Who is Mia Hamm?

Mia Hamm was born Mariel Margaret Hamm in 1972, and who could have foretold that she would go on to become one of the most famous soccer players in the world? She played for many years on the U.S. team, as a forward, and she has scored more goals in her international career than ANY player, male or female, in history.

Mia Hamm is a household name in the United States, as well as in the countries whose teams she has helped the U.S. to beat in international competition. She is an asset to the U.S. team and a role model for the next generation of female athletes here in the States. She received scholarships that in days not long ago were given only to men, and she got the training she needed to become an elite athlete.

Hamm was named the women's FIFA Player of the Year the first two times that award was ever given out, in 2001 and 2002, and she is listed as one of FIFA's 125 all time best living players, a list that was compiled by Pele!

Mia retired from soccer in 2004, and played her last game in the 2004 Fan Celebration Tour, which commemorated the U.S. Women's National team's Olympic victory in 2004. 2007 was her first year of eligibility for the National Soccer Hall of Fame, and she was selected to be inducted by 137 out of 141 votes cast. Womens Professional Soccer, a league that was started just in 2009, features her silhouette in its logo. Hamm was also inducted into the Texas Sports Hall of Fame in 2008.

Mia Hamm spent her early years on Air Force bases with her parents Bill and Stephanie Hamm, and five siblings. She started organized sports at a very early age, and she joined the U.S. women's national team at the age of 15, the youngest ever to play for them.

She attended UNC Chapel Hill, helping the Tarheels to four NCAA championships. In fact, the team lost only ONE game that she played in during her career there!

In 1991, when the U.S. womens national team won the FIFA Womens World Cup for the first time ever, Hamm became the youngest American Woman to win a World Cup championship, at 19 years of age.

In 1997, Hamm founded the Mia Hamm Foundation, which is dedicated to bone marrow research, as well as to helping womens' sports teams make progress.

In 1999, Hamm broke the all-time international football/soccer goal record, when she scored her 158th goal in a game in Orlando Florida, against Brazil. The same year, Nike named the largest building at their corporate offices after Hamm, and that year she again led the U.S. to the Championship at the Womens FIFA World Cup.

In 2004, she announced that she would retire after the Athens Olympics, to settle down and start a family with her husband, baseball great Nomar Garciaparra.

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