Megan Rapinoe is Sports Illustrated’s Sportsperson of the Year. She’s only the fourth woman to be named SI’s Sportsperson of the Year. It’s a well-deserved honor, not only for being the MVP of the USWNT, which won the Women’s World Cup this year. She deserves it for being what many call the “Muhammed Ali of women’s soccer.” The activist-athlete, the woman who walks the walk and sh-t-talks the sh-t-talk. Megan said she wasn’t going to the f–king White House and she meant it. She won the World Cup even as Donald Trump and the Deplorables were boycotting her and harassing her.

I went into this SI cover profile just looking to skim the piece for some good quotes to highlight and excerpt, but I ended up reading the whole thing and crying several times. Megan is such an amazing person. I barely have words. Some highlights:

Her arms-out pose during the WWC: “It was kind of like a ‘F— you,’ but with a big smile and a s— eating grin. You are not going to steal any of our joy.”

All of the awards she’s received: Rapinoe never would have bet on herself to take that award (for which she ultimately edged out Morgan) or the Golden Ball (for MVP) or to be named FIFA’s Women’s World Player of the Year two months later. “I’m not sure I’m the best player on my own team,” she admits.

She’s not going to run for office: “I don’t have plans for policies and how to implement them. I’ll just be the jabber.” (The White House did reach out privately to the team about a visit, a U.S. Soccer rep confirms. Rapinoe says she heard about the outreach on the plane ride home from France, from USSF president Carlos Cordeiro. He suggested a visit to both the White House and Capitol Hill; Rapinoe and another player reiterated they didn’t want to meet with Trump.)

Fears of being seen as an activist-fraud: “My biggest fear is claustrophobia, being stuck in small places. And also that people will think I’m a fraud. I never want to be seen as trying to leverage something for personal gain. A lot of the stuff I talk about has a personal benefit. Equal pay. Even kneeling with Kaepernick, there was a lot of personal gain from that.”

How she came to kneel during the anthem: Kaepernick’s peaceful protest first caught the eye of the nation in August 2016. Rapinoe joined nine days later, before a game with her NWSL club, Seattle Reign. “He needs support,” she remembers thinking, “and I can help.” That September she warned U.S. teammates: She would kneel again before a friendly against Thailand, and she knew it might be uncomfortable for them. “I don’t understand the [idea] that it’s un-American to criticize your country. That’s what an open democracy is about—civil discourse and being able to protest. Clearly, we are not perfect. Until we address the problems we have, it is not going to be better.”

Nowadays she stands for the anthem: She stands, with her hands crossed behind her back instead of over her heart, reflecting silently. Sometimes, she says, the names of people of color who have unjustly lost their lives run through her mind. Trayvon Martin. Michael Brown. Tamir Rice. She stops herself. She doesn’t want to seem like she’s leveraging their names. “But I think about Why?” she continues.

She wonders if she should still kneel: “I considered [continuing to kneel],” she says. “It’s still something I’m a little conflicted about. I don’t know what would have happened [if I’d continued]. Can you do the same thing without kneeling? Did I make my point? How long do you need to protest? It certainly was better for me to stop kneeling. So, that’s a little, like—” Rapinoe scrunches up her face. As she graces magazine covers, as she appears on stages and fields and podiums across the world, she carries the question with her: Am I doing enough?

[From Sports Illustrated]

Rapinoe is apparently constantly in a state of worrying that she’s not doing more social activism, and she speaks to other activists a lot to get advice about what she should be doing or what more she can do. Some of those activists told her that one of the best things she can do is talk about whiteness and how her white privilege functions, and to be open about all of these feelings she has about whether she’s doing enough. I honestly cried when she talked about seeing Kaepernick’s anthem-kneel and her first thought was “He needs support and I can help.” Love Pinoe so hard.

Megan Rapinoe speaking truth as she accepted Sports Illustrated's Sportsperson of the Year award last night in New York.pic.twitter.com/GiBwv4mEDr

— Grant Wahl (@GrantWahl) December 10, 2019

Embed from Getty Images

Embed from Getty Images

Photos courtesy of Getty, cover courtesy of Sports Illustrated.