World-Renowned Soccer Player Abby Wambach at HVCC.

By Kevin Conley II , Staff Writer

Abby Wambach is the United States’ leading soccer player and has played in the 2007 and 2011 Women’s World Cup tournaments along with the 2004 and 2012 Olympics. She became a two-time Olympic gold medalist and FIFA World Cup Champion. 

Wambach is also an activist for equality and inclusion and a bestselling author of the New York Times bestseller “Forward: A Memoir” and “WOLFPACK: How to Come Together, Unleash Our Power and Change the Game” which are currently available in bookstores everywhere. 

Recently, Wambach spoke at an online event on March 4th, 2021 at HVCC. Wambach discussed with students and staff about her accomplishments as an athlete, the challenges she faces and advised current athletes of Hudson Valley on how to conquer their challenges. 

People who participated in the event such as students, athletes and coaches, came together to ask Abby Wambach for motivation and advice on how to push through canceled sporting events and missed opportunities during the pandemic. 

In response, Wambach discussed her way of being motivated by stating how she became the athlete she is today. 

Wambach stated “for whatever reason, I don’t believe that I’m wired differently. I just believed that I chose to focus on certain things. And one of the things that I embrace as a person in terms of my outlook, I am very optimistic, I’m very confident” 

“I also feel like every single day, I truly feel this. I feel like every single day, I can get better at something. When I was an athlete, it was so easy because you could manage it and you could measure it. You could measure your gains on a daily basis and towards the end of my career, everything became very data-driven” Wambach added.

Wambach also stated about motivation saying “what I would say is: the best and smartest people I have met in my life don’t need somebody else to motivate them. There’s some sort of eternal or intrinsic motivation happening and for me, my motivation was always this: that I didn’t know what my limit was and it was almost this sick masochistic gain with myself that every single day, I would come back, I would go to the training field and I would be like, ‘alright, I guess I will put my body through immense pain or immense trial or immense pressure, and I’m gonna see what happens, and I’m gonna do that until I don’t want to do that anymore. And over time, truly, I didn’t need my teammates there to make me feel that way, but it was so helpful having other people who were light-minded this way” Abby said. 

Despite the pain, hardship and intense sportsmanship, she clarified that anyone can gain power and use it on the field or the outside of the field.

Wambach also responded to the pandemic saying “what I would tell you is; if you feel bad about what has happened over the last 12 months, you’re responding properly to the stimulus and what has been happening. You’re awake”

“I know it sucks and I know that things getting canceled that you were looking so forward to is not easy,” Wambach added.

“What I would tell you is this though; even a few months into the pandemic, I’ve decided that ‘okay, I’m gonna come out of this pandemic better.’ Somehow, I’m gonna come out of this pandemic better” Wambach said.