Retired U.S. soccer star Abby Wambach wants to see women demand more.
That's what she told an applauding audience of about 500 at The Playhouse at Rodney Square on Saturday evening, weaving together jokes, personal stories and memories of the U.S. Women's National Team.
Her talk kicked off a new "Vibrant Voices" speaker series at The Playhouse.
It's The Grand's effort to introduce celebrity speakers, "a new segment we haven't been in," into its show offerings, said Grand associate director of marketing Andy Truscott.
More: Abby Wambach, George Takei & John Quiñones headline new Playhouse series
Wambach, a two-time Olympic gold medalist, until just over a month ago held the title of top all-time international goal-scorer among male and female players.
But she said after she retired in 2015, she looked at decorated male athletes and realized their end-of-career concerns would be based on the large sums of money they had made.
"Mine was truly how I was going to pay my mortgage, and what job I was going to create or apply for," Wambach said. "I just feel like if this was happening to me, it was happening to every woman in the world."
Wambach discussed gender pay equity concerns, a cause some of her former team's players have taken up in a discrimination lawsuit against U.S. Soccer, and paid tribute to female soccer stars who had come before her, including Mia Hamm and Michelle Aker.
She described seeing Hamm's locker as a 16-year-old visiting the U.S. women's soccer team locker room ahead of the 1996 Olympics.
"I was the extra weird kid," she said. "I grabbed her cleats and I was rubbing them on my legs."
"It worked," she added as the crowd laughed and cheered.
Wambach recalled a memorable training session alongside Aker.
"I had never seen a person, let alone a woman, step into her power like that — demand what she wanted and then deliver," Wambach said.
The player also touched on coaching her stepchildren's teams ("95% of the time what parents are yelling onto the field is wrong," she said, to laughter) and her post-retirement running workouts, one of which she appears to be planning in Delaware.
She took to Twitter on Saturday to ask for running club recommendations in Wilmington, and was overheard at a meet-and-greet after the speech discussing plans for an 18-mile run in the area on Sunday.
Next in the lineup for the Playhouse series, which is sponsored by The News Journal, 6ABC WPVI-TV, and Chase Bank are ABC News journalist John Quiñones and "Star Trek" star and activist George Takei.
Contact Jeanne Kuang at jkuang@delawareonline.com or (302) 324-2476.
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2020-03-08 13:59:32Z
https://www.delawareonline.com/story/news/2020/03/08/soccer-star-abby-wambach-talks-gender-equity-new-playhouse-speaker-series/4985958002/
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