A Superstar's Burden.

Now that she's queen of America's fastest-growing sport, soccer star Mia Hamm may have to act like one, too

Every time Mia Hamm steps off a soccer field, the young girls are waiting. They are wearing her No. 9 jersey. Their hair is pulled back just like her own ponytail. They shriek her name adoringly, then hold out their hands for her to slap, or ask her to sign their jerseys. In return, Hamm offers high fives, an autograph, a smile--a gesture suggesting that they can aspire to be everything she has become.

"It's very important for young girls to have female athletes they can identify with," says Hamm. And that's about as close as she gets to acknowledging that she is the reigning queen of the soccer world.

"She's not only a soccer icon," says her coach, Tony DiCicco. "She's an icon for women's athletics. That's a huge responsibility."

Regarded by many as the world's best female soccer player, Hamm has become a role model for the 7.5 million girls who play the game in the United States. Now 27, the star forward represents for many the full realization of sports opportunities for women. She has won two world championships and an Olympic gold medal, and has scored more career goals than any other woman or man to play the game.

She has also reached an uncommon level of celebrity. People magazine voted her one of its 50 most beautiful people. Nike named a building in her honor at its Oregon headquarters. She appears in a commercial with Michael Jordan, challenging him in basketball, soccer, track, and fencing, then flipping him over her hip in a judo maneuver while the music asserts, "Anything you can do, I can do better."

Hamm accepts that she is a pioneer. Yet she is a reluctant celebrity. Having grown up in a military family with three sisters and two brothers, she has a reserve, a sense of duty and decorum, as if she should succeed at a high level but not stand out from the others.

NO SUPERSTAR ATTITUDE

If you ask her how she feels about being called the best player in the world, she challenges the notion that there really is one best player. And she confesses to a trait one doesn't usually associate with superstars--a lack of self-confidence. "I don't think a lot of athletes walk around thinking they're the best," she says. "If they do, it's probably to hide some weaknesses they have."

With her teammates, she can be funny and outgoing, putting on humorous accents and making jokes at her own expense. She even makes fun of her picture on the box of Soccer Barbie. The photo shows her with a freeze-dried smile and more makeup than a fading movie star. "You can't tell which one is the Barbie," she cracks.

Now married to a Marine pilot, Hamm is the daughter of an Air Force colonel, and grew up in Texas, California, Virginia, and Italy. By the time she was 15, she became the youngest player ever to join the U.S. women's national soccer team. With her, the team has won the Women's World Cup twice--in 1991 and again this year--as well as the gold medal at the 1996 Olympics.

But her triumphs have been tempered by tragedy. Her older brother, Garrett, contracted a rare blood disorder in 1985, and although Mia raised $50,000 for his care through a benefit soccer match, he died in 1997, at 28.

Hamm absorbed the hurt, and has played on, scoring more goals and raising expectations. Those expectations have put enormous pressure on her, not only to lead her team, but to help fill stadiums and to be the spark that could one day ignite a pro soccer league for women.

Fortunately, Hamm's style of play is dynamically suited to spreading the sport to a wider audience. When she is on the field, a fiercer expression emerges, cheeks hollowed and jaw clenched in exertion. Her ponytail fans out behind her as she sprints 40 yards to finish a fast break, or carves a defender with a deft two-step and makes a charge toward the goal.

Says a former coach: "When she gets the ball, you hold your breath."

RELATED ARTICLE: The Law That Gave Mia a Chance

It's fitting that Mia Hamm was born in 1972, the year the U.S. enacted Title IX. By banning sex discrimination at any school or college receiving federal funds, that law has helped to open up the sports world for female stars like Hamm. But so far, it's an incomplete revolution.

Title IX requires schools to offer the same sports opportunities to girls as to boys, as well as equal financing. And indeed, since 1972 the number of girls participating in high school and collegiate sports has jumped from 300,000 to more than 3 million.

But some schools responded by cutting back on men's sports, not beefing up women's. And spending on male college sports is rising faster than its female equivalent.