Brandi Chastain

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Brandi Chastain
Personal information
Full name Brandi Denise Chastain
Date of birth 21 July 1968 (1968-07-21) (age 40)
Place of birth San Jose, CA, United States
Height 5 ft 7 in (1.70 m)
Playing position Defender/Midfielder
Club information
Current club FC Gold Pride
Number 6
Youth career
1986 UC Berkeley
1989–1990 Santa Clara
Senior career1
Years Club Apps2 (Gls)2
1993 Shiroki F.C. Serena
California Storm
2001–2003 Bay Area/San Jose CyberRays
2009– FC Gold Pride 002 00(0)
National team3
1988–2004 United States 192 0(30)
1 Senior club appearances and goals counted for the domestic league only and correct as of 18:19, 12 April 2009 (UTC).

2 Appearances (Goals).

3 National team caps and goals correct as of 18:19, 12 April 2009 (UTC)
The world-famous 1999 sports bra incident.

Brandi Denise Chastain (born July 21, 1968) is a professional soccer player, who was on the U.S. women's national soccer team from 1991 to 2004 and the San Jose CyberRays of the WUSA (2001-2003). She recently played for the California Storm in the WPSL, and currently plays for FC Gold Pride of the WPS league. She is best known for her game-winning penalty kick against China in the 1999 FIFA Women's World Cup final and her bra-baring celebration afterwards.

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[edit] Early playing career

She attended Archbishop Mitty High School in San Jose, California, helping take the team to three section championships. In 1986 Chastain was awarded the Soccer America Freshmen Player Of The Year award at the University of California-Berkeley. Soon after, she underwent reconstructive surgery on both knees which caused her to miss much of the 1987 and 1988 seasons. She transferred to Santa Clara University before the start of the 1989 season, leading them to two Final Four NCAA appearances, 1989 and 1990, before she graduated in 1991.

Chastain first represented her country on 1 June 1988, against Japan. She scored her first (through fifth) international goals on 18 April 1991 when she came off the bench as a forward to score five consecutive goals in a 12-0 United States win in a CONCACAF FIFA Women's World Cup against Mexico. Team USA went on to win the World Cup, staged in China.

After that first World Cup, she played club soccer for one season in Japan in 1993, earning team MVP honors and was the only foreigner to be selected as one of the league's top 11 players.[1]

As a defender, she made the U.S. National team again in 1996 and participated in the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Games, helping the Americans win the gold medal by playing every minute of every U.S. game, despite a third serious knee injury suffered in the semifinal against Norway[2]. Of her 192 career caps, she played 89 primarily at defender during which she occasionally played midfielder.[2]

[edit] Sports bra episode

On July 10, 1999 at the Women's World Cup at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, California, after scoring the fifth penalty kick to give the United States the win over China in the final game, Chastain celebrated by peeling off her jersey and falling to her knees in a sports bra, her fists clenched. This image was featured on the covers of TIME, Newsweek, and Sports Illustrated [2].

Chastain's take on the incident was "Momentary insanity, nothing more, nothing less. I wasn’t thinking about anything. I thought, ‘This is the greatest moment of my life on the soccer field.’"[3]

[edit] Professional career

Chastain played on the San Jose CyberRays in the Women's United Soccer Association from its formation in 2001 until its suspension in 2003. She played on the US women's national team until her last game on December 6, 2004.

She appeared in the HBO documentary Dare to Dream: The Story of the U.S. Women's Soccer Team.

She was a broadcaster with ABC/ESPN on their coverage of Major League Soccer.

Chastain's website and her book about women's competitive sports are titled It’s Not About the Bra.

She posed nude except for soccer cleats and a strategically-placed soccer ball in the lad's mag Gear.[2].

Chastain served as an analyst for NBC Sports coverage of Soccer at the 2008 Summer Olympics. [4]

[edit] Personal life

She currently lives in the Rose Garden neighborhood of San Jose, California, where her husband, Jerry Smith, is the women's soccer coach at Santa Clara University. The couple's first child, son Jaden Chastain Smith, was born on June 8, 2006. Brandi also has a stepson, Cameron, who was seven at the time when she married Jerry Smith.

[edit] References

[edit] External links


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