Don't Worry, Score Happy: How Christen Press Became A Budding U.S. Soccer Star

Christen Press sat in a hotel lobby last fall and began to talk. It was a routine scene on the U.S. men's and women's national soccer team beat. When a reporter snags a sit-down interview, it almost always takes place in the hotel lobby where the team stays. These lobbies look the same, and the interviews sound the same.

Except for ones with Press. They are not the same, nor are they routine.

Conversations with the 26-year-old Press—a forward who made her first Women's World Cup appearance in the USA's opener on Monday and scored the game-winner over Australia—seem to exist on a different plane. One that's overtly psychological, and perhaps a bit spiritual. She'll speak of being "in the present moment." Of "appreciating the nuances of life."

"Before I found my peace, I was way too much in my head," she told me in an interview for FOX Sports. "I have learned that there's a little bit of a danger in stressing ourselves out and living in the future—worry affects how we are today."

This isn't how talking to members of Team USA usually goes. They are, for the most part, bright and affable women. A sit-down with star striker Abby Wambach is a battle of wits. Elfin midfielder Megan Rapinoe possesses unique mellowness and lightness. Strikers Alex Morgan and Sydney Leroux are less keen to connect—but get them started on the right subject, like their fathers, and they'll speak openly.

As a group, however, the team comes burdened with a consuming self-reverence, likely the residue of dominating the sport for decades. Press is different. She doesn't speak like an athlete, and she isn't consumed by soccer.

Instead, she practices Vedic meditation, sitting twice a day while repeating a secret Sanskrit mantra to "take the power away from all your stressors" by controlling the object of your focus–or something. She does yoga. She writes. One recent entry on her blog): "I have a weakness. I never feel like I'm good enough. … I have a strength. I never feel like I'm good enough." She takes a deep interest in psychology, which she majored in at Stanford University.

Press is thoughtful and disarmingly honest about her own failings and those of her peers–a kind of taboo around the women's national team. She doesn't even look like her teammates: Press is frailer, and hunched when on the ball.

"Often you find soccer is just a representation of your life and I think I have a little bit of a different pace from a lot of the girls here," Press said last fall. "A lot of the team here is really, really competitive, really fast-paced. When we walk, we walk so fast. People are driven, always looking forward. The speed of life that top American athletes have is boom-boom-boom, and I'm a lot slower. I look before I cross, you know?"

Press comes from a different place. While most players on Team USA hail from middle-class backgrounds, from parents who made sacrifices and took a chance on their daughter's talent, Press had a privileged upbringing. She's a product of a high-achieving family, living in Palos Verdes, a rich town in Los Angeles County—on the ocean, it appears.

Coming out of Stanford as the national player of the year and its all-time leading scorer, Press seemed on the fast track to the national team. But under Pia Sundhage, a head coach disinclined to introduce young talent, no call came. Press was the rookie of the year in the Women's Professional Soccer league in 2011, but it made no difference. She was too similar a player to Morgan and Leroux, who were faster, stronger and younger. There didn't seem to be any room for her, not with Wambach and Amy Rodriguez ensconced on the national team roster as well.

When the WPS folded, Press gave up on Team USA and signed a contract in Sweden. There were two kinds of Americans who went to Europe: Arrived stars who would be paid a premium, and players who couldn't hack it stateside but weren't ready to retire. Press seemed to count among the latter. Yet by crossing the Atlantic, she began to realize what was holding her back.

She wanted to make the national team too much. Had strained to do so her entire life. Maybe that drive came from her investment banker dad, so intense and voluble that Press would have the referee remove him from her youth games before they even kicked off. Or maybe it was internal. Whatever the case, Press' blind pursuit had the unintentional effect of muting the natural creativity and mirth in her game, her unconventional ways of solving the soccer's age-old problems.

At her best, Press is a clever player, with a tremendous dribble. Only that's not how USA forwards traditionally played. So she didn't let herself play that way, either. In Sweden, though, she let loose, played the way she enjoyed, and not coincidentally scored a pile of goals. Within two months, she was joining Sundhage's team. (Of course, it helped that Sundhage, a Swede, paid particular attention to her home league, something Press was unaware of).

Suddenly, Press had value for being different. She offered Sundhage—and her successors, Tom Sermanni and then Jill Ellis—an alternative as the Americans try to shake their old, stodgy and outmoded playing style. As Wambach told me, Press is "a lot more mindful and thoughtful" than typical forwards.

A colleague once called Press a "female Landon Donovan" for her willingness to share her innermost feelings. But it also applies to her California mindset. In his later years, Donovan talked about "being centered" and expelling "negativity" a lot, too—and her ill-defined position. Like Donovan, she's not quite a winger or a playmaker, and is undersized as a forward, but she scores goals at a ludicrous clip anyway.

Her ability to keep doing so may prove decisive for Team USA in the Women's World Cup.

Take Press' goal against Australia in the opening game—her 21st for the U.S. in just 46 appearances, even though she's been playing out on the right wing for many of those games, where scoring chances are harder to come by. The way she scored was typical Press: instinctive.

She had drifted far inside for a counter-attack, almost to the other end of the field, but slowed up when Leroux went running through the box. A conventional forward would have hurtled on. When Leroux cut the ball back for Press, she had found the room to one-time it into the low far corner of goal. It was a clever and subtle score, the kind that only comes from an unorthodox player.

Chances are, Press will score more goals at this World Cup. A month or so from now, she may even be viewed as the national team's newest star. One who arrived at her own speed, looking before she crosses.