Soccer

NWSL Week 9 in review: The USWNT might have moved on from Christie Rampone, but Sky Blue FC hasn’t

With a very young defense around her, Christie Rampone not going to Rio is the best thing that could happen to Sky Blue FC. On Sunday night against Seattle, Rampone again proved that while her time with the USWNT might be done, she definitely isn’t.

by Lauren Barker

Jun 20, 2016, 2:42 PM UTC

Charles LeClaire-USA TODAY Sports

Last month, just as the USWNT was set to meet in Denver, U.S. Soccer announced that Christie Rampone had chosen not to join the team for camp ahead of two friendlies with Japan.

On paper, it wasn’t that surprising. Rampone’s on-field role with the team had diminished significantly as last summer’s World Cup progressed. By the knockout rounds, Jill Ellis was using her as a late-game sub, if at all. Rampone also saw limited time in the first several games of the subsequent victory tour, and then missed the last five due to a knee injury. She had knee surgery in December. She’d made 311 appearances for the USWNT, and had been the team’s longtime captain, her absence necessitating a changing of the guard and the beginning of the reign of current co-captains Carli Lloyd and Becky Sauerbrunn. Rampone was also the last of the ‘99ers still playing, and at 40, she was double the age, at least, of some of the players Ellis was bringing in as the team began preparations for this summer’s Olympics.

Injured and old. Perhaps it was more surprising then that Rampone had been on that roster at all than that she’d decided to take herself off it.

Even with her status with the national team up in the air well before that May camp, there never seemed to be a question as to whether or not Rampone would continue playing, though. When the NWSL season kicked off in April, sure enough, there was Rampone, in the center of Sky Blue FC's back line. Maybe she'd be a part of the USWNT again, maybe she wouldn't, but Christie Rampone definitely wasn't done.

After making her USWNT debut at 21, Rampone had grown up with the USWNT, and then watched the USWNT grow up around her. And that’s where she finds herself now with Sky Blue, again watching -- and helping -- a young team grow up. When the opening whistle blew in Seattle for Sky Blue’s first game of this season, Rampone was in her usual spot in the center of the back line, Erin Simon on one side, Erica Skroski on the other, goalkeeper Caroline Casey right behind. Casey, Simon and Skroski are all rookies; Sky Blue’s win in Seattle -- the first ever loss for the Reign at Memorial Stadium -- was the first professional game any of them had ever played. Simon had landed her spot on the roster after impressing at an open tryout a few months earlier.

Rampone, a New Jersey native, spent 2009 and 2010 with Sky Blue, before heading to Florida to play for Team Turn Your Computer Into A Telephone in WPS’s final season. She served as captain in both of her WPS seasons with Sky Blue, and also became the team’s player-coach for the end of the 2009 season, including through the playoffs, when they won the WPS Championship. After playing, captaining and coaching Sky Blue to that inaugural WPS title, Rampone revealed to her teammates that she was nearly three months pregnant with her second child. Rampone returned to Sky Blue in 2013 for the first NWSL season and she’s been captaining the team, and anchoring the defense, ever since. Rampone’s even scored twice for Sky Blue. In 2014 she netted what was her first-ever professional goal, and Rampone had played in all three seasons of both the WUSA and WPS, and the 2013 season of the NWSL. She added her second career goal last season (Rampone has scored four times for the USWNT).

Rampone has played every minute of every game this season, the ninth 90-minute performance of the year coming Sunday night in a 0-0 draw with Seattle. Though this time lined up with Kelley O’Hara, second-year player Kristin Grubka, and only one rookie in Skroski (plus rookie keeper Caroline Stanley), it was Rampone who ran the show defensively for Sky Blue, throwing her body around and running down players a decade -- or sometimes two -- younger than her, holding a Seattle team that, current record aside, is still very good and very dangerous offensively, scoreless.

As the Olympics loom and the preparations to find an even greater greatness kick into high gear, it seems ever clearer that the USWNT has moved on to a life post-Rampone. But with O’Hara, the next-most-experienced defender Sky Blue’s got, set to miss some time to help look for the greatness, Rampone’s role in New Jersey will become more important than ever. But watching her on Sunday night, a week shy of her 41st birthday, it’s clear that Christie Rampone is up to the task, and definitely not done yet.