Alex Morgan has assisted on goals in World Cup matches and World Cup qualifiers. She has had assists in the National Women’s Soccer League playoffs and in pointless friendlies.
But on Tuesday she began establishing what appears to be one of the most important helps of her career by launching her own foundation to provide support, empowerment and an example for girls and mothers in South San Diego Bay.
“Alex is a football phenomenon, who is known all over the world. But it’s really about giving back to the community, and these girls see her as a role model,” said Alejandra Inzunza, a high school principal who took 17 girls to meet the two-time World Cup winner moments earlier. to present the Alex Morgan Foundation at a ceremony at a National City high school. “Hopefully, in return, they will give back, support the community, and keep defense in mind as they go.
“It absolutely validates them. And Alex Morgan is the perfect person to do it.”
Morgan, 33, said her perspective on many things, including soccer, changed when she gave birth to her daughter, Charlie, nearly three years ago.
And she’s played one of the best soccer matches of her career as a mom, leading the NWSL in scoring in 2022, winning the Ballon d’Or as the best player at last summer’s CONCACAF W Championship and scoring 14 goals for the Americans, the most in history. for a usa womens national team soccer mom
Motherhood also played a role in the timing of her decision to launch a foundation, as did Orlando Pride’s move to expansion last year. San Diego Wave. Morgan went to high school in Diamond Bar, and her husband, a former Galaxy midfielder serving carrascoHe grew up on both sides of the Mexican border, so the exchange marked a homecoming for both of them.
“I’ve actually been thinking about starting a foundation for probably the last five years, but it didn’t really come to fruition until a couple of months ago,” said Morgan, whose 121 international goals and two world championships make her one of the most most laureates in the history of football. “One of the reasons it is now is because, for me and Servando, we realize that this is our home. I never really had that feeling in any other city.”
The foundation, he said, is built around three “core areas of impact”: sports equity, empowering girls and supporting mothers, all areas that Morgan, who helped lead the successful fight for equal pay for the USWNT, you are familiar with. Among the foundation’s first initiatives will be fundraising to invest in the expansion of the field and sports.
Morgan unveiled his foundation during three stops in working-class areas of south San Diego County, starting at an art gallery in San Ysidro, within sight of the Mexican border. Then they took her in a golf cart to Casa Familiar, a grassroots development agency that also runs the art gallery. There she met with community leaders, all volunteers and most of them mothers.
“Mom’s support was incredibly important to me,” Morgan said. “Navigating motherhood and the workplace was incredibly challenging, and many moms do it with great grace. They do it with all the messes behind closed doors. They don’t share those. So I want to create a community where we can share any issues and help moms embrace the challenges and be able to navigate it in a much better way.”
Alex Morgan (13) holds her daughter, Charlie, as she is honored for her 200th appearance with the US women’s national team before a SheBelieves Cup game against Canada on February 16 in Orlando, Florida.
(Phelan M. Ebenhack/Associated Press)
Meeting the students at their last stop, Morgan sat next to Inzunza, a bouquet of wildflowers in a vase between them, at the top of a circle with the girls, dressed in blue Alex Morgan Foundation T-shirts, in front of them.
Prompted by Inzunza, a pair of shy girls, clearly in awe of Morgan, questioned her in voices barely above a whisper. Finally, a student asked Morgan who was her role model of hers.
“My mother,” she replied, sharing a story about how her mother, Pamela, worked during the day and studied at night, but still found time to take Morgan and her sisters to softball, soccer, and soccer practices. basketball.
Morgan’s family, many of whom attended Tuesday’s ceremony, had given her dreams of becoming a professional soccer player since she was 7 years old, never bothering to tell her that there was no professional women’s league at the time.
“They supported my dream,” he said, “even though there was no road there.”
Twenty-five years later, she is the leading player in one of the most successful women’s professional leagues in the world. The moral of the story was obvious to the girls in the room: with an ambitious dream and enough support, there’s no reason they couldn’t blaze their own trails, too.
And when that happens, credit Morgan with an assist.
