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REDDING — The traditional good luck wish, offered up by a patron of the Red Rock Bar just outside this town, where soccer star Megan Rapinoe grew up, was delivered with a significant dose of sarcasm.
“I hope she breaks a leg,” said retired firefighter Tony Roberts, before letting out a hearty laugh.
In reality, Roberts has no desire to see Rapinoe break a bone of any kind as she attempts to lead her team to a second consecutive title in the Women’s World Cup final against the Netherlands on Sunday. (She is nursing what she described to reporters as a minor hamstring muscle strain but has said she will play in the final in Lyon, France).
But Roberts’ comment underscores the uneasy relationship between the woman who has become the defiant face of U.S. soccer and the sun-baked land of Trump supporters she calls home.
Shasta County, about 250 miles north of San Francisco, is where California takes a hard right, where people wave the flag and hold their conservative ideology tight. Now they have a homegrown, world-famous sports star with lavender-streaked hair who is both “out,” and outspoken.
“It is interesting to watch people pretzel themselves to say, ‘We love her and we want to claim her but we also don’t support her as a person,’ ” Shasta College sociology professor Heather Wylie said.
Rapinoe, who turned 34 on Friday, is the leader of a group of talented soccer players who have transcended sport and become a cultural phenomenon. In the past, no one paid much attention to women’s soccer. But the women’s team has overshadowed their U.S. male counterparts, who also are playing Sunday in an important North American regional championship against Mexico — not that many fans seem to care.
The turnaround has largely been a product of battles Rapinoe (pronounced Rap-een-NO) has led. She has taken on the White House and a century’s worth of presumption about the relative status of male and female athletes. She unabashedly uses her platform to promote feminist issues: She was the first openly gay person to appear in Sports Illustrated’s swimsuit edition.
But many in this oak-filled woodland stretch of the Sacramento River Valley seem to still be seething over Rapinoe’s kneeling during the playing of the national anthem in 2016 while wearing the Team USA jersey — a gesture of support for former 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick. After she did it, U.S. Soccer officials put in a rule saying players must stand for anthems.
“Certain things are sacred to our nation,” said Roberts, as the barkeep and her clientele nodded their approval at the Red Rock. “We’re proud our small town girl did great but keep your mouth shut. I respect your opinion. Just don’t put it in my face.”
Others expressed similar sentiments — even a few who count Rapinoe and her family as friends.
“With me, it’s not going over well,” said John Gebauer, a long-time Palo Cedro youth soccer coach who knew Megan and her fraternal twin Rachael when they were kids. Gebauer, 72, a former Air Force mechanic, said Rapinoe has a right to her opinion.
“But we need to support our country in every way, shape or form,” he added. “I salute the flag, yes sir.”
Forgotten land?
Some might say Shasta County is the part of California the Golden State has forgotten.
“The joke is we live in ‘Calabama,’ ” Wylie said. In the 2016 general election, Donald Trump captured 63.9 percent of the Shasta County vote, compared to Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton’s 27.5 percent, according to the county’s database.
A former logging and flour mill town, with a population of about 90,000, Redding is perhaps best known now as the home of the Bethel megachurch that attracts an internationally diverse following.
On the surface, Rapinoe’s parents reflect the values of the town.
Her father, Jim Rapinoe, owns a construction company; her mother, Denise Rapinoe, is a server at the popular Redding institution Jack’s Grill, where the steaks are thick and the distaste for liberal politics thicker.
But while her parents might share views with fellow Redding residents, their support of their daughter is absolute.
“I voted for Trump,” said Jim Rapinoe, who on July 4 wore a red T-shirt imprinted with an American flag.
But, he said, “I wish he would stay off Twitter,” referring to a testy exchange between his daughter and the president. “The guy does more harm than good,” Jim Rapinoe said. “This is all you have to do today? Just get on Megan on a comment she made from a while ago?”
In June, asked if she would go to the White House if her team won the World Cup, Rapinoe replied, “I’m not going to the (expletive) White House.”
Last week, just before the U.S. faced France in a quarterfinal showdown in Paris, Trump tweeted that he would invite the women’s team win or lose, “but Megan should WIN first before she TALKS!”
“Finish the job!” he tweeted. “Megan should never disrespect our Country, the White House, or our Flag.”
Rapinoe did not back down, nor did her partner, Seattle Storm star Sue Bird, who in The Players’ Tribune on Tuesday published an essay titled “So The President F*cking Hates My Girlfriend.”
Nor did the dust-up have an impact on Rapinoe’s play. She scored both goals in the United States’ 2-1 victory against its host country, and after the first one she ran to the corner of the field and struck a triumphant pose.
“I’m really proud of the political thing with her,” said Jim Rapinoe, who returned from France after a week to care for his 94-year-old father, who is ill. “She’s got her stances, and she is willing to fight for them and she is willing to sacrifice it all. When she did the kneeling thing, that could have been the end of her career.”
Like his father and brother, Jim Rapinoe is a veteran.
“That’s what we go for, the right to be able to protest,” he said of serving in the military. “She protests peacefully. She doesn’t go out there and try to burn buildings down.”
Rapinoe, who has been out as a lesbian since 2012 and has campaigned for LGBTQ rights, said after she kneeled that “being a gay American, I know what it means to look at the flag and not have it protect all of your liberties.”
But Gebauer said, “What Megan is doing that started with Colin Kaepernick is anger, and anger doesn’t solve the problem.”
‘Who … is this girl’
Where did she find her activism while growing up in rural America?
Jim Rapinoe said he first heard his daughter’s political voice when she spoke in an assembly at Junction Middle School. He can’t remember the topic, he said. But he recalled looking at his once-quiet child and asking, “Who the hell is this girl?”
“Megan gets up and speaks as if she had been doing it her whole life,” he said.
Rapinoe said she is proud of her hometown, although she and basketball great Bird are a celebrity sports couple living in liberal Seattle.
“I feel like Redding is kind of this underdog, hard-working, blue-collar, is-what-it-is kind of town, and I try to take that with me,” Rapinoe told ESPNw last year. “I never want to just say, ‘Oh, I’m from California.’ I’m not from California. I’m from Redding. For me, that means something.”
It means something to young soccer players in Redding, too. They play at the California Soccer Park on a field named in her honor. It can be found along 15 Rapinoe Way, the “15” representing her U.S. jersey number. Redding is hosting a party for the final game Sunday morning at the park.
Last year, Rapinoe helped launch a fundraiser for victims of the 2018 Carr Fire in Shasta County, which let to eight deaths and destroyed 1,000 homes.
The campaign was criticized on social media by people who said they would not donate to the Shasta Regional Community Foundation because of Rapinoe’s political views. But it raised $57,319, according to the Shasta Regional Community Foundation.
Now Rapinoe, an Olympic and World Cup champion, has a chance to bring even more relief to a town that is still feeling the pain of the Carr Fire.
And almost everyone in Redding will be supporting her on Sunday — even those who dislike her politics.
“Where the devil has come to destroy, angels shine. That’s what we’re hoping when she is playing,” said Roberts, the retired firefighter.
