiger Woods in golf.” In 1999, Nike named the largest building on its corporate campus after Mia.

  Having seen the enormous support her and her teammates received at the ′96 and ′00 Games, Mia became a founding member of the Women′s United Soccer Association and led the Washington Freedom to the Founder′s Cup. Poised, articulate and honest, Mia is a pioneer in her sport and a role model for athletes and fans alike who believe in equal opportunity, Title IX legislation, and the love of the game.

  *Presentations arranged with Octagon Speakers Group