Gold Keeper: Scurry shares gold-winning journey in memoir

From rural club fields to state championship shootouts, to overcoming a rival in the sport’s first-ever Olympic Games and a world-famous leftward lunge, there was no shortage of jaw-dropping saves to choose from.

But the greatest save of all came years after the Hall of Fame soccer career ended for Briana Scurry: herself.

It’s a winding tale of euphoric highs on the playing field, to life-threatening lows off of it for the Dayton-raised Anoka grad, all laid bare in Scurry’s newly released memoir “My Greatest Save.”

Through it all, one thing is certain.

Scurry is always herself: a keeper of gold.

‘I’m going to be an Olympian’

Scurry’s quest to becoming an Olympian was put into motion early.

Not on a soccer field, but rather a sheet of ice in New York.

“When I was 8, I was watching the 1980 Lake Placid men’s hockey team play against the USSR in the Olympic Games,” Scurry said. “I was watching that game with my mom and dad on the couch, and when they beat the USSR in the semifinal after losing to them 10-3 a couple weeks before that, it was amazing. And somehow at 8 years old, I understood the enormity of what they were doing and how I was watching greatness. I didn’t know the whole story, but I saw something and I was inspired by it. I jumped up off the couch and said, ‘I’m going to be an Olympian!’ My mom and dad were amazing. They didn’t say, ‘Oh, honey, that’s too hard, girls can’t do that.’ Or, ‘That’s a great dream, but it’d be really hard.’ They were all about it. They were all in. They said, ‘You can do anything you set your mind to; if you work hard you can do it.’ They were amazing and so supportive. I took that little seed of inspiration and nurtured it.”

‘I grabbed that flyer and I ran home’

The dream was decided. Next came the path of how to get there.

Scurry’s start in soccer arrived at the age of 12.

Instead of being drawn to the sport by seeing others playing, though, she was drawn in by a small piece of paper.

“When I was in elementary school, they used to pass out these little flyers to all the kids about sports sign-ups that were coming up, and soccer was one of them,” Scurry said. “I grabbed that flyer and I ran home to my mom and dad, and I asked them if it was OK if I played and they said yes.

“They were so willing to let me play any sport — including tackle football for two years — I wanted to. They knew I was very athletic and that I was fired up about sports. They knew sports was a good avenue to keep me occupied and to express myself, and to learn a lot.”

Soon after, Scurry found herself in the spot where she would become a worldwide star. Initially via some well-intentioned, albeit misguided strategy from her first coach. Then, a passionate disdain for goals scored against her team.

“My first year, I was the only girl on the boys team because soccer was just starting in the area in Dayton,” Scurry said. “They put me in the goal because the coach thought I would be safer there, which we all know is the opposite – he obviously didn’t know! But that was fine. I really enjoyed my first year. My second and third year I played Champlin/Dayton soccer with the girls team as they expanded to have a girls team and girls league too. I played in the field and in the goal. I really liked playing in the field and scoring goals, but I hated when we had goals scored on us, so I found my way back to the goal around 15, 16 years of age and was there ever since.”

‘The four of us were the spine’

Scurry and three of her club teammates were more than ready to contribute upon entering their freshmen year at Anoka High School. However, a rule at the time limited participation in team varsity sports to students in 10th through 12th grades.

They petitioned to get to play, with three of the four — including Scurry — allowed to join early.

Once the group was entirely intact, it developed into one of the best in the state.

“The four of us were essentially the spine of the team down the middle,” Scurry said. “I was the goalkeeper, Shannon (Jaakola) was defender central, Colleen (Perry) was center midfield and Laurie (Menke) was center striker. We were the backbone of that team and we came into our first year and did really well compared to the year before. By the time we were seniors, we were competing for a state championship.”

The team was led by Dave Tank, a longtime coach for the boys basketball team who became the coach for the girls soccer team in 1986, Scurry’s first year. In 1989, the Tornadoes won state, with Scurry in net for a championship game shootout victory, earning All-American accolades as a senior.

An immense soccer talent, Scurry’s athleticism also carried over to the winter as an all-state high school basketball player.

Looking at potential colleges, options arose to pursue either. Her club coach, Pete Swenson, helped connect Scurry with the University of Massachusetts.

Swenson knew the women’s soccer coach Jim Rudy, who led a program that was top 10 at the time, after Swenson’s daughter had been recruited there previously. Swenson made a recruiting pitch of sorts, letting Rudy know of Scurry’s skill and potential.

“I had all these great opportunities to go to colleges, but I needed a full scholarship because my family didn’t have a lot of money,” Scurry said. “We had a lot of love and support, but we didn’t have a lot of money. In the process of writing this book, I learned that my club coach Pete Swenson helped finance a lot of my travel soccer. I had suspicions because I know soccer is super expensive and my family didn’t have money, so I figured he must be helping, and sure enough he was, so that was really cool. That got me going.”

Scurry settled on UMass, both quickly climbed

By the time she was a college sophomore, Rudy let Scurry know she was capable of even more.

“Coach Jim told me my sophomore year at UMass that he thought I was good enough to play on the National Team. And I said, ‘Oh? That’s great. … I didn’t know we had one,” Scurry laughed. “It was amazing and tragic at the same time. When Jim said that, I was like, ‘OK, if you think I can, I believe you.’ I will take your confidence and make it my own. It’s a great testament to people helping people. You don’t get to lofty heights by yourself. You have a lot to do with it, but other things have to come together, including support in different ways.”

As it turned out, Rudy knew Anson Dorrance, the head coach at the University of North Carolina, as well as the leader of the U.S. Women’s National Team.

Massachusetts advanced to the NCAA Final Four to take on North Carolina during Scurry’s senior season, a year in which she had 15 shutouts in 23 games. Although UMass lost, Scurry had a dynamic game in net with Dorrance on the opposing sideline.

“I had a fantastic game — similar to Jim Craig, different result,” Scurry laughed.

Dorrance already knew he wanted Scurry to come to the National Team’s camp, but the performance solidified his opinion of Scurry’s potential, helping set the stage for the next chapter as she closed in on her childhood dream.

‘It was fast’

Scurry was invited to a USWNT camp in November 1993 as the fifth of five goalkeepers. It wouldn’t take long for that to change.

By March of 1994, she was up to No. 1.

“It was fast,” Scurry said. “There were a couple of camps in between there. They kept on inviting me back, and I kept on improving.”

While the rise felt meteoric, it was in line with Dorrance’s opinion of Scurry, shared just recently: that Scurry had more potential than any goalkeeper he had ever seen.

“This is all stuff I learned writing my book, going back and asking people things in a completely different view as an adult,” Scurry said. “I was able to find out the path of a lot of things and it was fascinating to learn this stuff.

“This whole process has been eye-opening and I’ve been so humbled, knowing the perception of all of my coaches, letting me know how they were thinking. You just usually don’t get to know that from their own mouths later, because they can’t really do that at the time because they have to be objective, but now they can be more open. And Anson is a literal legend in the game. Having him say that about me is really eye-opening and pretty cool.”

‘It was literally a dream come true’

Scurry had won the starting goalkeeper position, and at the perfect time. In 1996, women’s soccer was set to become an Olympic sport.

“It was literally a dream come true,” Scurry said. “I had the inspiration at 8 years old to be an Olympian, then as I teenager I made a sign on 8-by-11-inch paper that said, ‘Olympics 1996, I have a dream.’ I knew I’d be in my mid-20s at the time, so I figured that would be a good target, and sure enough I found myself on a team that was going to play in the Olympics for the first time.”

Women’s soccer had not yet been in the Olympic Games, but in the five years prior, a decision was made to put it in in 1996. Often, sports compete initially as an exhibition, but women’s soccer jumped right in as a medal sport.

And Scurry was a focal point of that team, the last line of defense for a U.S. team that was coming off of a third-place finish in the 1995 World Cup.

“That was a golden time for the team,” Scurry said. “We won everything. Losing in 1995, then beating the same team in the 1996 semifinal, Norway, that beat us, we never looked back. Then we won again in ’99 – two major tournaments on U.S. soil that I think had a major impact on the fan base of soccer in the country.”

After the euphoria of winning Olympic gold in 1996 came another landmark win on home soil three years later.

Scurry made the decisive save midway through the 1999 World Cup championship shootout against China. Sprawling to her left, Scurry turned away a shot that set up the game-winning goal by Brandi Chastain, vaulting the team into the national and world spotlight.

Still, Scurry — the first openly gay and Black player on the USWNT — didn’t receive the spotlight many others felt she had earned.

“What I’ve learned is, going through the World Cup and all the media and all the accolades after making ‘the big save’ that set the stage for Brandi to make her kick, a lot of people said to me in the process after that as I did talk shows or traveled, that they felt I didn’t get the attention I deserved,” Scurry said. “I remembered at the time not wanting to believe that had anything to do with anything other than being a goalkeeper. I would say it’s because I’m a goalkeeper and not a scorer, it’s defensive as opposed to attacking, it’s not as fun and whatnot. Over time I realized it had nothing to do with being a goalkeeper. I realized it was probably something else. I didn’t want to think it was my race or my sexual orientation because I didn’t want to believe that’s true, because I’m a very optimistic person. I thought, ‘No, that’s not why.’ Then I realized through the process of writing the book and thinking about it more and talking to people, that yeah, I wasn’t the face for the media, or that potential sponsors wanted to represent their products. I didn’t look like the girl-next-door soccer player.

“But now I feel, and I’ve always felt this, part of what makes me who I am and what makes me brave, what makes me special, what makes me have resilience, what makes me powerful, is knowing exactly who I am and blazing that trail for people that are like that. I’ve had young girls come up to me in the 2000s and tell me they didn’t know Black people played soccer. And I said: ‘Guess what? You can! And I do!’ That has been, I have to say, the thing that so many people may have thought had to be a hindrance or obstruction, I feel has been the source of my strength. Some of the most rewarding things I’ve been told have been thank you for being brave and who you are — it helped me be me. That’s the most amazing legacy I could possibly leave.”

‘Completely disconnected from who I was’

World-class athletes can jump, sprint, throw, kick and move at a level that people can see, but have a hard time believing.

Beyond that, though, comes incredible mental strength within.

Scurry’s career forged ahead after the late 1990s glory, winning an Olympic silver in 2000, a World Cup bronze in 2003 and another Olympic gold in 2004. She continued to play at the club level as well.

Then, in 2010, an inadvertent collision in a game in which Scurry took a knee to her temple threatened to crumble that pillar of power forever.

“My greatest asset has always been my mind, my mindset, my mentality,” Scurry said. “It’s something that is paramount for our women’s soccer team, for all of us who have ever played. With my head injury, the very thing that was so powerful for me to achieve everything I achieved was broken. That was the thing that was wrong.

“I essentially was completely disconnected from who I was, from how I felt. It’s unlike any other injury you could possibly have because it affects everything.”

Scurry had the usual list of symptoms: sensitivity to light, emotional issues, headaches, depression, anxiety.

“It came in waves,” Scurry said. “Sometimes they’d go away a little bit and then come back.”

An injury that Scurry thought would sideline her for a couple weeks turned into a couple months. Then, it became a season-ending injury.

Finally, it turned out to be the end of Scurry’s playing career. And the start of a nightmarish stretch of legal battles that spiraled into Scurry’s personal life.

“My intention was to play another season while I thought about what I really wanted to do with my life,” Scurry said. “I was confident I’d be able to do that, but because it was a head injury I had trouble learning, I had trouble functioning, I had trouble with a lot of things and I began to withdraw and isolate. I really struggled. As time went on, my dealings with the insurance companies — if you read the book, I talk very much in detail about the odyssey about why it took so long. Because the insurance company didn’t want to pay for my care and I had to fight them in court, five or six times to fight them on different things, on second opinions, on doing the opinion I was given, on worker’s comp.”

Broke, Scurry pawned her Olympic medals. She was clinging to her life.

“I slid into a depression in 2013 that was so deep,” Scurry said. “I was in financial despair and ruin because sometimes they would pay and sometimes they wouldn’t pay, and I was dependent on that income because I was declared totally temporarily disabled at the time. So I thought about suicide. When I thought about ‘how,’ that’s when I knew I was in trouble, when I thought about how I’d do it. And then I realized I couldn’t do it, because someone would have to tell my mother, inform her that her baby was gone, and I couldn’t stomach it. I could not do that to her. She was battling Alzheimer’s at the time, but still knew who I was. And I couldn’t do it to her after all she’s done for me. So I hung in there, and then shortly after that I got a lifeline thrown to me in the image of my wife Chryssa (Zizos), who is a PR expert — she owns her own PR firm. She put pressure on the insurance company to do the right thing and they caved. I got my procedure done shortly after. That was the first step. Then I had one year of therapy. That’s how I got to go on the right path and started recovering.”

‘I’ve always been just who I am’

Scurry and Zizos got married in 2018. Battling back from the abyss, Scurry’s life is richer than ever, an inspiration for countless others by doing what she has always done: be herself.

She has served as an inspiration for future generations, and helped pave the way for milestones such as the U.S. Women’s National Team garnering equal pay earlier this year. A world champ, a Hall of Famer, the first openly gay player and Black player on the USWNT, and now the permanent Title IX Exhibit in the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture.

“I realized I was gay when I was in junior high,” Scurry said. “I’ve always been just who I am. It’s never been something that I was hiding, it’s never been something I tried to deny. I never considered myself to be in the closet. I know that’s actually a little uncommon as I had friends who were very afraid of what their parents might say, their communities. For me it was just part of who I was.

“For me, being African American, that’s very visible. That’s well-known. You can see that I’m Black. Playing a predominantly white suburban sport, for me, my teammates have always been amazing. Every sport I played, I never had any issues with the players I played with. Now I don’t know if that’s because I was an exceptional athlete in the different sports I played. Maybe sometimes people didn’t see me as Black. I had that said to me from time to time. Now I realize that is a slight form of prejudice by saying that. But that never stopped me. I just forged ahead in going after what I wanted, which was to be an Olympian and a gold medalist.

“Now, I’ve learned through this book process that I was an inspiration and a role model in both ways as a Black player and also as an openly gay player, for people to feel like they could be who they are.”

‘It’s truly been a 30-year journey’

The success of Scurry and the USWNT in the 1990s wasn’t limited to the playing field.

The team went on strike before the Olympic Games to get U.S. Soccer to pay the team a bonus for winning silver or bronze, not just gold, whereas the men’s team received bonuses for each round advanced.

It also fought for better resources, travel and hotels, child care and higher per diems.

The fight was taken up by players later on in lawsuits to apply pressure in the court system, all helping lead up to a milestone moment earlier this year when the USWNT achieved a $24 million settlement and equal pay.

“It was absolutely fantastic to see,” Scurry said. “It’s truly been a 30-year journey, if not more. The lynchpin of all of this in my mind, the taliswoman, if you will, was Cindy Parlow Cone. Parlow Cone was able to get the men and women on the same page. Without their cooperation, we don’t have the FIFA bonus money being equal. She got the board on the same page too. Past presidents have agreed, but then the board has shot down some stuff. Now you have a united federation, for the first time in over 30 years, with both its women’s and men’s teams together, on the same page in unison.”

The united front has helped lead to more corporate sponsors eager to jump on board, with more revenue opportunities in broadcasting partnerships as well.

“The whole pie could be two, three times bigger than it was before as we’re all pulling together,” Scurry said. “With the Men’s World Cup coming in 2026, it’s just a whole new world here. These women could make the kind of money they could retire on after a good stint. We’re talking about millions of dollars, finally, for women athletes.

“I think it’s fantastic what we’ve done for soccer. I think it could be replicated in other federations — Europe, Canada, Australia. There’s a precedent other organizations can take into account. Not just sports; they can figure out ways to even that equality up, maybe thinking outside the box like these players and Cindy Parlow Cone have done. There can be fantastic reverberations for the next several decades. Time will tell.”

Transparent and authentic

In 2019, Scurry sat down with her “brain trust” — her publicist and wife — to discuss writing a memoir. It was a long-held idea, one Scurry was finally ready to put it into action.

“I’ve felt I’ve had a book in me for about 20 years, but I’ve never been in the right place,” Scurry said. “I finally realized I was in a good place to even think about doing this. I had to make sure I was ready to be completely transparent and authentic and honest about everything. Not just the good stuff, but the bad stuff, the difficult stuff. Once I realized I was ready to go to the feeling space of the things that have happened in my life, we got going and set sail.”

Scurry partnered with five-time New York Times bestselling author Wayne Coffey for two years on the project, with a goal of joining the NYT bestseller list herself. The book launched on Good Morning America June 21. The book tour is just beginning, with an audiobook narrated by Scurry herself also available.

“Everybody who has read the book has absolutely loved it,” Scurry said. “People who didn’t know my story, some people who knew it sort of, some people who think they know soccer really well and thought they knew me really well were surprised and amazed at what the book said, and how it was read and how it was done. It’s been a fantastic response.”