I'm sorry I don't mean any disrespect, I'm just curious if anyone from an older generation remembers seeing Hamm play from beginning to end and knowing that she had suffered from a birth defect known as a club foot? Does anybody know if she still dealt with it in her professional career or was it corrected through surgery? I never really saw Hamm play live until 1999 WWC. I was still a child then but like many young people I really admired her. I never knew she had that condition before until I looked her up on wikipedia. Also this may be slightly off topic but is she really bigger looking in real life? I never met her in person, is she as big as Wambach or slightly smaller than her? I'll be honest, I think Wambach and Barnhart, and Hope Solo are really tall strong looking women that I wouldn't want to meet up with in a dark alley, I never knew Mia Hamm was a particularly big athlete but maybe she is in person.
'Partial club foot." It was non-surgically corrected in her infancy/early childhood, I think. The foot can be trained back towards normal through a system of braces and casts as I understand it. If you want to get really flipped out, the same was true of Kristi Yamaguchi. I've been close to the sidelines acouple of times- Mia is only 5-5, but she is rather sturdy and perfectly configured for her career, with her power in her hips and thighs. She's also strikingly pretty, pun intended.
We watched her play from her first year at UNC. Back before Wikipedia - - so we never knew about any foot issue and never noticed anything. She wasn't big or big looking. HTH
As others have noted, she's just a bit on the small side. And she's very retiring in person - I've seen her all but disappear beneath a baseball cap in public when she doesn't want to be bothered.
yeah I'm thinking my co-worker probably though Mia Hamm was a big athlete because maybe she met Mia when she was just a kid? LOL I think someone who struck me as really big was Abby. When I first saw the Washington Freedom live at the Home Depot Center against the LA Sol, that's when I realized Abby was so much taller than her teammates. Shannen Boxx too looks big in person. Isn't Marta only like 5 4?
I watched 8-hours of girls high school basketball yesterday. "Big" is relative. I always think it's funny to see 5'10" or even 5'11" (Abby range) described as big in soccer discussions. Isn't Abby taller than Hope (who is also called tall)?
Kristi Yamaguchi used to buy groceries every week from me when Hedican played for the Carolina Hurricanes. She was amazingly small, even when pregnant. Very nice lady, as well as her mom. They remembered my name and everything.