Tonight soccer fans will says goodbye to a legend. Her name is Heather O’Reilly, commonly known around the international soccer community by her initials HAO. Before everyone overreacts to the fact that I called her a legend, it wasn’t me, it was the greatest female soccer player ever, Mia Hamm, who uttered the high praise. The New Jersey native, burst onto the national team in a March 2002 friendly against Sweden, a year before O’Reilly even played a college game at North Carolina. Since then she has done everything, she’s won two college cups in chapel hill, captured Olympic Gold three times and most recently was part of the U.S team that won their first Women’s World Cup in sixteen years last summer in Canada. While some may argue that she was the beneficiary of playing on really good teams, her individual numbers speak for themselves.

The speedy winger has has amassed 230 international appearances, 46 international goals, and 54 assists, which is good enough for sixth all time. Maybe the most impressive thing about O’Rielly is she is a big game player. She has scored in Two World Cups as well as scoring in the Olympic Semifinals in both 2004 and 2008. However, her biggest moment may have come on a play where she didn’t find the back of the net. In the 123rd minute of a physical Olympic semi-final between O’Reilly’s Americans and Christine Sinclair’s Canadians, O’Reilly floated a cross into the box that found that head of American striker Alex Morgan. Morgan’s header found the back of the net and would send the U.S to the final where they went onto get revenge against Japan who beat them in the previous year’s World Cup Final.  

O’Reilly who often gets overlooked by fans because she doesn’t have the “finishing ability” of an Abby Wambach or the “tenacity” of a Megan Rapinoe but, O’Reilly was a star in her own right. She was a team player who never got caught out of position and most of all she was a competitor. She always gave her all on the field and that’s what fans will remember most about one of the greatest American soccer stars ever. O’Reilly’s character is best understood when she was left of the roster for the 2016 Rio Olympics. O’Reilly who was left off the roster in favor of an injured Megan Rapinoe, never complained. Instead she supported her teammates and worked her butt of just in case her number was called as an alternate. The point about O’Reilly is this, while she wasn’t the main reason that the U.S. had been successful over the past 15 years, it’s almost certain that without her the USWNT would be a fraction of what it is today. When O’Reilly takes the field tonight in Columbus for the final time, she can be proud of what she has achieved on the field as well as off, as her teammates and her have inspired a generation of Americans to believe that sports on the highest levels aren’t only reserved for men.