Christie Rampone: Ultimate Soccer Mom

If more than just a few diehards and pony-tailed hooligans paid close attention to women's soccer, Christie Rampone's story would have been considered Hollywood-worthy the moment she lifted the first Women's Professional Soccer championship trophy a few miles to the south at the Home Depot Center.

Her team, the unfortunately named Sky Blue FC (they play in central New Jersey and wear orange), was in last place and in crisis following the May dismissal of coach and GM Ian Sawyers. His replacement, assistant Kelly Lindsey, resigned two months later. So defender Rampone took over as player-coach, hoping to muster the experience earned in three Women's World Cups and three Olympics in an attempt to keep the franchise from imploding.

"I didn't hesitate, actually," Rampone told The Star-Ledger about her decision to coach as well as captain her team. "I just saw the shock in everybody's eyes [after Lindsey's departure]. The team was just at a standstill at that point. I just thought it was the natural thing to do, to take over."

A fortunate combination of results on the final day of the regular season lifted Sky Blue (7-8-5) to fourth place in the seven-team league and the final playoff berth. But the WPS did its lowest seed no favors, forcing Rampone and her team to beat the league's top three teams on their home turf over just eight days to win the title.

So they did, ousting the Washington Freedom 2-1, St. Louis Athletica 1-0 and then the top-seeded Los Angeles Sol, who had lost only three times all season, 1-0 in the Aug. 22 final. Rampone's defense yielded just one goal to the league's three best teams. Yes, the postseason results should come with a small asterisk because each Sky Blue opponent lost a key attacker to the start of the UEFA Women's Euro championship tournament. But few who watched or covered the games denied that Rampone's side was the deserving winner in each. They simply played confident, mistake-free soccer.

Already a pretty amazing rags-to-riches story, the tale took a twist of the surreal in the locker room following the final, when Rampone told her team that she'd been pregnant for nearly three months.

"They were getting a little annoyed I wasn't celebrating enough with them, with the cocktails," Rampone said on a conference call on Thursday. "I hadn't told anybody. I said 'I'm almost three months pregnant. Eleven weeks.' Everyone was just shocked. It was an awesome moment to tell them."

Although they do it somewhat anonymously, WPS players are as committed to their sport as any professional. In fact, the relative lack of money, infrastructure and attention may make their seasons even more difficult to negotiate. But they want to win just as badly, as do their opponents. On the field it's no less competitive than any other circuit, and what Rampone accomplished is astonishing. She won a title in her sport's most competitive professional league against odds longer than just about any individual athlete in any team sport that comes to mind. And her story has garnered some attention from the national media. It's just a shame it had to happen after the season.

FanHouse asked Rampone, who already has one child, why she chose to hide her second pregnancy until after the final, when it could have proven to be such a publicity boon for the struggling league.

"It was a personal choice," she said. "I didn't want anyone worrying about me, the team focusing on whether I'm tired or losing any confidence. I didn't want anything focused on myself. It was all about the team. If I came out and said or it leaked out, then we wouldn't be focused on the right thing."

She said the "adrenaline" of qualifying for the playoffs, during which the team only reserved flights and hotel rooms for the next destination after a victory, often relegated the pregnancy to "the last thing on my mind." She had a team to take care of, one that had won just one of its first seven games, and she did so in a manner that would be instantly celebrated if it happened on a bigger stage. When pundits and publications pick their sportsmen and athletes of the year for 2009, it will be hard to argue against Rampone if you remove the number of TV viewers, bloggers and fantasy players from the equation. It is a remarkable story.