Brandi Chastain

Brandi Denise Chastain (born July 21, 1968) is a professional American soccer defender and midfielder who plays for the team California Storm ofWomen's Premier Soccer League and is a former member of the United States women's national soccer team.

Chastain has played for San Jose CyberRays of the WUSA and FC Gold Pride of Women's Professional Soccer. She is best known for her game-winning penalty shootout kick against China in the 1999 FIFA Women's World Cup final and her celebration afterwards. Amongst her many achievements, Chastain has won two Women's World Cup championships, two Olympic gold medals, and an Olympic silver medal. She is married to her former college coach, Jerry Smith, who is still the women's soccer coach at Chastain's alma mater, Santa Clara University.[1]



Contents
[hide]  *1 Early playing career  ==Early playing career[ edit] == 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.
 * 2 Sports bra episode
 * 3 Professional career
 * 4 Career statistics
 * 4.1 Club career
 * 4.2 International career
 * 5 See also
 * 6 References
 * 7 External links

Chastain first represented her country on June 1, 1988, against Japan. She scored her first of five international goals on April 18, 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 qualifier 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.[2]

As a defender, she made the U.S. National team again in 1996 and participated in the 1996 Women's Olympic Football Tournament, 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 againstNorway.[3]  Of her 192 career caps, she played 89 primarily at defender during which she occasionally played midfielder.[3] ==Sports bra episode<span class="mw-editsection-bracket" style="color:rgb(85,85,85);">[ edit<span class="mw-editsection-bracket" style="color:rgb(85,85,85);">] == <p style="margin-top:0.5em;line-height:20.363636016845703px;color:rgb(37,37,37);font-family:sans-serif;font-size:13.63636302947998px;">On July 10, 1999, at the 1999 FIFA Women's World Cup Final at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, California, after scoring the fifth kick in the penalty shootout to give the United States the win over China in the final game, Chastain celebrated by spontaneously whipping off her jersey and falling to her knees in a sports bra, her fists clenched, flexing her arms. Removing a jersey in celebration of a goal is so common in men's soccer that it has, at times, been cause for an automatic yellow card caution, according to the Laws of the Game.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-4" style="line-height:1;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;">[4]  Photographs of the incident were featured on the covers of Newsweek and Sports Illustrated and the event also landed her on the cover of Time.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-autogenerated1_3-2" style="line-height:1;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;">[3]  The image of her celebration has been considered one of the more famous photographs of a woman celebrating an athletic victory.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-5" style="line-height:1;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;">[5] <sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-6" style="line-height:1;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;">[6]

<p style="margin-top:0.5em;margin-bottom:0.5em;line-height:20.363636016845703px;color:rgb(37,37,37);font-family:sans-serif;font-size:13.63636302947998px;">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.'"<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-7" style="line-height:1;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;">[7] ==Professional career<span class="mw-editsection" style="-webkit-user-select:none;font-size:small;margin-left:1em;line-height:1em;display:inline-block;white-space:nowrap;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;font-family:sans-serif;"><span class="mw-editsection-bracket" style="color:rgb(85,85,85);">[ edit<span class="mw-editsection-bracket" style="color:rgb(85,85,85);">] == <p style="margin-top:0.5em;line-height:20.363636016845703px;color:rgb(37,37,37);font-family:sans-serif;font-size:13.63636302947998px;">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.

<p style="margin-top:0.5em;margin-bottom:0.5em;line-height:20.363636016845703px;color:rgb(37,37,37);font-family:sans-serif;font-size:13.63636302947998px;">She appeared on an episode of [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celebrity_Jeopardy! Celebrity Jeopardy!] on February 9, 2001, and won with $1. Her charity received $15,000. Host Alex Trebek alluded to the incident when he said, "I hope you win again."

<p style="margin-top:0.5em;margin-bottom:0.5em;line-height:20.363636016845703px;color:rgb(37,37,37);font-family:sans-serif;font-size:13.63636302947998px;">She appeared in the HBO documentary Dare to Dream: The Story of the U.S. Women's Soccer Team.

<p style="margin-top:0.5em;margin-bottom:0.5em;line-height:20.363636016845703px;color:rgb(37,37,37);font-family:sans-serif;font-size:13.63636302947998px;">Chastain's book about women's competitive sports is titled It’s Not About the Bra. (ISBN 978-0060765996)

<p style="margin-top:0.5em;margin-bottom:0.5em;line-height:20.363636016845703px;color:rgb(37,37,37);font-family:sans-serif;font-size:13.63636302947998px;">She posed nude except for soccer cleats and a strategically placed soccer ball in the men's magazine Gear.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-autogenerated1_3-3" style="line-height:1;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;">[3]  Her appearance in the magazine created a controversy and the issue was brought up as a question at the Miss Teen USA pageant in 1999.

<p style="margin-top:0.5em;margin-bottom:0.5em;line-height:20.363636016845703px;color:rgb(37,37,37);font-family:sans-serif;font-size:13.63636302947998px;">Chastain has been a color commentator on soccer telecasts on two networks. She broadcast for NBC Sports during the 2008<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-8" style="line-height:1;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;">[8]  and 2012<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-9" style="line-height:1;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;">[9]  Summer Olympics. Her work with ABC/ESPN has included Major League Soccer matches and being part of a rotation of studio commentators for the 2011 FIFA Women's World Cup.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-10" style="line-height:1;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;">[10]

<p style="margin-top:0.5em;margin-bottom:0.5em;line-height:20.363636016845703px;color:rgb(37,37,37);font-family:sans-serif;font-size:13.63636302947998px;">Chastain was the Official spokesperson for Pfizer's (legacy Wyeth) multivitamin product Centrum Ultra.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-11" style="line-height:1;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;">[11] ==Career statistics<span class="mw-editsection" style="-webkit-user-select:none;font-size:small;margin-left:1em;line-height:1em;display:inline-block;white-space:nowrap;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;font-family:sans-serif;"><span class="mw-editsection-bracket" style="color:rgb(85,85,85);">[ edit<span class="mw-editsection-bracket" style="color:rgb(85,85,85);">] == ===Club career<span class="mw-editsection" style="-webkit-user-select:none;font-size:small;margin-left:1em;line-height:1em;display:inline-block;white-space:nowrap;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;"><span class="mw-editsection-bracket" style="color:rgb(85,85,85);">[ edit<span class="mw-editsection-bracket" style="color:rgb(85,85,85);">] === ===International career<span class="mw-editsection" style="-webkit-user-select:none;font-size:small;margin-left:1em;line-height:1em;display:inline-block;white-space:nowrap;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;"><span class="mw-editsection-bracket" style="color:rgb(85,85,85);">[ edit<span class="mw-editsection-bracket" style="color:rgb(85,85,85);">] ===